We discussed the merits of doing direct fulfillment with Amazon in our earlier blog.

One of the requirements for doing Direct Fulfillment is that the suppliers should maintain the inventory up to date in the vendor central. As orders are directly fulfilled by the suppliers, Amazon need to know if inventory is available before accepting an order from the online customer.

So, it is the responsibility of the supplier to maintain the inventory status updated regularly.

Amazon expects the suppliers to provide inventory feeds in two batches.

1. Daily feed of full inventory. This will refresh the full inventory list and reload the inventory. This is to ensure that any new items added or old items removed from the inventory should update in Amazon correctly.

2. Frequent feed of inventory changes throughout the day. It can be done as frequently as needed but at least once every hour is recommended. This incremental feed will have only the changes that happened in the last one hour. So it will not be a full inventory file.

These inventory files can be manually uploaded using Excel upload in the Vendor Central or by using EDI message 846 Inventory Availability advice.

Using EDI messages can be faster and accurate. As the data comes from the source system that maintains inventory , it will reflect all the adjustments that need to be done on the inventory. For example, a supplier might be selling through multiple channels. If an item is sold in one of the other channel, the change should be updated into Amazon so that stock out situations do not happen.

TPSynergy has custom EDI solutions that are tailor made for both Amazon vendor central DC Fulfillment and Direct Fulfillment process.

For more details on how EDI helps and cost benefits of EDI, please read this blog.