Create an Inbound Shipping Plan

Sometimes, due to amazon API limitations, we may recommend that you bypass creating the shipment directly from InventoryLab and instead create a shipment plan from your listings that you created in InventoryLab. Although this may seem like a complex or duplicated step, it is actually very simple if you follow the instructions, and only takes a few minutes to complete.

This process is particularly helpful when you use Amazon’s label and prep services or commingle some of your items. If you create the shipments through InventoryLab you will have to separate products by label type into separate shipments. By sending only the feeds and creating a shipping plan you bypass that system.

To bypass creating shipments from InventoryLab, you will want to list all products to your Private batch, once you have completed this step click the “Review Batch” button at the bottom of the list and prep page. On the send products page, you will click “Submit.” This will bring up a modal that gives you an option to send your product listing feeds, or send feeds and request proposed FBA shipment plans. To bypass creating an FBA shipment, you only want to choose the option “send product feeds”

This will close your batch and allow you to begin the process of importing a shipment plan into Amazon.

Once your batch is closed, this is where the export/import process becomes very simple. Go to List->Closed Batches:

Click on the name of the batch you need a Shipping Plan File for:

Click on Export and choose Shipping Plan File. This will give you a properly formatted .txt file:

!You must wait 15 to 30 minutes for your feeds to fully send your listings over to Amazon prior to uploading your Inbound Shipping Plan into Seller Central. If you attempt the upload too early, Amazon will give an “Unknown SKU. The SKU for this product is unknown or cannot be found.” error.

Now, you’re ready to upload! Simply visit this link (click here) and upload the file under Step 2 (Step 1 was done by downloading the shipping plan file from InventoryLab). This will create a shipment plan with the items you listed with InventoryLab!