Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment: merchant plugin guide [add-on]

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine’s support for Amazon multi-channel fulfillment.

Table of contents

Introduction

Supported countries

Limitations

Requirements

Setup

MCF stock locations

Order routing

Order rejection

FAQs

Introduction

If you take advantage of Amazon's marketplace fulfillment service, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), then you might be eligible to take advantage of Amazon multichannel fulfillment (MCF), Amazon's logistics services to fulfill orders from other marketplaces on which you sell. 

Amazon MCF enables you to use Amazon as your third-party logistics provider (3PL) to fulfill orders from non-Amazon marketplaces on which you sell, beyond Amazon. 

Supported Countries

Amazon MCF is not available in every country where Amazon operates. Presently, the list of countries where MCF is supported includes:

Australia
Canada
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Spain
United States
United Kingdom

Cross-delivery to a non-supported country is possible. For example, an MCF order originating on Amazon.fr (France, which is supported) can have a shipment address in Belgium, which is not a supported country.

Limitations

The following limitations apply:

• Certain marketplaces forbid merchants from using MCF. Before adding the Amazon MCF plugin to your environment, make sure the marketplace you are working with allows Amazon to fulfill orders made on its marketplace. Note that you may need to meet certain requirements even when the marketplace allows the use of MCF. E.g.: the marketplace might require that your products be sent in unbranded packaging.
• Amazon MCF does not support automatic returns, so you need to handle MCF returns manually. To learn more about handling Amazon MCF returns, check out the article How to process an Amazon multi-channel fulfillment (MCF) return.
• Certain types of products cannot be fulfilled by MCF. These include, but are not limited to, perishables, aerosols, flammable substances, and batteries.

Requirements

• You already sell on Amazon. 

• You have FBA and MCF agreements with Amazon.

• Advanced order management is enabled in your tenant. Check out ChannelEngine: advanced order management [add-on].

Associated costs

For information on the fees Amazon charges to use the MCF service, visit the Pricing page on the Amazon Supply Chain website. For information on associated costs for enabling the Amazon MCF in your ChannelEngine tenant, contact your customer success manager or the Support team. 

Setup

On Amazon

To enable MCF, create an account on Amazon’s MCF page. Once you set up MCF and FBA services on Amazon, you can add the MCF plugin to your tenant on ChannelEngine.

On ChannelEngine

To add the MCF plugin to your tenant on ChannelEngine:

1. In the sidebar menu, go to Plugins. Locate the Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment plugin and click + Add.
2. Go to the Setup step. 
3. In General, enter a suitable name for your plugin. 

Authorize ChannelEngine

1. In Authorize ChannelEngine, select an appropriate authorization option – depending on the region where fulfillment services need to be enabled. Options are Authorize America, Authorize Europe, and Authorize Far East.
2. In the Amazon sign-in window that pops up, enter your credentials and click Sign in. Upon a successful sign-in, the corresponding Authorize [region] button changes to green on ChannelEngine.

Connection

In Connection, the appropriate connection fields (i.e.: Seller ID, Refresh token, and Access token) should be filled out automatically.

Plugin-specific settings

In Plugin-specific settings, configure the following settings according to your preferences and marketplace-specific requirements:

• Block Amazon Logistics as a carrier for this order - (setting only available in the US) the last mile of the delivery is not done by Amazon Logistics, which certain marketplaces forbid. Note that blocking Amazon Logistics incurs an additional fee of 5%.
• Shipment service level - set a desirable shipping time frame. You can choose between Standard (3-5 business days), Expedited (2 business days), and Priority (1 business day). Keep in mind that the shipment service level directly affects the fee charged by Amazon.
• Fallback to slower Shipment Service Level if needed - some marketplaces, including TikTok Shop and Shopify, enforce strict delivery SLAs with Expedited service. When active, this setting tries all other possible shipping options with a given order before rejecting the order. This feature ensures orders continue processing across your marketplaces without interruption.

Advanced settings

• Remove countries from synchronization - enable it to stop the synchronization of your stock and orders between Amazon MCF and ChannelEngine for the selected country. If you fail to select a country, the disabling of that country in your Amazon account is communicated to ChannelEngine via the API and is automatically applied on ChannelEngine. E.g.: if you sell in Canada, Mexico, and the US, and want to halt sales in Mexico, select Mexico from the dropdown.
• Property used for data sync - select the attribute you want to use for synchronizing orders and stock levels between ChannelEngine and Amazon MCF, such as the Merchant product number. Ensure that this attribute is recognized by the Amazon MCF system.

MCF stock locations

ChannelEngine automatically creates stock locations for every MCF plugin that you activate. 

You can later use these stock location names to set up order routing.

To activate and create your MCF stock locations:

1. In Settings, define a Stock location name prefix, which is the unique prefix that you add to a stock location name. The prefix helps you distinguish between different stock locations when you set up order routing.
2. Save your settings and proceed to the Activation step. 
3. Toggle the Activate synchronization for Amazon Multi-channel Fulfillment setting. 
4. Once the synchronization process is completed, the label next to the Amazon logo in the plugin changes to Active. 
5. The plugin creates new stock locations based on the region and prefix you provided in the Setup step, with the structure Amazon Mcf [prefix][region].
6. For the US and Canada, two stock locations are created – regular and "blank box". 
   • The location names are based on the settings that you configure in the Setup step, with a suffix trailing the "blank box" stock locations: Amazon Mcf [prefix][region](BlankBox). 
   • E.g.: if you select Authorize America, and set your Stock location name prefix to 'MyBrand', ChannelEngine generates the following stock location names: 'Amazon Mcf MyBrand US' and 'Amazon Mcf MyBrand US BlankBox'. 

Order routing

When working with different stock locations, you can use predefined business rules that assign incoming orders to specific stock locations. This is called order routing.

To enable order routing on ChannelEngine:

1. Reach out to ChannelEngine's Support team to enable advanced order management on ChannelEngine. This is an add-on feature that must be requested as an additional feature for your tenant. For details, check out ChannelEngine: advanced order management.
2. From the sidebar menu, click Orders, Routing. Then, click the Add button.
3. In the Add: Order routing dialog box, enter information in the following fields:
   • Name - the order routing’s name.
   • Select channels - click the dropdown box to select the marketplaces that apply to this routing. Note that you can only select marketplaces that are not already active in other routings. Marketplaces are grouped according to how they handle order lines:
   • Support for shipments - the whole order must be shipped together.
   • Support for split orders - different order lines can be split into separate shipments.
   • Order lines can be referenced by multiple shipments - order lines can be split when the order line quantity must be shared across multiple warehouses.
   • Select stock locations - the stock locations you want to use. The combined stock of the selected locations, minus the reserved stock, is then exported. If your MCF account is Amazon US or Amazon CA, you can select a stock location with a 'blank box' indication, which ensures that your orders are fulfilled in unbranded packaging.
   • Prioritize shipping multiple items from one stock location - if enabled, it checks if a whole order can be shipped from one stock location. This way, you can override the conditional rules and prevent the order from being fulfilled from two or more separate stock locations, which incurs extra shipping costs.
4. Click Next.
5. Set up the conditional rules for your routing. These rules are applied when orders are imported into ChannelEngine. You can filter on specific order fields (e.g.: Shipment region, Delivery country, EAN, etc.), as well as ChannelEngine fields and custom fields. 
   • Make sure you set up conditional rules for all the selected stock locations.
   • Use abbreviations in the Shipment region field, e.g.: New Jersey = NJ, Massachusetts = MA, etc.
6. Click Add to save the order routing. Order routing rules are now applied to new orders.

Order rejection

If Amazon MCF rejects an order, you may see the error Rejected by MCF Export Orders. This message means that Amazon cannot deliver the specified products to the specified address in the given SLA time. To make the order acceptance process more resilient, check and/or modify Fallback to slower Shipment Service Level if needed in Setup, Advanced settings. 

If Amazon MCF still rejects the order, then the order is routed to your default stock location, as per your stock location settings on ChannelEngine. 

You can receive an email notification whenever Amazon MCF rejects an order by setting up the Orders rejected by MCF notification in Account settings, Notifications settings.

FAQs

How often does ChannelEngine import stock levels from Amazon?
ChannelEngine runs an import stock task every hour. If you need ChannelEngine to import stock levels more frequently, contact ChannelEngine’s Support team.

How can I see if my synchronization tasks were successful?
When the AmazonMCF plugin is activated, the Dashboard page displays a list of tasks scheduled by ChannelEngine – as well as their statuses. E.g.: ‘Export orders to merchant’ task and its status ‘Finished at: 5 minutes ago’.

Why is my stock not being allocated to an MCF stock location when inventory is available? 
ChannelEngine stops synchronizing stock and orders with Amazon MCF based on the Remove countries from synchronization setting. Locate this setting in Advanced settings and make sure that the relevant country/region is not selected.

Do I need to change order routing once my product listings on the marketplace change?
Yes. Once the Amazon MCF plugin is enabled for a marketplace, you need to adjust the conditional rules for order routing whenever you introduce changes to your product listing on the marketplace (e.g.: remove or add products).

How can I see my Amazon MCF orders on ChannelEngine?
Orders fulfilled by Amazon MCF can be found by going to Orders, Orders on ChannelEngine, and are indicated by the Amazon MCF label. ChannelEngine imports order status updates from Amazon once they become available. When the order has the status Shipped, you can find order extra information – such as the fee charged by Amazon and the shipment date.

Can I sell bundles via Amazon MCF?
No, product bundles are not supported on Amazon MCF. Orders related to bundles must be fulfilled directly by you.