Glossary

A Prep Center is an intermediary between Amazon and FBA Sellers that receives inventory from sellers, inspects the inventory, bundles and packs the inventory units, prepares shipping and box labels, and ships to the Amazon warehouse.

Fulfilled By Merchant (FBM) allows sellers to list their products on Amazon and choose to ship products to each buyer themselves. They are responsible for fulfilling their orders and do not rely on Amazon for the same. While it's advantageous for products with lower margins, FBM is rather overlooked owing to easy shipping, handling, and other benefits that come with FBA.

Amazon Seller Central is Amazon's platform where sellers view and manage all their marketplace and fulfillment operations. The platform enables sellers to add product details, track orders and inventory, manage FBA vs FBM activities, create shipping plans, settle fees, commission, and charges with Amazon, and more.

Case Packed is an Amazon FBA packing arrangement where the shipment boxes contain the same products with identical SKUs in the exact condition. A merchant can specify the number of cases/boxes and the number of units of each item in each box while preparing the Shipping Plan. Case Packed allows maximum of 150 units of a SKU in a box.

FBA Prep is the process of inspecting and preparing inventory to be shipped to the Amazon Warehouse. This involves inspecting inventory, bundling and packing inventory units, adding necessary labels, and preparing cartons/packages to be shipped out.

Individual Packed is an Amazon FBAM packing arrangement where a merchant can place different quantity of different SKUs in a box. The merchant must break down the box content while preparing the shipping plan and must specify the SKUs, number of units, and other parameters for every box.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that allows businesses to outsource order fulfillment to Amazon. Businesses send products to Amazon fulfillment centers and when a customer makes a purchase, they pick, pack, and ship the order. They can also provide customer service and process returns for those orders.

Amazon Buy Box refers to the box on the right side of the Amazon product detail page, where customers can add items for purchase to their cart. As there are multiple sellers for one product, "winning" a Buy Box is extremely beneficial, as it means you're the seller customers are buying from when they click "Buy Now".

An Amazon Fulfillment Center is a large warehouse facility where Amazon stores, preps, packs, and ships orders for FBA merchants/sellers.

A Universal Product Code (UPC) is a type of code printed on retail product packaging to aid in identifying a particular item. It consists of two parts – the machine-readable barcode, which is a series of unique black bars, and the unique 12-digit number beneath it.

FNSKU, or Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit is a unique barcode that is used by Amazon to store, identify, pack, and ship products sent by FBA merchants and sellers. Every product-supplier combination has a FNSKU code to it and is placed at the unit-level.

European Article Number (EAN) is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configuration, from a specific manufacturer.

Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a ten-digit alphanumeric code that identifies products on Amazon. It’s unique for each product and is assigned when you create a new product in Amazon’s catalog. Almost every product on Amazon has an ASIN with the exception of books (they use the ISBN or International Standard Book Number.

Small Parcel Delivery (SPD) is a shipping option offered by Amazon Carrier Partner Program. SPD involves individual boxes/packages of products (case packed or individual packed) that are sent to the Amazon warehouse. SPD has a limit of 200 items when using a partner carrier.

Amazon's European Fulfilment Network (EFN) allows sellers with an Amazon Europe Stores account who are also registered for Fulfilment by Amazon to store their inventory in their local fulfilment centre and fulfil orders coming from other European stores from the same local inventory pool, maximising the control and flexibility that sellers have over their inventory.

Multi-Country Fulfillment allows merchants/sellers to select certain countries where they wish to send their products and have Amazon warehouses fulfill the subsequent orders locally.

Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) is a program that allows sellers to deliver directly to domestic Prime customers from their own warehouse. By displaying the Prime badge, sellers are committing to fulfill orders with Two-Day Delivery at no additional charge for Prime customers.

MSRP, or Manufacture's Suggested Retail Price is the price that is put on the product by the manufacturer. The price may be discounted by Amazon or the seller, and is shown next to the marketplace price.

Less Than Truckload (LTL) is a shipping option offered by Amazon Carrier Partner Program where the products sent by merchants are palletized. Merchants are allowed to ship upto 12 pallets in one shipping plan. The LTL method doesn't require a complete trailer.

Distributed Inventory Placement is a kind of Inventory Placement Service that requires a merchant to send its inventory to typically 3 Fulfillment Centers that is later rerouted to other fulfillment centers by Amazon itself.

Inventory Placement is a service provided by Amazon where it receives inventory and reships it to other warehouses for optimal placement and distribution. Merchants can signup for the Inventory Placement program and can ship their inventory to a single Fulfillment Center that is then rerouted to other facilities.

An Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) is a number that nearly every product in its catalog is awarded once the item has had at least one sale. It uses sales and historical sales data, and hence is an indicator of both how well a product has sold in the past and how well it has sold in the last few hours

The Amazon Partnered Carrier Program allows eligible sellers to get services from partenred carriers at deeply discounted rates, where the cost is billed to the sellers account as an inbound transportation charge.

Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment is a fulfillment and shipping service provided by Amazon to D2C/E-commerce brands. It also involves fulfilling orders that maybe placed on channels other than Amazon such as marketplaces like eBay, and e-commerce platforms like Shopify.

Brand Registry is an Amazon program where brand owners register their private labels, giving them increased control of their products on the marketplace and protecting them from counterfeit or fraud. It gives them access to other features likes EBC (Enhanced Brand Content) and Product Display Ads as well.