How do sellers create their first Amazon FBA shipment?

Short answer: you build a shipment in Seller Central's "Send to Amazon" workflow — pick your products, prep and label every unit, choose your placement and carrier, print box labels, and ship. The whole thing takes an afternoon once you know where the traps are.

Your first FBA shipment feels more intimidating than it is. The workflow is genuinely step-by-step, and Amazon holds your hand through most of it. What actually trips up beginners is not the workflow itself — it is the prep rules around it: the barcodes, the box limits, the packaging requirements. Get those right and the shipment is boring. Get them wrong and your boxes come back, or worse, sit in a warehouse limbo while Amazon charges you to fix them.

Here is the whole thing, in order.

Before you touch the shipment workflow

There are two prerequisites, and both are easy to forget.

First, your listings must be set to FBA fulfillment. In Seller Central, go to Manage Inventory, find your SKUs, and change the fulfillment method from "Merchant Fulfilled" to "Fulfilled by Amazon." Until you do this, the shipment workflow will not let you select those products. If you are selling a product that already exists on Amazon, you match your offer to the existing listing by its ASIN or UPC. If it is a new product, you create the listing first — title, bullet points, images, category — then flip it to FBA.

Second, decide who labels your products. Every unit Amazon receives needs a scannable barcode. You have two options: use the manufacturer's UPC barcode as-is, or print Amazon's own FNSKU labels — unique barcodes tied to your seller account — and stick one on every unit. FNSKU is the standard choice for private-label sellers, because it keeps your inventory separate from other sellers' identical products. Amazon will apply labels for you, but it charges a per-unit labeling fee, and doing it yourself is cheaper. Either way, this decision has to be made before you create the shipment.

Step 1: create the shipping plan

In Seller Central, hover over Inventory in the main menu, then click FBA Inventory. At the top of the page, hover over Shipments and click Send to Amazon. This opens the workflow that will carry you through everything.

The first screen asks you to confirm which inventory you are sending. Select your FBA SKUs and enter quantities. Then you specify packing details: how the items are packed — individual units or case-packed — and whether any prep is needed, like poly bags or bubble wrap. Be honest here. Amazon checks, and mismatches between what you declare and what arrives cause delays.

One important detail: decide whether you want to ship everything in one box or split it into multiple shipments. For a first shipment, keeping it simple is fine. You can get fancy with split strategies later, once you understand the placement fees involved.

Step 2: prep and label every unit

This is the step where beginners lose the most time, so slow down here.

Every sellable unit needs its barcode — the FNSKU label you decided on earlier, or the manufacturer UPC. If you are applying FNSKU labels yourself, print them in a thermal 4x6 format if you can; they scan more reliably than inkjet printouts, and a label that does not scan is a unit that does not get checked in.

Packaging has its own rulebook. Items that need poly bags must use them, and any poly bag with an opening larger than a few inches needs a suffocation warning printed on it — this is a safety regulation, not an Amazon quirk, and missing warnings are one of the most common reasons shipments get flagged. Fragile items need bubble wrap. Liquids need to be sealed so they cannot leak.

Here is the change that caught sellers off guard: as of January 2026, Amazon discontinued its FBA Prep Services in the US. Previously you could send unprepped inventory and pay Amazon to label and bag it for you. That option is gone. Everything must now arrive pre-labeled and prepped to Amazon's standards. If you were reading a guide written before 2026, throw out the prep-service parts. For your first shipment, this means doing the prep yourself or hiring a third-party prep center — there is no Amazon safety net anymore.

Step 3: choose your placement option

After prep, Amazon shows you where your inventory will go — and this is where money enters the picture.

Amazon operates a network of fulfillment centers, and it wants your inventory spread across them. The workflow presents split options with estimated inbound placement fees attached. You will typically see an "Amazon-optimized" option that minimizes or avoids these fees, alongside options to send to fewer locations for a fee.

For a first shipment, the honest advice is simple: pick the Amazon-optimized option. The placement fee math only starts to matter at scale, when you are shipping enough volume that the fee structure meaningfully changes your unit economics. Beginners who agonize over placement splits are optimizing something that barely affects them yet. Send it the cheap way, learn the rhythm, and revisit the question when you are shipping your tenth batch, not your first.

Review the warehouse destinations Amazon assigns. Write them down. You will need them for the carrier step.

Step 4: pack the boxes

Box rules are specific, and they are enforced:

• Maximum box weight: 50 pounds. Single-item boxes can go up to 70 pounds.
• Maximum box dimensions: 25 inches on each side for standard items.
• Each box gets an Amazon shipment label, generated in Seller Central during the workflow. Print one per box and attach it where it is visible.
• Do not mix products from different shipment IDs in the same box. This is the rule beginners break most often, usually because they are trying to save on shipping. Amazon's receiving process sorts by shipment ID; mixed boxes create reconciliation messes and delays.

Enter your box dimensions and weights accurately in Seller Central. Discrepancies between declared and actual weights can trigger additional fees or receiving problems. A cheap luggage scale and a tape measure are legitimate business equipment at this stage.

Step 5: choose your carrier and ship

You have two paths here.

The Amazon Partnered Carrier program lets you buy shipping labels directly inside Seller Central at discounted rates, with automated tracking. For small parcel delivery — the normal choice for a first shipment — you enter your box details, accept the partnered carrier quote, print the shipping labels, and either schedule a pickup or drop the boxes at an authorized location. This is the path of least resistance, and for most beginners it is also the cheapest.

The alternative is using your own carrier: book the shipment outside Seller Central, then enter the tracking information manually. This makes sense if you already have negotiated carrier rates or are shipping freight (LTL/palletized) rather than small parcels. For LTL shipments, you will also need to print pallet labels and provide a Bill of Lading to the carrier at pickup.

Once the boxes leave your hands, the waiting starts. After arrival, Amazon typically takes one to seven business days to receive, check in, and make your inventory available for sale. During peak season — October through December — expect the longer end of that range, sometimes more. You can watch progress in the Shipping Queue in Seller Central, which shows when items arrive and flip to "Available."

The mistakes first-timers actually make

After watching the pattern across seller forums, the same five errors account for most first-shipment pain:

• Wrong or missing barcodes. A unit without a scannable FNSKU or UPC does not exist as far as receiving is concerned.
• Skipping the suffocation warning on poly bags. It feels like a detail. Amazon treats it as a violation.
• Mixing shipment IDs in one box to save on freight. The savings are imaginary; the delays are real.
• Declaring one weight, shipping another. The scale does not lie, and neither should your shipment plan.
• Sending inventory to the wrong warehouse. Double-check the destinations Amazon assigned before the carrier picks up.

None of these are complicated. They are just the kind of thing you only learn by doing — or by reading someone who did.

What happens after check-in

Once your inventory shows as Available, you are, in practical terms, an FBA seller. Amazon stores your products, and when orders come in, it picks, packs, ships, and handles customer service. Your job shifts from logistics to the things that actually grow the business: pricing, reviews, advertising, and deciding what to send next.

Keep an eye on your FBA Inventory dashboard. It shows your stock levels in real time, and running out is the most expensive rookie mistake in the catalog — every day out of stock is a day your listing loses ranking momentum. Set a reminder to start your next shipment well before you hit zero. The second shipment takes a third of the time the first one did, because now you know where everything lives.

That is the whole first shipment. Afternoon of careful work, a few days of waiting, and then the strange quiet of watching orders fulfill themselves.