Amazon integration

Amazon is the world’s best-known online marketplace, reaching millions of customers worldwide. Sell and fulfill your products with Amazon while using Cin7 Core to track your inventory levels, or fulfill orders without Amazon. It is not currently possible to list items from your catalog in Core to Amazon.

If you primarily work with Fulfillment by Amazon, you can add the Fulfillment by Amazon integration. Cin7 Core FBA integration allows your external warehouse/fulfillment center to be created as a separate location in Cin7 Core as well as allow sales order details to be communicated to your external fulfillment center. It also has the ability to synchronize inventory quantities once orders are fulfilled and receive shipping/tracking information from the fulfillment service. You will still require the Amazon integration if you purchase the Fulfillment by Amazon integration.

Prerequisites

• An Amazon Seller Pro account (required)

• Familiarity with sales (required)

• Users will need the Integration: eCommerce - Amazon permission in order to use this feature.

Important information

Cin7 Core supports the following Marketplaces: USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, UAE, Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Belgium, Poland, Japan, India, Singapore, and South Africa.

Benefits of the integration

• Stock levels automatically update from Cin7 Core to Amazon.

• Inventory costs and movements are synced to your accounting application.

• Centralized inventory management for all channels.

Sales orders, product details, customer contacts and payments are downloaded from Amazon to Cin7 Core. Item quantities are uploaded to Amazon, keeping track of inventory.

Once the integration has been established, Cin7 Core will download products from Amazon, each sales order from Amazon will be captured and sent to Pending Sales in Cin7 Core and have stock allocated. They will then be processed into actual sales orders, either individually or once a day, depending on your sales order consolidation settings. Stock level changes are then pushed from Cin7 Core to Amazon (or other connected sales channels) if this optional setting has been enabled. Payments are automatically applied to orders captured from Amazon.

Not supported

• Initial import of products from Amazon does not import stock quantities.

Connect to Amazon

First, you must connect Cin7 Core to your Amazon store. You can link several Amazon stores to a single Cin7 Core account, with each linked store having its own independent catalog, logs, and settings. You need one available integration license per Amazon store you want to connect.

After authorizing the connection, you should set up your Amazon integration settings.

Set up Amazon settings

Once you have connected to Cin7 Core and Amazon, you can customize your Amazon integration settings.

In Cin7 Core, you can set up your Amazon settings to:

• Manage order downloads and product mappings.

• Consolidate orders into one daily order.

• Decide if Cin7 Core or Amazon is the main source of information.

• Define settlement accounts, process the Amazon settlement report, or ignore Amazon taxes.

• And so much more!

Carrier mappings

Amazon requires the carrier name upon shipment confirmation via bulk feeds, APIs, or integrators for seller-fulfilled orders. Some of the commonly used carrier names are USPS, UPS, and FedEx. From May 3, 2021, Amazon will validate tracking details (including carrier name and tracking ID) for ALL seller-fulfilled orders, and show warnings for invalid tracking details.

Cin7 Core will automatically send the sale order carrier to Amazon after fulfillment is authorized in Cin7 Core. Tracking numbers are also passed to Amazon when they are available.

Carrier names in Cin7 Core must be mapped to available carriers in Amazon so shipment tracking information can be correctly exported and meet these requirements. The list of carriers is loaded automatically from Amazon.

1. Go to Integrations → Amazon → [select store]  → Carrier Mapping.

2. If multiple Amazon channels have been integrated with Cin7 Core, the user can select Copy mappings from... and select their marketplace to load carrier mappings from another configured Amazon channel. The copied mappings can be edited before saving.

3. Map carriers in Cin7 Core to carriers in Amazon. If a carrier exists in Cin7 Core that does not exist in Amazon, select Other. The Cin7 Core carrier name will be passed to Amazon.
       

Catalog

Downloading products

Products can be loaded from Amazon to Cin7 Core in the Catalog tab by clicking Load Products.

There are two types of products in Amazon: a simple product and a complex product (a product with options/variations such as, for example, the same product in different colors and sizes).

Each complex product can have many options in Amazon, but Cin7 Core can only support up to 3. Due to this constraint, Cin7 Core uses only the first 3 options from the Amazon product. These complex and simple Amazon products map perfectly to Cin7 Core Product Families and Cin7 Core Products. When downloading products from Amazon, Cin7 Core checks if the Amazon product is simple (without options) or complex (with options).

If a product has options in Amazon, Cin7 Core creates a product family with all the variants of that product created as separate products in Cin7 Core belonging to that family. If a product family and its products are already created/linked with Amazon, then Cin7 Core updates the existing family/products instead of creating new versions.

When a product is created or updated in Cin7 Core during the download process, a link is established between the product and variant unique Amazon ID and Cin7 Core unique product ID. This link is used when products are matched against sales order lines in Amazon and when subsequent product downloads occur.

Amazon maintains a hierarchical structure of categories while Cin7 Core categories are all treated at the same level. Only the first (top-level) category of an Amazon product is linked to Cin7 Core.

When downloading products, Cin7 Core first tries to match existing products to avoid creating duplicates. This search is done in several steps:

1. First, Cin7 Core attempts to search for a product family by name using the Amazon product title.

2. Then, for each variant, Cin7 Core searches for a Cin7 Core product using the Amazon variant ID.

3. If not found, Cin7 Core then searches for a Cin7 Core product by Amazon product (or variant) SKU.

Cin7 Core products must have unique names, while all Amazon variation names also differ. Variation name consists of family name + “(Option1Value, Option2Value, ...)".

During product download, Cin7 Core automatically creates product categories and product brands for all product types in Amazon.

If a product price in the Catalog is important for the user, they MUST use a different Price tier for each Amazon marketplace; otherwise, the price will be overwritten with the last price in the marketplace currency.

Data mapping for products between Cin7 Core and Amazon is as follows:

Managing the catalog

There are three possible statuses for products in the Catalog: Not Listed, Listed and Cancelled. The Canceled status appears for products that were removed from Amazon. By default, they are not visible in the catalog unless the Show only active checkbox is disabled.

There is also an option that allows you to switch the appearance of the catalog to Show variations separately. If checked off, all products without variations are displayed, and each product variation is shown as a separate product line. If this function is not enabled, products without variations are displayed as usual, and product families are displayed as a single product line.

In addition to downloading products from Amazon and performing automatic product mapping, you can choose to manage your Amazon catalog from Cin7 Core. There is a column for manually linking and unlinking Cin7 Core and Amazon products. This is useful when the correct product has not been found, or when a link between the Cin7 Core and Amazon product has been broken due to Amazon ASIN merge operations.

Cin7 Core supports Amazon’s 'global SKU' feature: when a product listed in several marketplaces within a region (All marketplaces in Europe, for example) is linked to one Cin7 Core product, the total quantity of the Cin7 Core product will be used for all marketplace listings. This shared product can have a different name (alias) in each marketplace while still being linked to a single Cin7 Core product. If an alias name is used, the Catalog Tab will show the alias name instead of the actual product name.

There are three linking options:

• Leave blank (do not tie to a product in Cin7 Core)

• Link to an existing product

• Create a new product in Cin7 Core (available if the product with the required SKU does not exist).

Product mapping must be completed in order for sales to be successfully downloaded from your sales channels to Cin7 Core. When sales are loaded from a sales channel, and a sale contains a product that is not mapped to any product in Cin7 Core, then this sale will not be downloaded.

The user will be notified if a sale is skipped through internal messages such as notifications, recordings in the operations log, or a text message on the screen (depending on the situation).  

Catalog modifications in Amazon

Consider a catalog that contains 3 products: A, B, C. Product C has been modified in the sales channel. Next time the catalog download is triggered, the products A, B, D will be visible with the following statuses:

Products A and B (the unchanged products) will remain in the catalog with a Listed status. Product D will now appear in the catalog with a Listed status, but product C’s status will change to Canceled.

Orders and sales

Processing pending orders

Whenever a sale is created in Amazon, it is first placed in Pending Orders, and stock is allocated immediately. Cin7 Core checks every hour if there are any new orders and imports them immediately as individual sales orders or once a day as a consolidated sales order (Daily Consolidation enabled).

By default, each Amazon sale is converted into an identical sale in Cin7 Core, keeping the same customer, shipping and billing information.

If you enable daily consolidation, the consolidated order will use the customer selected in the integration settings. Cin7 Core will ignore any customer, billing and shipping information from Amazon.

When processing orders, the logic is identical to that of the Cin7 Core UI. Dropshipping, Kitting and other important scenarios are implemented in the same way as the Cin7 Core UI.

Pending Orders can be processed manually by clicking Process. They can then be viewed in the Log tab.

Order field mapping

No Consolidation - Online Sale

Daily Consolidation - Online Sale

Downloading Orders and Payments

Orders are automatically downloaded every hour when an order is paid, modified or changed in Amazon.

Pending or Pending Available order statuses won’t be processed. Generally, you do not need to trigger manual order download. However, if an order was not captured by Cin7 Core or to load historical sales, you can use the manual Load Order option. Cin7 Core allows loading historical sales data a maximum of one year old.

Any imported order is saved to the Pending Orders section. It is a temporary storage of all sales and payments in Cin7 Core. Only orders matching the selected capture option are accepted: with status paid/unshipped/shipped. You can change the capture option in the Load from Amazon setting.

If an order already has an entry in the Log, i.e. it has been imported previously, it will be skipped. This guarantees that no duplicate sales will be created by Cin7 Core.

While saving orders, Cin7 Core captures customer information such as the shipping address. Unfortunately, upon order download, it is impossible to obtain the billing address details, except for the billing name (the person who paid for the order). All line items are captured together with quantities, prices and totals. Total order discounts are applied as additional charges to the whole order, without distribution by lines to reduce any chances of discrepancy.

Shipping, gift wrapping and discounts are also saved as additional charges in the sales invoice. Amazon has special Tax Rules for these additional charges, and you can map these tax rules to those in Cin7 Core under the Setup tab.

For each line in a sales order, Cin7 Core will try to locate the corresponding product by SKU. If no product is found, Cin7 Core tries to download the product information from Amazon using the same logic as in the Download Products function described above. If the product information is not found (if removed from the Amazon store, for example), Cin7 Core marks this line as a Service (Non-product). Next, the sale line is saved to pending orders with all the data imported from Amazon: Tax, Quantity and Total.

If a Payment Account has been specified in the Integration Settings, Cin7 Core will always assign associated payments to the captured orders (whether the order has already been processed or is still pending) when the Amazon Order is paid.

When an Amazon order is canceled, Cin7 Core automatically finds and voids the corresponding sales task if already created as a sales order or just removes the associated pending order if not yet processed.

The final step in the order download is to trigger an update of stock levels in the other Amazon stores and the other connected eCommerce channels.

Updating Fulfillment in Amazon

When Shipment is authorized in Cin7 Core and the carrier specified, Cin7 Core will try to create order shipment information in Amazon. This will only work in the No Consolidation processing mode.

Logs

Each captured Amazon order once saved to Pending Orders creates a Log entry to track the link between the Sale in Cin7 Core and in Amazon. This eliminates the possibility of creating duplicate orders when capturing the same order several times during manual order load.

Each Log entry has a link to the sales task in Cin7 Core. Depending on the settings selected by the user in the Setup tab, this sales task could be draft or authorized, one or more of the Pick, Pack and Ship tabs could be authorized, and payment could have been applied to the invoice.

Log entries allow you to see which sales task reflects a particular Amazon sale. You also have the option to delete a Log entry manually. This will allow Cin7 Core to reprocess an order if required. Deleting a log entry will not void or delete its associated sales task.

Reloading Orders from Amazon

If for any reason you need to reload an order from Amazon, this can be managed from Cin7 Core.

To reload an order from Amazon:

1. Void the sales task. A record of this will be kept in Cin7 Core for reconciliation purposes, but the transactional data will be deleted.

2. Return to the Amazon integration Log tab and delete the Log entry. This will allow the order to be recaptured from Amazon.

3. Navigate to the Pending Orders tab and click Load Orders, making sure to set the date before the order to reload was made. Cin7 Core allows loading historical sales data a maximum of one year old.

Refunds and Returns

Cin7 Core Amazon integration supports refunds and returns. When returning an item, customers can choose their preferred refund method in Amazon. Cin7 Core will capture and process a refund regardless of the refund method.

Cin7 Core will process the captured refunds automatically every hour, but users can manually load and process refunds and credit notes via the Pending Orders tab. Only refunds that are Completed from Amazon will be captured and loaded to Cin7 Core. Pending or Declined refunds will not be loaded or processed to Cin7 Core.

Note: Cin7 Core will process returns and refunds when the Invoice status is authorized and order is processed. Returns and refunds for unfulfilled sales will be stored in the Pending Orders tab until the sale has been fulfilled. Cin7 Core supports processing both Amazon fulfilled and Merchant fulfilled sale refunds.

When a refund or a return is captured from Amazon, Cin7 Core will create and authorize a credit note and refund equivalent to credit note total for the relevant sale order in Cin7 Core. Amazon has different fees applied on refunds depending on product and location (for more information, go to Amazon - About Our Returns Policies). Any of these fees will be captured by Cin7 Core as an additional charge. There will be no restocking done for Amazon returns during processing the returns and refunds to Cin7 Core.

When processing refunds for historical sale orders on Amazon integration, Cin7 Core would load the sale order together with the refund and credit note from Amazon. If the sale pre-dates the date when Cin7 Core was integrated with your Amazon store, a stand-alone credit note will be processed, while the original order will not be altered or synced.

We do not recommend using the Cin7 Core RMA and Returns feature for Amazon sales, for capturing all of the relevant charges and fees it is more user-friendly to process returns via Amazon for Amazon sales.

Amazon Settlement Fees and Charges

Amazon generates sales invoices as the customer would see them, without fees. The fees (Commission Fee, FBA Fee, etc.) are then subtracted. Approximately every two weeks, Amazon will deposit the sales money, minus charges for Amazon fees, in the seller’s Amazon account directly into the seller’s bank account.

Amazon generates a report (Amazon Settlements Report) detailing these fees at approximately two-week intervals. The fees can then be processed manually by the user or automatically by Cin7 Core. You will need to enable the Process Amazon Settlements Report setting for Cin7 Core to automatically capture and process data from the settlement report.

You can review transactions from the settlements report from the Amazon Settlement Files tab.

See Handling Amazon Settlement Fees and Charges for detailed instructions.

Operations Log

Each time the user or Cin7 Core downloads sales, the appropriate record is added to the operations log, which also contains information about results of downloading, including the count of processed, skipped or canceled orders.

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