Amazon's Operational Updates & Reminders | August 2020
Advanced Purchase Offers for Q4 Demand
To help you plan your production for upcoming Amazon demand, Amazon may issue advance purchase offers for your review that cover part of Q4 demand. This is a new process and different from the existing Advance Purchase Order process. To help prepare for these advance purchase offers, ensure sufficient inventory for top products, update product availability in your catalog, and inform Amazon of any out of stock issues in advance.
These advance purchase offers will be issued during the week of August 17th. You can access these offers on Vendor Central, which are issued up to 8 calendar days in advance, and allows you to accept only the offers that you can fulfill. You can partially accept and only confirm the quantity that you can ship/deliver within the advance purchase order future ship/delivery window. You will have 8 calendar days to accept (or reject) the advance purchase offers and then 5 calendar days to accept the corresponding purchase orders which will be cancelled, if not confirmed. Amazon will issue the purchase orders to you at the end of the offer review period.
You cannot request different future start/end date of delivery windows nor can you ship before the start/delivery window. You can, however, reject the purchase offers, but the quantity ordered may show up on a regular replenishment order.
During this time, they will continue to place additional regular replenishment orders to support shifts in customer demand. Please ensure you continue to confirm all regular replenishment orders for these ASINs as normal.
Note: The purchase orders issued after the offer period will be subject to the regular chargeback and performance requirements.
Coming Soon: Amazon's New Vendor Central Shipment Experience
Amazon is rolling out a new shipment experience in Vendor Central this fall, which should aid in the shipment creation process. They've included a training video and training materials to help prepare you for these changes - we would highly recommend your warehouse, or whoever will be creating shipments in Vendor Central at your organization, review the materials provided.
Amazon has noted the following improvements that will come with this launch:
-
A new shipments home page in Vendor Central where you can access your shipments from one central location
-
A new shipment creation ("routing request") workflow which automatically populates packing details (like weight and volume)
-
Increased visibility and tracking of shipments from creation through delivery
-
The ability to edit a shipment’s requested pick-up date directly within Vendor Central
-
The ability to add shifts to warehouse operating hours
Your Global Overview team has taken the time to familiarize themselves with these changes and will be available to walk you through the new process once it rolls out.
Reminder: Utilize Amazon's 'Contact Us' System for LTL Freight Delays
For any Amazon Freight LTL shipping-related disruptions (for e.g. missed or delayed pick-ups), please use the following process. Global Overview is available to support this process as well.
-
Go to Amazon's Vendor Central Contact Us and open a case.
-
If case does not receive a response within 24 hours, or if the issue is particularly urgent, call the Relay Operations Center (ROC) hotline at 866-203-8372.
Amazon's July 2020 Updated Shipment Guidelines
Amazon has updated their North American (NA) Vendor Shipment Guidelines, which is now in two parts (the NA Vendor Preparation and Receive Manual & the NA Vendor Transportation Manual).
You can find Amazon's updated NA Vendor Preparation and Receive Manual in the Vendor Central Resource Center, the NA Vendor Transportation Manual will be updated later this month (August 2020).
Changes & impact are outlined as follows:
-
Addendum 6 has been renumbered to Addendum 4.
-
No content has been changed therein.
-
FRD (Freight Ready Date) has been replaced with RPD (Requested Pick Up Date)
-
Collect shipments now have a routing request cutoff of 2 business days prior to RPD, allowing for more time to schedule pick up.
-
Section 2.1.2.2: Expiration date training path updated.
-
Updated link, no content changed therein.
-
Section 3.5: Non EDI and EDI Vendors can submit ASNs with SSCCs (Serial Shipping Container Code).
-
EDI is no longer the only way to submit SSCC ASNs - Amazon has yet to provide guidance on how to do so, however. Once GO becomes aware of the process, we will provide this information to our clients.
-
Section 3.1: Vendors can find alerts on the shipment detail page is ASNs have not yet been submitted/received for shipment.
-
Section 5.2: Import shipment label requirement path has been updated
-
Updated link, no content changed therein.
If you have any questions on the above changes, please reach out to your Global Overview Vendor Operations Manager.