Using Amazon Shipping Groups With Storefeeder

A Shipping Group (Amazon also calls these shipping templates or merchant shipping groups) controls which shipping rates, transit times and regions Amazon applies to a listing when a buyer orders it. StoreFeeder does not create shipping groups — it tells Amazon which of your groups each listing should use.

StoreFeeder holds two shipping group values per listing:

StoreFeeder swaps between the two automatically, so you can advertise a longer or more expensive delivery service while you are drop-shipping from a supplier. If you only ever sell from your own stock, fill in the first field and leave the second blank.

Before you start

Create the shipping groups in Amazon Seller Central first (Settings → Shipping Settings → Shipping Templates). StoreFeeder reads the list of available groups back from Amazon, so a group that does not exist in Seller Central cannot be selected in StoreFeeder.

If you have just created a group in Seller Central, allow a short while for it to appear in StoreFeeder — the list is fetched from Amazon when the listing page loads.

Setting a Shipping Group on a single listing

1. Open the product and go to its Amazon listing.
2. Stay on the General tab and find the Listing Information section.
3. Choose the Product Type for the listing if you have not already. The two shipping group drop-downs stay greyed out until StoreFeeder has loaded the Amazon requirements for that product type.
4. Pick a value in Shipping Group Name (Has Physical Stock).
5. Optionally pick a value in Shipping Group Name (No Physical Stock). Leave it blank if you do not want the group to change when you fall back to supplier stock.
6. Click Save & Upload.

The drop-down is empty or greyed out
This means Amazon has not returned any shipping groups for that product type. Check that you have at least one shipping template set up in Seller Central, and that a Product Type is selected on the listing.

Listings imported from Amazon

When StoreFeeder imports an existing Amazon listing it copies that listing's current shipping group into both fields. Change the No Physical Stock value if you want a different group used while selling supplier stock.

Setting Shipping Groups in bulk

Use Listings Import/Export. The two fields appear in the Fields To Export list as:

• Shipping Group Name (Physical Stock)
• Shipping Group Name (No Physical Stock)

1. Select one or both fields, export, and edit the file.
2. Enter the shipping group name as it appears in Seller Central. Leading and trailing spaces and capitalisation are ignored on import.
3. Re-import the file.

Two things to be aware of on import:

• Names are validated against Amazon. If a name in your file is not one of your Amazon shipping groups, that row is rejected with an error naming the group. Fix the spelling in Seller Central or in the file and re-import.
• The change is pushed to Amazon by the next inventory & price sync, not instantly. You do not need to re-upload the listings by hand.

See How to use the Listings Import/Export Feature for the general import/export process.

Channel settings this feature needs

The shipping group travels to Amazon in the routine inventory and price sync — the same update that carries your stock levels and prices. Two settings on the Amazon channel affect it, both under Settings → Integrations:

If your stock and prices are updating on Amazon but the shipping group never changes, Upload Listings is the first thing to check.

How the automatic switch works

As standard, the shipping group is only re-sent when something has actually changed. All of the following must be true:

1. Update Inventory or Update Prices is enabled on the Amazon channel.
2. Upload Listings is also enabled on the Amazon channel.
3. At least one of the two shipping group fields is filled in on the listing.
4. The listing has just crossed the boundary between selling your own stock and selling supplier stock, in either direction, since the previous sync.

That last condition is what makes the feature useful — and also why nothing happens on listings that never use supplier stock. Supplier stock is only offered when the listing's Inventory Type is set to Inventory + Oversell + Priority Supplier Inventory or Inventory + Oversell + Sum of Suppliers Inventory. On plain Inventory + Oversell, supplier stock is never used, so the No Physical Stock group will never be applied.

If Shipping Group Name (No Physical Stock) is blank, StoreFeeder sends nothing when the listing switches to supplier stock, so Amazon keeps whatever group the listing already has — in practice the Has Physical Stock group stays in place.

Need the group sent on every sync?
Some accounts need the shipping group included in every inventory and price update rather than only when it changes — for example if something outside StoreFeeder is also editing the group on Amazon. This is an account-level setting that has to be enabled by StoreFeeder Support; raise a ticket if you need it.

With it enabled, conditions 2 and 4 above no longer apply: the group is sent on every sync whether or not it has changed, and Upload Listings does not need to be on. You still need Update Inventory or Update Prices enabled, and a value in the relevant shipping group field.

Troubleshooting