Amazon: SKU suffix

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine's SKU suffix for FBM offers on Amazon.

Table of contents

Introduction

Use cases

SKU suffixes

Before you start

Enable the SKU suffix

FAQs

Introduction

Amazon synchronizes select attributes on single offers between different countries, including stock, handling time, and fulfillment type. Consequently, some synchronized attributes on Amazon's platform might cause an Amazon offer to switch between different countries.

E.g.: if you set the handling time on a given SKU to two days on your Amazon UK sales channel, Amazon also changes the handling time to two days for that same SKU on Amazon DE – even if you set that SKU's handling time to one day on Amazon DE via ChannelEngine.

This situation may not be desirable if you ship the product through direct fulfillment, i.e.: Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM). Therefore, ChannelEngine gives you the option to set a unique SKU for each country when you use FBM with Amazon. This solution is called the SKU suffix.

Use cases

Use SKU suffixes when:

• You ship products that are sold on an Amazon marketplace via direct fulfillment, i.e.: FBM.
• You sell on multiple Amazon countries within a region, e.g.: Europe, and you manage different stock levels per Amazon country.
• You have dual fulfillment enabled on your Amazon sales channel, i.e.: FBM and FBA. For guidance on configuring dual fulfillment with Amazon on ChannelEngine, check out Amazon: dual fulfillment.
• You have hybrid fulfillment enabled on your Amazon sales channel, i.e.: FBM or FBA. For more information, check out ChannelEngine: hybrid fulfillment. 

The SKU suffix ensures that SKUs associated with FBM offers are different from the SKUs associated with FBA offers. FBA and FBM offers appear separately for the same product on Amazon.

SKU suffixes

The tables below illustrate three scenarios where FBM is enabled in an Amazon plugin on ChannelEngine. The first scenario shows the SKU suffix disabled. The other two scenarios show the SKU suffix enabled, both with and without the country code appended to the end of the SKU. 

Note that the SKU suffix follows the pattern: CE_FBM_[country code].

SKU suffix disabled

SKU suffix enabled without country code

SKU suffix enabled with country code

Before you start

Although these are not requirements, it is recommended that you do the following before enabling the SKU suffix:

• Make sure your SKUs are not longer than 30 characters. This feature can add up to ten characters to an SKU, and Amazon rejects SKUs longer than 40 characters.
• If needed, map the Export content attribute in Mappings, Content mappings, to configure sending updated content per product. 
• Do not configure stock filters. This is required to avoid the constant deletion of the offer, when the stock tied to it goes below a certain threshold.
• Note that deleting the offer deletes its parent-child relationship. When the content export is enabled and all required fields are mapped, ChannelEngine recreates those relationships – and does not returns errors.
• Stop all Amazon campaigns as these are tied to the old SKUs.

Enable the SKU suffix

ChannelEngine gives you the option to enable SKU suffixes for your FBM-fulfilled stock. These suffixes enable you to further differentiate each SKU based on its fulfillment type and country. SKU suffixes only appear on ChannelEngine and Amazon Seller Central and are not visible to buyers on Amazon.

Select one SKU suffix from the three options below:

1. SKU suffix disabled - used for FBA fulfillment.
2. SKU suffix enabled without country code - SKUs appear with 'FBM’ appended to the end. This setting ensures that SKUs associated with the FBM offers are different from the SKUs within FBA offers. ChannelEngine creates one FBA SKU and one FBM SKU across the whole of a region. Select inventory data is shared within a region, including handling time and stock levels. If you do not need to differentiate inventory data across regions, choose this option.
3. SKU suffix enabled with country code - the country code is appended to the end of the SKU on Seller Central. This setting ensures that SKUs associated with the FBM offers are different per Amazon country. Use this option if you want Amazon to keep the offers separate per country, especially if you have multiple warehouses. E.g.: 909042_CE_FBM_DE, if the sales channel in use is Germany.

If you want to enable dual fulfillment with Amazon, you must choose either option 2 or 3.

FAQs

Can my customers see the SKU suffix?
No. The SKU suffix is only used when sending offers to Amazon so that FBM and FBA offers are kept separate on the marketplace. The SKU appendix is only visible on Amazon Seller Central.

The SKU suffix has been enabled, but some of my products are returning errors. What can I do?
If you experience issues after turning on the SKU suffix, try deleting an affected product from Amazon and recreating it. During the initial export, the product is matched via its EAN or GTIN. Once it is matched by Amazon, the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) becomes the main identifier.

I have the SKU suffix feature enabled, but one of my products is still available without the SKU suffix. What is wrong?
You have a hybrid-fulfillment workflow configured across your Amazon marketplaces instead of a dual-fulfillment workflow. The product that does not have the SKU suffix is the FBA version of the product. With hybrid fulfillment, once the stock of the FBA version of a product is replenished, ChannelEngine deletes the FBM version of the product and replaces it with the FBA version, i.e.: the product without the SKU suffix. To enable dual-fulfillment, follow the steps in this article. To enable only FBA fulfillment or only FBM fulfillment, contact the ChannelEngine Support team.