The “Send to Amazon” page is stating “Due to high demand in the West region, please anticipate delays in receiving your inventory for Minimal Shipment Splits. Consider shipping to the East region for Minimal Shipment Splits.”
What are Minimal Shipment Splits?
A way to get you to pay for placement fees?
Amazon Minimal Shipment Splits is an inbound placement option for Amazon FBA where you send your inventory to a single fulfillment center, and Amazon then distributes it to other warehouses on your behalf for an additional per-item fee. This option provides simplicity by sending inventory to one location but incurs a fee that can vary by inbound region, being higher for West Coast locations. You select an inbound region (East, Central, or West) for your shipment, and Amazon handles the rest of the distribution.
We normally try to use “Amazon-optimized shipment split” to save on placement fees and reduce the overall cost of the entire workflow. We do wait for the slower locations to process our inventory instead of sending as a Minimal Shipment.
But, sometimes another option may provide a lower rate. I recently had a 3 split instead of a 5 split. It is rare but happens.
Here is a quick image and link to the info page.
Thanks! I actually searched on Minimal Shipment Splits in Seller Central and didn’t get any meaningful hits. Thankful to have SAS!
Thanks! I’ve actually been doing the Amazon-optimized shipment splits for a while now (not realizing that the old way I was doing it was called Minimal shipment splits) and I think it helps get my inventory to the Available status quicker.
Ooh. I’d test that, but by the time I’m ready to test it, everything has been created and packed. Too much trouble to test out 3 vs. 5.
This 3 split shipment does contain items = Size: Oversize
I have not noticed 3 split shipments with items = Size: Standard-Size
It may only occur with Oversize items. I am not sure. I do not have the data.
Testing is possible on a future shipment. I would just need to guess a little bit about the pallets. Inches matter with weight and freight class on pallets.
My default is the 5 split, but the 3 split was oddly much less expensive this time.
The employee who creates the shipments pre-selected the 3 split. Possibly based on timing or something else. I do not handle that part of the business or control the decision. But, I do provide my freight pricing based on the options available before building the pallets. Most of the time my boss decides on the 5 split. This time I was told to keep the 3 split. Partly to save my time, I do not ask why.
It ended up being 10 pallets split into 3 shipments. I do not know the zip codes to test pricing if it became more smaller pallets going to 5 zip codes. In other situations the class would drop and 5 split is cheaper, but this one still shows less expensive with placement fees and on a 3 split than the original 5 split rate.
I did not save the 5 split zip codes and contents to test. If we have a 3 split in the future, I can save the 5 split data and calculate rates next time with a guess on the pallets quantity, weight, size, and class.
I did want to delete the workflow and start all over and price out the 5 pallet split to see which would be less expensive after pallet sizes with weights and correct class. My boss mentioned that we do not have time to redo the workflow due to employee vacations and me leaving for Dragon Con.
I will update the next time we ship a 3 split workflow over a 5 split.
In my experience, it usually does. However, the cost to get your stuff on the shelf may be more than the profit in the sales. It’s a cost-benefit analysis only you can do.
I personally find shipping it to 5 sites gets it on the shelf fastest. If one facility is backed up, at least some will get to the others.
