What is Amazon Easy Ship?

Amazon Easy Ship is a fulfillment method designed to offer merchants a simple logistics solution, while ensuring the end customer gets swift and reliable delivery. Importantly, it’s a way of presenting your products for sale on Amazon without tying up stock in the Amazon warehouse.

How Amazon Easy Ship works

Amazon Easy Ship is a convergence of convenience and reliability when it comes to order fulfillment. It presents a hybrid approach where you retain control over your warehouse operations and stock, while entrusting Amazon with the task of package delivery. Below is a step by step description of the process from order to delivery.

Customer purchase

Someone buys one of your products on Amazon Marketplace. At this point, you will get an email notification, and the order will appear on your Seller Portal. You must now prepare, schedule and hand over the parcel to the courier within your designated handling time (either 1 or 2 days, depending on your setup).

You should also capture your order in your accounting system (or ERP). If you are using Stock2Shop to leverage the Amazon Selling Partner API, this can be automated.

Schedule handover

You must now book a time slot on your Amazon Seller Central portal in which your parcel is scheduled to be handed over to the courier. Depending on your location, you may be eligible for the Pick-Up Model in which a courier will collect from your premises, otherwise you will be placed in the Drop-Off Model which requires that you deliver to one of the authorised drop-off points.

With Stock2Shop, you can use the Easy Ship API to automatically find and book time slots for package handover, create and update schedules, and retrieve package details and statuses.

Print shipping label

You must package your parcel for handover according to Amazon guidelines (which differs depending on category). One requirement is that you attach a packing slip (which can be printed directly from your Amazon Seller Central portal), ensuring that it’s pasted in the middle of the largest flat surface and not folded over any edges.

With Stock2Shop, you can use Amazon’s API to automatically generate shipping labels, reducing the chance of human error.

Order handover

Depending on which handover model in which you fall, you will either drop off your parcel with a courier or it will be collected from your premises, and delivered to the customer. Throughout the process, you and your customer will be able to track the order from handover to fulfillment.

Benefits of Amazon Easy Ship

Convenience

Amazon Easy Ship streamlines the order fulfillment process. Sellers can focus on core business activities such as product innovation and customer engagement without having to stress about logistics.

Competitive rates (for you and your customers)

By leveraging Amazon’s network of delivery partners, you get access to preferential rates while maintaining affordability for customers. And with Stock2Shop integration, you can retrieve real-time shipping rates from Amazon’s API based on factors such as package weight, dimensions, and delivery location, resulting in accurate, cost effective shipping quotes to customers.

Reliability

Timely delivery is a big factor in achieving customer satisfaction and loyalty. With Amazon Easy Ship, you can rest assured that your packages will go promptly from warehouse to doorstep, with real-time tracking updates throughout the process.

Streamlined integration

Stock2Shop makes it easy for merchants to harness Amazon’s Selling Partner API (SP-API) for smooth integration with Easy Ship. You can automate order management, streamline scheduling and access real-time insights into your fulfillment operations. With integration, you’re able to optimise Easy Ship workflows, drive operational efficiency and unlock new avenues for business growth.

Access to your stock

With the Easy Ship, your products stay in your warehouse until they have been ordered. This means that you have access to stock, should you receive an order from a different sales channel, such as your website or even over the phone. Of course, this model can expose you to the danger of overselling unless your internal inventory management system is integrated with all of your sales channels. You can read more about the benefits of omni-channel selling here.

Amazon Easy Ship takes away a lot of the stress that is typically associated with ecommerce logistics, and integrating it with your accounting (ERP) system carries significant benefits. By automating shipping processes, improving order fulfillment efficiency and leveraging Amazon’s extensive delivery network, sellers can streamline their operations, reduce costs and deliver a superior customer experience. Contact us to find out how you can integrate with Amazon’s Easy Ship service.