Shipping Templates Details
Shipping Templates are the new method provided by
Amazon for setting shipping rates in Seller Central. The following applies to
ALL sellers of merchant fulfilled items. i.e. Sellers of BMVD (Books, Music, CDs, Videos and DVDs) and non-BMVD (i.e.
everything else) products. For sellers of BMVD products, this will be a
major change. This only applies to merchant fulfilled items and does not
impact FBA inventory.
While it may seem that there are a lot of changes
happening (both at Amazon and on AMan), once you get familiar with shipping
templates on Seller Central, this will actually become quite simple. Our
recommended procedure for migrating is below.
Other pages related to this topic (also
accessible via our Support page):
Configuring AMan to use Shipping
Templates:
Very Important:
Once you have converted to shipping templates, you should generate and
import an open listing report (using Amazon Reports->Generate Open
Listings Report) on EVERY copy of AMan. If this is not done, AMan will
not know of the templates created on your account.
AMan supports the use of Shipping Templates
from version 3.3.1697 onwards. There are multiple ways to configure
AMan to use shipping templates.
- When generating and importing an Open
Listings Report, AMan will detect if Shipping Templates are being used
and configure AMan accordingly.
- AMan will generate (but NOT import) and
examine an Open Listings Report every 24 hours. If AMan detects the use
of shipping templates, AMan will be automatically configured to use
shipping templates. AMan will notify you if it detects the change. At
this time an Open Listings Report should be generated on all PCs using
AMan.
Changes to AMan to support
Shipping Templates:
- When using List an Item to list or modify inventory,
the Shipping Template for the item must be selected from the pull down list
(populated from the shipping templates obtained from the Open Listings Report)
or typed in the area provided. The shipping template section replaces the
section
where BMVD shipping options (Expedited etc.) could previously be specified).
Note: AMan will be unaware of any shipping templates created
until at least one SKU has been assigned to that template (and an open listing
report with that template is imported into AMan - at times it can take
Amazon some hours to include that information in the open listings report).
- List an Item may be configured to always start
with a specified shipping template by:
- Select or type the shipping template you
wish to use when List an Item starts.
- Click on 'Set as default'
- List an Item named settings will now store the
shipping template name. Initially that will be blank. You will need to add the
shipping template to any named settings by doing the following:
- Use 'Load setting' to load the named
setting.
- Select or type the shipping template you
wish to use with the named setting.
- Click on 'Save setting' to save the named
setting.
- For Add New Inventory Wizard, the shipping
templates for the SKUs in the input file may be specified in one of two ways:
- A column in the input file may be mapped to
the AMan column of ShipTemplate. This column must contain the name of a
valid, non-blank shipping template for each SKU.
- Alternatively, a Shipping Template may be
selected towards the end of the dialog which will apply to all SKUs in the
input file. By default the Shipping Template selected as default in List an
Item (see above) will be selected.
- To use AMan to change the shipping template on
one or more items with AMan, please do the following:
- Have the items that require changing in
Pending Uploads.
- Select the items in Pending Uploads.
- Right click on the Pending Uploads grid.
- Select Change Shipping Options->Change
Shipping Template for Selected.
- Type the shipping template name.
- Select the items in Pending Uploads.
- Click on Upload to Amazon->Upload Shipping
Methods + Prices.
- Upload New/Modified, Purge/Replace and
Shipping Options will require that the shipping template is non-blank for all
items in the upload.
- Active Listing and Pending Listings display
have an additional column 'ShipTemplate' which is the shipping template
assigned to a SKU. This column may be used to sort and in the Filter bar.
- Display (Active) Listings with AMan Fields and
Export (Active) Listings with AMan Fields will contain the shipping template
for each SKU.
- When exporting inventory data from one copy of
AMan for use in the same or other copy of AMan, it will be necessary to export
the ShipTemplate field in addition to fields that you currently export. When
importing that data using Add New Inventory Data Wizard or Merge Inventory
Data Wizard, it will be necessary to map the ShipTemplate column. This will
require changing named maps used prior to shipping templates.
- Please review
BMVD Items
and Shipping Templates for changes in AMan specific to BMVD inventory.
Recommended procedure for converting to
using shipping templates:
Note: If you have already migrated
to shipping templates, skip to step B.
- Steps to migrate on Amazon Seller Central:
- If you have received an email from Amazon
stating that your shipping settings will be migrated automatically in the
future, we strongly recommend that you manually migrate as, by doing so, you
have a lot more control.
- Place your account on vacation.
- Allow at least 30 minutes for the vacation
status to completely change.
- Visit
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/shipping/dispatch.html (US) and
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/sbr/introduction (UK) - Logon to Seller
Central will be required - to perform the migration.
- If you use shipping overrides, you should
take the opportunity to generate the overrides report when offered as
shipping overrides are not migrated.
- Once complete, you will have at least one
shipping template called Migrated Template which, by default, will be used
when listing new inventory on Amazon. If you sell BMVD products, you will
have four more shipping templates (one for each of the BMVD categories).
These will be used for your existing BMVD products (see
BMVD Items and
Shipping Templates for more details).
- Each of your items will be assigned to one
of the shipping templates created by Amazon.
- The templates will need to reviewed to
ensure that they meet your business requirements. Since only one template is
created for each of BMVD and all other product categories, it may be
necessary to edit and/or create templates.
Important: Since the shipping options (Expedited International
etc.) you will be providing customers are specified in the shipping
templates, it is very important
that you verify that the values configured in your shipping templates
are correct.
For BMVD sellers this is especially important as (for instance) you may not
have offered Expedited and/or International on heavy books. Since there is
only one shipping templates for all of your books, you may need to create
extra shipping templates for your heavy items.
- If you create one or more shipping
templates, you should assign those templates to at least one of your active
SKUs using Manage Inventory. This will ensure that AMan is aware of the
newly created shipping templates when completing B below.
- Once you are satisfied with your shipping
templates, you should allow at least an hour to pass to ensure that your
shipping templates have been synced on all Amazon servers.
- Steps to follow in AMan once migrated to
shipping templates:
- Generate and import an Open Listings Report
on ALL copies of AMan to ensure that AMan is aware of the
templates used on Seller Central. Please make sure that you are prompted by
AMan that it has detected that you are using shipping templates. If not,
this means that Amazon has not yet synced all servers or that you have not
activated shipping templates. You will need to retry again later.
- If you wish to change the shipping templates
assigned to some or all SKUs, please use the procedure detailed above.
- If you use List an Item, you should set the
default shipping template using the procedure above.
- If you sell BMVD products, please follow the
steps in BMVD Items
and Shipping Templates .
- If you have changed the shipping rates for
products, you should review your MinPrice, MaxPrice and Cost values if used
for repricing in AMan. These may be instantly updated in the Active Listings
display.
- Making the shipping templates live:
- Take you Amazon account off vacation on
Seller Central.
- If you use AMan for repricing, you should
either start automatic repricing or manually price using Price Active and
then Upload Prices Only.
- For the next few days, orders should be
monitored to verify that the correct shipping rates are being charged to
your customers.
- If you change the shipping rates on any
shipping template on Seller Central or you change the shipping templates
assigned to SKUs and you use AMan for repricing, it is very important that
you immediately run a Price Active to allow AMan to pick up the new shipping
rates and price accordingly. Once complete, you should then use Upload
Prices Only to cement the changes both in AMan and Amazon.
Very Important:
Once you have converted to shipping templates, you should generate and
import an open listing report (using Amazon Reports->Generate Open
Listings Report) on EVERY copy of AMan. If this is not done, AMan will
not know of the templates created on your account.
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