Today, you may have seen an article on TechCrunch about a brand-new feature for ShipStation. Hidden amongst the talk about AWS and the cloud, you may have noticed something else: we now offer Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). For any of you who fulfill your orders through Amazon, just think of what you could accomplish by using your ShipStation account to fulfill those orders over the process that you have now. Yeah, that’s a lot of time you’d save.
Here’s how FBA works to those of you unfamiliar with it: you have your store on eBay, Shopify, Volusion, Sears, etc. and you get an order. Rather than ship that item yourself, you pay Amazon to keep it in its warehouse for you and use its fulfillment and shipping providers to do everything past the “Yay, I got an order” part. So, once you have your celebration over receiving an order, you let Amazon know to fulfill and ship the order, and they take care of that entire process. Once the order has shipped, Amazon will send you the tracking number and shipment status. You then communicate that information to both your marketplace and customer through a type of copy-and-paste routine. That’s where we come in.
If you’d like your orders fulfilled through Amazon’s FBA service, rather than ship them yourself through ShipStation, you need only move the slider from “Shipment” to “Fulfillment” when you have an order (or orders) selected within the main Orders screen. Then, select “FBA” as the provider, choose the preferred Service, and ship the item! Once shipped, Amazon will immediately notify ShipStation of the tracking number and shipment status where we then instantly and automatically update your marketplace and customer with that information, just as if you had shipped the item yourself, but without the manual steps.
FBA is a fantastic way to easily fulfill and process orders from any marketplace, and now we’ve helped to make the process even easier, especially for those of you who still do some fulfillment in-house. Fulfillment can easily take up most of your time when running an online eCommerce business, and we’re sure that if you’re not already using ShipStation, we can help you cut down on your order processing time. If you decide to also go with FBA for part (or all) of your order fulfillment, our app will help you streamline that process as well, and help you save valuable time.
To sign up for FBA within ShipStation, all you need to do is go to your Settings page, and click the newly renamed Shipping / Fulfillment Providers link. (Previously, it was Postage / Shipping Providers.) Here, simply click on the Fulfilled by Amazon fulfillment provider and follow the on-screen instructions. If you’re looking to help manage your inventory, our friends over at Stitch Labs can help with their recently-announced integration with Amazon and Amazon’s FBA program.
Looking for a bit more info on FBA before you sign up? No worries; Amazon has a few fantastic videos and FAQs for more information.
I’m Erika, the social media & content manager for ShipStation. You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, and the other areas of the ShipStation world. In my free time, I’m a lover of video games, my cats, and other generally nerdy things. :)
Entering manual orders can be very time consuming and tedious. ShipStation now has a solution that will allow sellers to quickly import existing orders into our application. By using our new CSV Import feature, sellers can upload orders for marketplaces not currently supported by ShipStation. This feature is currently in Beta testing and is available to ShipStation users on the Silver or higher plans.
To begin importing your orders with our CSV Import feature in ShipStation, follow these simple instructions:
Step 1) Head to the “Orders” page and locate the “Import” button.
Step 2) Select a file to import from your local hard drive.
Step 3) If this is your first upload, select to create new field mappings. Remember to choose if your file is Comma Separated or Tab Delimited. Be sure to also specify if the first line of your file contains column names.
Step 4) You can now create your field mappings and save these settings for future imports.
Step 5) Click next to finalize your upload and view your orders.
We have just launched a beta test of our CSV Order Import feature, if you would like to be include you may let us know by emailing support@shipstation.com
or from within ShipStation by hovering over Support and select “Submit a Support Ticket.
As with any beta testing, we hope you’ll forgive the occasional hiccup. If you encounter any issues, please contact us through the same channels and and one our technical support team members will respond.
