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The Basics: Amazon's In-house Tool
The Benefit Of Third-Party Software
9 Amazon Order Management Solutions
As one of the largest companies and employers in the world, Amazon’s influence is not to be underestimated. That’s why if you sell products online, you’ll probably want to consider joining the Amazon platform. But becoming a successful Amazon seller can feel like a daunting task, regardless if you’re a veteran ecommerce brand or you recently purchased your domain.
The extensive size (and popularity) of Amazon’s marketplace poses unique challenges for its many merchants, from attracting customers and securing conversions, to fulfilling orders and managing your bottom line. Shop owners need to have command over their inventory, keep accurate stock counts, and be sufficiently prepared for the ebb and flow of customer demand.
Fortunately, with the help of Amazon order management software, any seller can make Amazon work for them, and give their customers the best possible experience.
What is Amazon order management?
Amazon order management is software that supports all stages of the order management process on Amazon and other channels. This process begins when a customer purchases an item from Amazon and ends when the order is shipped and fulfilled. The main benefit of Amazon order management is the ability to oversee all order information on a single dashboard.
Amazon order management tools automate the work and are useful for retailers that manage inventory across multiple channels.
Amazon’s order management basics
Amazon’s order management tools and processes help merchants engage with their customers and optimize their product listings. By leveraging these resources and other management tools, business owners can take control of their orders and ensure greater customer satisfaction overall.
Manage Orders
With the Manage Orders tool, Amazon sellers can see a list of their current orders and uncover important details like an order’s product, buyer, or shipping information. Your personal Manage Orders page provides a customizable view of all orders on all sales channels; you can view all orders within a given date range, or use Search to filter specific order types.
Additionally, this tool can perform a variety of order-related tasks, such as printing packing slips, confirming shipment, or issuing refunds.
Order Reports
The Order Reports tool provides fulfillment information for multiple orders within one unified report. From Amazon Seller Central, you can schedule Order Reports to run automatically, or you can opt to run just one report at a time. Either way, reports can be accessed around the clock no matter where you’re logged in, so long as you’re using your business account.
Plus, you can retrieve information for both FBA and seller-fulfilled orders, including order status, fulfillment center data, metrics, and other pertinent item details.
Amazon Marketplace Web Service
Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) is an integrated web service API, which helps sellers automatically exchange information on Amazon listings, orders, payments, reports, and so on. By using these automations with MWS, merchants can increase efficiency, reduce labor requirements, improve response times, and ultimately, grow their business.
While there aren’t any fees associated with this tool, you’ll still need an Amazon MWS-eligible seller account, and you’ll have to register to use the service, as well.
Benefits of third-party Amazon inventory management software
With smart order management solutions, any Amazon seller can elevate their business and improve processes throughout their supply chain. By using Amazon order management software, shop owners can consolidate all of their orders into a single platform, and leverage superior organization and functionality to accelerate their growth.
Manage multichannel orders in one place
When you can manage all sales channels from the same dashboard, you’ll reap some major ecommerce rewards. Not only can you resolve potential errors within your orders, but you’ll have the ability to sync inventory for multichannel sales, purchase orders, and more. Sourcing all relevant order info in one place is not just convenient, it’s powerful.
Amazon order management software makes it possible to streamline multichannel selling, take control of your stock levels, and meet customer demand with ease.
Integrated Amazon inventory management & Amazon order management
Amazon inventory management is all about knowing what’s sitting in your warehouse and where that stock is located at any given time. With that said, if your stock counts aren’t integrated with an order management system, you’ll miss out on the opportunity for major inventory optimization. Thanks to Amazon order management software, sellers can gain a competitive edge and the ability to exceed their customer’s expectations.
By implementing integrated inventory and order management solutions, Amazon retailers will experience the benefits of real-time updates and transparency on all customer orders.
Superior organization & functionality
Managing a large order volume or an unexpected spike in demand is time-consuming and stress-inducing, to say the least. While you always hope your store and your sales take off, if you don’t have the necessary organization or functionality to accurately fulfill orders, this surge can feel like somewhat of an ecommerce curse.
The advantage of using Amazon order management software is staying highly-organized as order processing piles up, and having the bandwidth to fulfill said orders on time, every time.
Integrations with your other ecommerce platforms
The fact that Amazon can integrate with other ecommerce platforms, like ebay, is what really sets it apart and takes their marketplace to a whole new level. When Amazon merges with additional software, shop owners enjoy an all-inclusive solution to sell and ship goods more efficiently. Using supplemental integrations with your existing Amazon account, you can achieve a superior workflow across all channels and deliver quality customer service with every order.
9 best Amazon order management software solutions
To be successful as an Amazon seller, a proficient order management software is a must; luckily, there are a myriad of tools available to help your brand rise to the top in this competitive scene. We’ve rounded up the best order management solutions that are essential to optimizing your Amazon store and ensuring you never run out of stock or turn away potential customers.
1. Extensiv Order Manager
Extensiv is the ideal system for multichannel, multifulfillment sellers who need a comprehensive view of their sales and order fulfillment data, as well as automated supply chain management for every SKU across every channel. Extensiv Order Manager’s inventory and order management software synchronizes data from sales channels, CRM, warehouses, 3PLs, and POS systems so retailers can minimize their storage costs, free up capital, and breathe life into their cashflow.
When you choose Extensiv Order Manager for Amazon, you can track your inventory levels, deliveries, sales, and orders originating from your Amazon sales channels and more. With Extensiv Order Manager, Amazon sellers can import FBA orders and inventory to obtain the most accurate customer data and analytics — and forecast per FBA warehouse to see detailed information like buy box price, units sold, and sales velocity.
With its capacity to automate inventory updates, inventory tracking, and financial reporting, it’s safe to say Extensiv Order Manager's unified platform is the best way to solve multichannel challenges with a singular focus.
2. Daasity
Daasity’s software was created for non-technical users, meaning their inventory analytics are easy to understand and apply to your daily operations. With Daasity, retailers can move beyond basic reporting, and instead access holistic sales data and insights that are fundamental to growth. This system gives companies a clear view into their performance across all channels, so they can maximize profits, cut costs, and drive revenue across the board.
Daasity has found numerous brands struggle to combine Amazon sales data with their other sales channels for a complete view of their business, which is why they’ve included Amazon Seller Central in their flagship product (D2C Analytics Suite). With this integration in place, Daasity will take your historical data and combine it with your other sales channels for enhanced clarity around what your inventory is doing.
3. Scout topShelf
Scout’s convenient topShelf inventory management system offers users full visibility and validation on every customer order. This software boasts a range of useful features, including both barcode scanning and RFID technology. Scout supports store owners in managing their entire product catalog, generating barcode labels, and printing directly from a mobile device.
With the topShelf integration for FBA sellers, shipping your products becomes exponentially easier. Scout’s software bridges multiple fulfillment channels and warehouses to cover merchandise stored in Amazon’s warehouses in the full inventory count. In other words, inventory quantities stored with Amazon are reflected in topShelf’s reporting tools, making shipping considerably more efficient.
4. StoreAutomator
StoreAutomator has been designed for online merchants who need help with listings management and inventory repricing, especially those who have multiple selling channels or outlets. Using the StoreAutomator platform, retailers can gain full oversight of their product catalog, and create product listings from scratch all on one dashboard.
With StoreAutomator’s sophisticated software features, brands have the power to fine-tune their product listings on Amazon. In addition, Amazon sellers who team up with StoreAutomator can enjoy flexible selling for inventory with multiple SKUs, achieve inventory control through catalog management, and mobilize data templates and mapping to boost sales.
5. Inventory Planner
Inventory Planner is a go-to platform for forecasting customer demand, creating purchase orders, optimizing stock for multiple warehouses, and customizing reports for greater intelligence. This software is optimal for ecommerce businesses with broad forecasting needs, and for those who want to capitalize on automatic replenishment recommendations that simplify the entire reordering process.
Inventory Planner’s forecasting can also be used for managing FBA and FBM with combined sales channels. If you’re constantly guessing which products to buy for your Amazon store, Inventory Planner can utilize your sales history to see what product lines are selling well, what styles are in demand, and what SKUs are making the best margins.
6. Inventory Source
Inventory Source is an inventory management software specializing in monitoring, integrating, and updating product data from your dropship suppliers to your preferred sales platform. The Inventory Source system can automatically upload products, sync inventory, and route orders from dropshipping suppliers to nearly any online store or marketplace.
When Amazon and Inventory Source come together, retailers can integrate their supplier’s inventory to automatically upload product data and sync inventory quantities. Dropship sellers who want to streamline their multi-warehouse order routing to their suppliers and 3PL warehouses could benefit greatly from this order management pairing.
7. QuickBooks Online
By partnering with QuickBooks Online, small businesses and midsize companies alike can reduce the amount of hours spent managing their finances. This cloud-based software makes it easy to accept payments, pay bills, and implement the payroll functions integral to your everyday operations. What’s more, QuickBooks provides accurate insights into the value of your inventory, the cost of goods, and the fluctuations in your cashflow.
If you have an Amazon Business account, you can connect it to QuickBooks for improved accounting, reconciliation, inventory tracking, and Amazon SKU profitability. This integration is a great way to save time and keep your books up to date, by automatically configuring all types of Amazon FBA and seller-fulfilled transactions and fees.
8. SkuVault
SkuVault users can connect all of their channels, organize their own warehouses, and manage their inventory with increased precision. The SkuVault system supports you in making data-driven decisions, which translate to improved selling, picking, and shipping — not to mention, a better customer experience, as well. And with the SkuVault app, you can construct detailed reports to guarantee you never oversell or run out of stock on any SKU.
The SkuVault integration with Amazon syncs your FBA inventory in real-time, to automatically reflect the physical inventory in your warehouse on your Amazon store. In addition, SkuVault will pull product data and order details from Amazon, and create efficient pick lists with direct routes that are sure to save you time and money.
9. Shopify POS
Shopify POS is a popular system for managing your business, marketing to customers, and selling everywhere you want to be. With its advanced inventory features, Shopify users can generate purchase orders and transfer stock based on previous performance. Plus, with the Shopify mobile app, you can quickly adapt to sales trends with unified analytics that blend in-store and online sales.
When it comes to integrations, Shopify’s Amazon connector helps retailers import products from their Amazon account to a Shopify store, and then maps product movement to manage inventories on both ends. This way, merchants can better track product inventories on either platform, and can carry a wider variety of SKUs than with a standalone service.
Considering the size and scope of the Amazon marketplace, order management might feel a bit confusing or complex. If you have lingering questions about Amazon order management, hopefully these answers will provide some much needed clarity.
