Distribute Your Inventory Across Multiple FCs At No Extra Cost

This announcement is for the US marketplace, however, we have been able to find that there is a in the UK so this program seems to be rolling out in UK/EU as well.

In an attempt to speed up fulfillment without raising shipping prices, Amazon has rolled out its Box-Level Inventory Placement Program to help sellers (and partner carriers) streamline the shipping of their SPD shipments across multiple FCs at no extra cost.

What is Box-Level Inventory Placement?

Box-Level Inventory Placement is a method for splitting eligible products into multiple box groups, with each group sharing the same destination address. Eligibility for this program is based on the box content information that you provide. In addition, box-level placement only applies to shipments shipped through Amazon-partnered carriers.

How Does it Work?

This may sound like the same thing we are all used to with the usual 3-location shipments, and Amazon’s own announcement of this program was very vague and even the seller comments noted a lack of clarity and downright confusion with what the announcement actually means, but read on for what we believe this new program entails based on Amazon’s own descriptions.

If your inventory is eligible, “Multiple Destinations” will show up under the “Ship To” tab in your FBA shipping plan. You can then create and track your shipments as you normally would.

This is where it gets a little muddy and time will prove the accuracy of this. When you make your eligible shipment under Box-Level Inventory Placement and Amazon-Partnered Carrier Program, instead of, for example, sending your inventory to a CA receiving center, then waiting for FC transfer to send some of that inventory on to Nevada, then New Mexico, it would just go to these locations directly from your 3PL warehouse at no additional cost. Although, again, be aware that Amazon’s news announcement doesn’t explicitly say this! 🤦

Also, on Box-Level Inventory Placement’s info page, it says that Amazon works with their partner carriers to essentially handle your shipments essentially for no extra cost. It is hard to say for sure, but from what we can interpret, instead of waiting for inventory to check-in at the receiving center, only to be then shipped again to other parts of the country, they may instead have you ship your inventory directly to more fulfillment center locations at no additional cost.

What this means about the FBA Inventory Placement Service–a service that FBA charges a per-item service fee for and which allows you to send inventory to 1 FC instead of three. Whether this program will continue to operate in light of the new Box-Level Inventory Program is unclear.

Another Way to Reduce Shipping Costs?

What I believe that this Box-Level Inventory Placement is saying is that even though you will pay for SPD shipments as if they are going to one single destination, they will actually be split into multiple, let’s say six destinations for example.

The idea is that your costs would be reduced as you’d be paying for one shipment but getting five, in this example. And because your inventory is initially being split up to more FCs than just the normal 3 or, in some cases 1, that shortens the amount of time before all inventory officially becomes for sale, as it would reduce or cut out the FC Transfer delay. It makes much more sense for everyone involved so long as the costs make sense. Instead of sending inventory to California and get checked in, only to have some of it go to Nevada and then get checked in there again, it would simply go directly to Nevada in the first place.

Also, this process would allow more transparency as you will be able track each of the shipments to each of the locations, adding more visibility than what we currently have with the FC Transfer process.

While the program seems promising, there are still a lot of questions around how it really works. But it is something to test out and to be aware of as an option.

Visit Box-Level Inventory Placement for more details.

Related: How to Ship to Amazon FBA (And Speed Up Check-In Times)