How to Manage Amazon Warehouse Inventory?

Mar 6

Looking for an effective and efficient way to handle your inventory? Indeed, inventory management is the key to boosting Amazon’s business in real-time. If you are an Amazon FBA Seller, then you need to make sure that you automate your inventory management system for quick and hassle-free tracking, monitoring, and management of your stocks and sells. Read this article to know how you can do Amazon warehouse management of your inventory with ease.

First, let’s discuss what the Amazon warehouse system is. Afterward, we will provide you with comprehensive insights into automated inventory management solutions.

Amazon Warehouse Inventory and Logistics Network

Amazon Warehouse Inventory refers to the stock of products stored in an Amazon fulfillment center. Basically, the fulfillment center is the warehouse that Amazon provides to the sellers for inventory management.

For sure, Amazon Warehouse makes it easier for the sellers to manage the inventory without investing their own efforts and energy. Keep in mind that only the FBA sellers are allotted a warehouse. The FBA sellers hand over everything to Amazon and stay tension free all the time.

To be more clear, FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) is a service offered to Amazon Sellers for inventory storage, management, and shipment. When the Amazon Sellers connect with FBA, they gain access to Amazon's logistics network, and all of their products are stored in the Amazon warehouses for stocking, packaging, and shipping.

In short, the FBA sellers send all of their products to Amazon fulfillment centers (warehouses) for storage. When a customer places an order, Amazon itself handles it. From the time an order is placed to the time when it is packaged and shipped to the customer’s whereabouts, everything is managed by the Amazon workers. Moreover, Amazon is also responsible for all customer service and return issues.

FBA Sellers VS FBM Sellers

The FBA Sellers are given access to Amazon warehouse services for inventory management. They don’t do anything other than hire the Amazon logistics network to handle everything on their behalf. The Amazon Sellers pay a service fee to use “Fulfillment By Amazon” so that they don't have to deal with the workload of the logistics, including inventory storage, management, and shipment.

Whereas about FBM Sellers, Amazon doesn’t allow them a warehouse or manage the inventory on their behalf. Fulfillment By Merchant (FBM) means that the Amazon Sellers themselves handle the logistics workload. They acquire, store, package, and ship the products on their own. Moreover, the FBM Sellers have to deal with customer support and order return issues as well. It takes all their time to monitor and manage the inventory for hassle-free order delivery.

Take into account that Amazon’s inventory has been divided into two main categories, which are Manufacturing Inventory and Merchandise Inventory. Anyhow, regardless of the categorization, the types of inventory include raw materials, work-in-progress, finished goods, packing material, MRO items, and fully prepared products which are ready to be sold

Now, it's time to tell you about Amazon’s Product Distribution Network, an important part of Logistics services that receive the inventory products to deliver the orders to the customers.

Amazon Product Distribution Network

The Amazon product distribution network has an interconnected group of five efficient storage facilities and transportation systems which make sure that the warehouse inventory is securely stored, managed, packaged, and shipped.

The three main facilities of the Amazon Product Distribution Network includes:

Fulfillment Centers (responsible for storing, managing, and packing the products for delivery)
Sortation Centers (responsible for sorting, scanning, and stacking packages within pallets for delivery)
Last-Mile Delivery Stations (responsible for transporting the ordered product to the customer’s door)

Take into account that there are two more facilities which are Crossdock Centers and Amazon Prime Now Hubs. Both of these facilities serve special purposes according to their needs. Have a look below to know how what these facility centers do:

Crossdock Centers manage the transport of the products directly from receiving dock to the shipping dock
Amazon Prime Now Hubs stores and ships time-sensitive products which are to be delivered within 2 hours of order placement

Now, let’s move ahead to find out how you can rationalize your FBM inventory management through automated solutions.

Automated Inventory Management System For Amazon Sellers

Inventory management includes the process of acquiring/producing, stocking, controlling, packing, and shipping the products to fulfill customer orders. It involves everything you are required to do, from the time items are received from the supplier to the time when these are stored and then dispatched for the order delivery.

If you are an FBM seller, then you need to know about automated solutions which streamline inventory management. There are numerous automated inventory management softwares available in the market from which you can choose as per your ease and requirements.

Automated inventory management involves the use of AI solutions for monitoring, tracking, and organizing the stock, supplies, or sales. The automated inventory management softwares enables Amazon Sellers to manage and control their inventory in real-time.

Indeed, automated inventory management systems ensure workflow efficiency, which in turn, increases the cash flow. Such effective inventory management solutions rationalize the entire logistics process as these automatically:

List Down All Products
Manages Orders
Sends Order Confirmation Emails
Tracks Order Deliveries
Send Dispatch Notifications
Tracks & Control Inventory Levels
Determines and Indicates ROPs
Provides Inventory, Customers & Sales Reports
Highlights Out-of-Stock Products
Manages Dropshipping Items

Automate to Manage Stocks, Customers, and Sells With Ease!

The reasons why you should use an automated inventory management system includes the facts that it works efficiently and accurately to:

Minimize additional costs
Maximize cash flow
Save time and efforts
Reduce manual working
Forecast problems before time
Prevent stock issues

Stay put and find out what is an automated inventory control system and how it helps you to manage your Amazon inventory.

What is Automated Inventory Control System?

When you leverage an automated inventory management solution, it comes up with an in-built inventory control system which automatically tells you about total number, location, and quality condition of each stocked product.

Moreover, it effectively determines and indicates:

Whether there’s any overstocking or not?
Whether there’s a need to exclude a product from the inventory?
Whether there’s a product which should be restocked?

For sure, an automated inventory control system helps you to control the inventory levels. Most importantly, it highlights how you can cut down your overhead expense and keep your profits high.

Always make sure that the Automated solution you leverage to manage your inventory with ease comes up with an efficient inventory control system.

Bottom Line

Amazon Logistics Network ensures that the inventory is effectively managed and dispatched as per the placed orders. The Amazon sellers can pay a regular fee to get FBA services and let the Amazon workers do all the work including storing, controlling, packing, and dispatching the products. Whereas if the sellers do not want to get fulfillment services by Amazon (FBA) then they can simply manage their inventory on their own through fulfillment by merchandise (FBM) services. Automated inventory management solutions serve the best to help FBM sellers to effectively manage the inventory and maximize the cash flow as these track and control the inventory in the best way possible.