Contents

    Transferring items to an FBA warehouses

    Your task/initial situation

    You sell and ship your goods via Amazon and have an FBA warehouse. You would like to regularly transfer the goods from your default warehouse or JTL-WMS warehouse to your FBA warehouse, as you want to store an appropriate number of goods there, i.e. not too many and not too little.

    Requirements

    • In order to move items to an FBA warehouse, the item must already be listed on Amazon. For items that are not yet listed on Amazon, you must first create a new listing.
    • For each item that you want to transfer to an FBA warehouse, the setting Fulfillment by Amazon must be activated in the Seller Central.

    Procedure

    Transferring items from your default warehouse or JTL-WMS warehouse to an FBA warehouse consists of 3 steps:

    Step 1: Create the stock transfer in JTL-Wawi. Specify which items are to be transferred from your warehouse to an FBA warehouse or have proposals for the quantities to be transferred automatically determined and register the transfer with Amazon. Amazon tells you which goods to send to which warehouse

    Please note: Please do not pack your goods until you have created the stock transfer and the delivery plan for Amazon! It may happen that you have to send the goods to several different Amazon warehouses. Amazon informs you via a delivery plan which goods are to be sent to which warehouse.

    Step 2: The goods leave your warehouse using your specified standard goods issue processes that you have defined for your warehouse and are posted to intermediate storage.

    Please note: We recommend that you ship your goods to an FBA warehouse via the Stock transfer function. If the normal shipping process and shipping via the Stock transfer function and the associated registration of the items with Amazon are mixed, the stock in the intermediate storage may be distorted, since the goods are generally cleared from the intermediate storage if the items match.

    Step 3: Your goods will be posted from intermediate storage to your FBA warehouse.

    Please note: Please do not pack your goods until you have created the stock transfer and the delivery plan for Amazon! It may happen that you have to send the goods to several different Amazon warehouses. Amazon informs you via a delivery plan which goods are to be sent to which warehouse.

    Step 1: Creating a stock transfer

    1. In JTL-Wawi, click on the Warehouse icon to open the Warehouse area.
    1. Open the Outbound stock transfers category and click New stock transfer. The Creating and editing stock transfers dialogue box opens.
    2. Select a Source warehouse (In this example we are working with a default warehouse) and an FBA warehouse as a Destination warehouse.
    1. Option –  Generating proposals for stock transfer quantities: JTL-Wawi can help you calculate the demand for items for a specific time period based on past sales. Click Generate proposals for FBA. The Generating proposals for stock transfers to an FBA warehouse dialogue box opens.

    Calculate demand
    Calculate demand for the next … days: Here you enter the number of days for which the demand is to be calculated.


    Use average demand from (date) to (date): By clicking on the button, the Determining stock transfer proposals based on the selected period dialogue box opens. Here you can define the time period for the calculation of the demand:
    Demand calculation from: Here you can define the day from which the demand is to be calculated.

    Demand calculation until: Here you can define up to which day the demand should be calculated.


    Consider only days on which the item was in stock: Enable this option to calculate an exact demand for your items. If you activate this option, only those days are considered in the calculation, on which the stock in the FBA warehouse was greater than 0 and the item could therefore also be sold.

    Attention: If you deactivate this option, you will not receive an exact result for your real demands.

    Include multichannel sales orders in the calculation: Specify whether to include items that have been sold directly via Amazon, as well as items that have been sold as a multichannel order via another platform. Disable this option if you generally prefer to keep items in your own warehouse that you deliver via multichannel FBA.


    Limit to
    Items with stock in the warehouse: The drop-down menu shows all your warehouses, including your intermediate storage. You can either select a single warehouse or select All warehouses. Also items without stock.


    Items from category: Here you can limit the demand calculation to items of a specific category.

    Automatic calculation of stock transfer quantities

    The automatic calculation of the quantity to be transferred is based on the demand. In order to be able to determine the stock transfer quantity, the demand for the specified days must first be calculated. Subsequently, the stock transfer quantity is calculated based on the current stocks in the FBA warehouse, source warehouse and intermediate storage.

    The results of the automatic calculation are proposals that have been calculated on the basis of specific key figures. You can accept the proposals or adjust them if necessary.

    First, the demand is calculated as follows:

    To achieve an exact calculation of your demand, please activate the option “Include only days on which the item was in stock in the calculation”.
    You want to calculate your demand for kick pads for 10 days. To do this, you use the sales on Amazon within the last 40 days. In the last 40 days you have sold 60 kick pads. That is an average of 1.5 kick pads per day. If you now multiply this number by ten, you know that your demand is 15 kick pads for 10 days.

    If the option Include only days on which the item was in stock in the calculation is NOT ENABLED, it is not taken into account whether the item was available for the entire period or within how many days the item was sold and how often. For example, if 60 kick pads were available in your FBA warehouse, but they were sold out on the first day and therefore were no longer available for the remaining 39 days you used for your calculation, this will not be taken into account in the calculation. The calculation assumes that you have sold the 60 kick pads over the entire period of 40 days and calculates the average value based on this. Thus, the calculation only works reliably for the items that were available over the entire specified period.

    Your demand for kick pads is 15. Five kick pads are still in your FBA warehouse, three are in intermediate storage on their way to your FBA warehouse, and 50 kick pads are in your source warehouse. Thus, the amount of kick pads that is to be transferred is 7. However, if you only have 5 kick pads available in your source warehouse instead of 7 kick pads, the quantity to be transferred is automatically set to 5.

    Attention: Minimum stocks per warehouse are currently not taken into account.
    1. To add items to your stock transfer, enter the SKU or item name in the Item field or click Add line items. The Searching for items dialogue box opens. On the left, you can narrow the items that appear in the list according to categories.
    1. Double-click on the items you want to transfer from the selection suggestion and clickApply selection. You are now back in the Creating and editing stock transfers dialogue box. Here you can view the items you have selected and enter the stock transfer quantity.
    Delete line items: If you want to delete a line item, select it and click Delete line item.
    1. Option: If items you want to transfer are linked to multiple Amazon listings, you will see the Add button in the Amazon SKU column. Click this button and select the Amazon SKU for which you want to transfer the item.
    1. To prepare your stock transfer data for transmission to Amazon, click Create delivery plan. The dialogue box Creating delivery plans for warehouses opens.
    At this point, there may be error messages for individual items if the items have not been prepared appropriately for Fulfillment by Amazon (see: Requirements).
    1. Select a destination country.
    2. Select how the goods are to be labelled.
    For more information on the delivery plan and how to label items, see the Amazon documentation in the Seller Central at:
    1. Click Create delivery plan. JTL-Wawi now communicates with Amazon and opens the Generating stock transfers to fulfilment warehouses dialogue box. In the Generating stock transfers to fulfilment warehouses dialogue box, you can now see exactly which of your selected items you should send in which quantity to which Amazon warehouse. In this example, according to the delivery plan for the stock transfer, these items should not be sent to a single warehouse, but to two different Amazon warehouses.
    As soon as you click Apply, the stock transfers are registered with Amazon as shown in the delivery plan and created in JTL-Wawi (for each warehouse a separate stock transfer with its own stock transfer number). The stock transfer(s) can no longer be edited. If you want to make changes, you must delete the stock transfer(s) in both JTL-Wawi and the Amazon Seller Central and create a stock transfer.
    Error creating the delivery plan: Errors may occur during the creation of the delivery plan. An error message appears, in which an error code is transmitted from Amazon to JTL-Wawi. A list with a breakdown of the Amazon error code can be found in the Amazon MWS documentation under the following link: Error codes If you have any questions about the Amazon error codes, please contact the Amazon support team: Contact Amazon MWS.
    1. Click Apply. An information dialogue box opens that tells you how many individual stock transfers have been created in JTL-Wawi. Since in this example the items are supposed to be shipped to two different Amazon warehouses, two stock transfers have been created instead of one. An individual stock transfer with its own number was automatically created for each destination warehouse.
    1. Confirm the message by clicking OK. The view jumps to the Stock transfer > Outbound stock transfers area. You can see the additional stock transfers created by JTL-Wawi in the list view.
    1. Option: Log in to Amazon Seller Central and go to Inventory > Manage FBA shipments.
    2. Check the shipment content of your stock transfer, which is displayed in the overview.

    Step 2: Preparing for shipping

    If you ship your stock transfer in several packages, you must indicate on each package using bar codes which SKUs are in which quantity in the package. To do this, you can include a QR bar code in the delivery note, which you can then stick onto each sent package. Read the instructions on how to do that in the accordeon.

    Shipping with JTL-Wawi and JTL-PackingBench

    Below you will learn how to prepare shipping with our free JTL-PackingBench.

    1. In the list view, select one or more stock transfers that you want to ship.
    1. If you are working with JTL-PackingBench, click on the small black arrow on the On pick list button and select the desired option. The Adding sales orders to pick list dialogue box opens.
    If you are not using our free of charge JTL-PackingBench, click Ship. The Shipping sales orders dialogue box appears. Click Ship in the bottom right corner. You can now find the stock transfer in the Shipped category.
    1. Please check the pick list and print it out if required. On the left, under Print, select Pick list.
    2. Confirm the information by clicking OK.
    3. In the Pick list category, select a pick list you want to edit and click PackingBench. The application JTL-PackingBench opens.
    1. Go to the menu PackingBench > Goods issue and select the pick list you want to edit.
    2. Pick the items that are on the pick list.
    3. Confirm the items in JTL-PackingBench and pack the items.
    4. Click on the Pack button. If you have made the appropriate settings for the JTL-PackingBench/JTL-WMS output in JTL-Wawi, all shipping documents will now be printed/sent.
    Jtl-wawi-stock-picklists-pack-plus-picklists-packing-positions-of-orders.png As soon as the stock transfer items are cleared from the source warehouse during the shipping process, they are automatically posted to intermediate storage. As long as the items are in intermediate storage, they can be viewed in the intermediate storage overview and are in the stock overview of the corresponding intermediate storage. For each combination of two warehouses, an intermediate storage is created, so that it is always possible to see exactly which items are being transferred between which warehouses.
    1. Prepare your shipment in Amazon Seller Central, enter all relevant data and create the shipping labels.

    Shipping with JTL-WMS

    Using your standard processes for goods issue in your JTL-WMS warehouse, you can now prepare your stock transfer for shipping. Since the goods issue processes of your customers are individual, we will only roughly show you the steps of the goods issue in JTL-WMS at this point.

    1. Create a pick list for the stock transfer in JTL-WMS.
    2. Pick the items that are on the pick list.
    3. Pack the items and prepare the shipment.
    Do you want to print shipping labels or shipping documents, or have a note displayed at the packing bench stating that the package should be placed in a separate location during the goods issue? These functions can be controlled via the JTL-PackingBench/JTL-WMS output.
    As soon as the items are cleared from the source warehouse during the shipping process, they are automatically posted to intermediate storage. As long as the items are in intermediate storage, they can be viewed in the intermediate storage overview and are in the stock overview of the corresponding intermediate storage. For each combination of two warehouses, an intermediate storage is created, so that it is always possible to see exactly which items are being transferred between which warehouses.
    1. Prepare your shipment in Amazon Seller Central, enter all relevant data and create the shipping labels.

    Step 3: Goods are posted to the destination warehouse

    As soon as your goods have arrived at the Amazon warehouse and have been processed, you will receive a confirmation of receipt via email. With the next synchronisation, the goods are automatically cleared from intermediate storage and posted to your FBA warehouse. It is possible that a delay may occur here. Any differences in the stock can be seen at a glance and you can contact Amazon directly for clarification.

    If it was not possible to clear all items from intermediate storage, for example because there were fewer items in the stock transfer than specified, you can remove these items from the stock transfer. In the Warehouse area, open the Goods in intermediate storage category. Right-click on the item that you want to clear from intermediate storage and select the Adjustment posting option in the context menu. The selected item has been removed from intermediate storage.