How to send products to Amazon FBA in the UK: Send to Amazon, step by step

Every unit you sell through Amazon FBA has to get to Amazon first, and that journey has a cost most brands never measure per unit: freight, the fee for any information you do not give Amazon, and the days the stock spends in a lorry or a receiving queue instead of on sale. This guide walks through the UK Send to Amazon workflow as it stands on 1 October 2026, and the choices inside it that change that cost. It assumes your units are already prepped and labelled; if not, start with our FBA prep guide.

Before you create a shipment

Three things decide whether the shipment goes smoothly, and all of them happen before you open the workflow.

• The products are converted to FBA. Send to Amazon only lists SKUs that already use FBA; it cannot convert them¹.
• The units are prepped and labelled. Amazon stopped prepping and labelling for sellers in its European stores on 1 July 2026, so whatever arrives is received as it is. Our prep guide covers the rules.
• You have capacity. UK capacity limits are set monthly in cubic feet per storage type, and open shipments count towards them. If stock at Amazon plus stock on the way would exceed your limit, you cannot create the shipment¹¹. New Professional accounts that have used FBA for less than 39 weeks have no limit; Individual accounts have a fixed 15 cubic feet¹¹.

Send to Amazon, step by step

Send to Amazon is Amazon’s streamlined shipment creation workflow. You open it from the Shipping Queue¹, and the steps run in this order:

Steps four to six apply only to some shipments: pallet details for pallets, pallet labels for partnered pallets, tracking for non-partnered carriers¹. A few rules inside the steps catch people out:

• Packing data must be close to reality. The box weight and volume you enter must not be more than 10% below the combined weight and volume of the units inside³.
• Placements expire. Fulfilment centre placement options are valid for 72 hours pending confirmation, and the shipping details can change if you do not confirm within 24 hours².
• Choose the mode carefully. Once you confirm the shipping mode and ship-from address you cannot change them. A shipment sent by a different mode can be refused at collection or cause problems at the delivery appointment².
• After confirming, you cannot add new SKUs, and quantity changes are only allowed within limits; beyond them, you cancel and start again².
• Delivery window. With a non-partnered carrier you give a seven-day delivery window: at step 2 for small parcels and step 4 for pallets. You can update it until the window starts¹⁰.

Box content information

Box content information is the number of units of each SKU in each box, any expiry dates, and each box’s weight and dimensions. Amazon requires it for every box, even a box holding a single SKU⁴. You can give it by web form, by uploading an Excel or tab-delimited file, with a 2D barcode on each box, or through the Selling Partner API⁴.

If you skip it, Amazon processes the boxes by hand and charges a manual processing fee of £0.15 a unit in the UK⁵. Three details make it expensive:

• If any box in the shipment lacks the information, the fee applies to every unit in that shipment⁴.
• Shipments created without box contents can only travel as pallet freight, and you can only add the information later by Excel upload².
• Manually processed shipments may be received more slowly⁵.

On a shipment of 2,400 units, skipping box contents costs £360. Two rules apply whatever you choose: each box may contain units from only one shipment ID, and what you send must match the plan, including SKUs, barcodes, expiry dates, condition, quantities and packing type⁶.

Box and pallet rules

All of these come from Amazon’s shipping and routing requirements⁶, except label placement, which is on the small parcel page: keep labels off seams and, where possible, at least 3 cm from the box’s edges⁷. Pallets shipped internationally must be heat-treated to ISPM-15, and pallet deliveries need a vehicle of at least 7.5 tonnes that can reverse to a loading bay⁶. Amazon strictly enforces box weights and dimensions; overweight boxes can lead to fees, refusal or blocked future shipments⁶.

Carrier options in the UK

The Amazon Partnered Carrier programme is available in the UK. It covers small parcel deliveries through UPS, DHL and Geopost (DPD UK), and pallet deliveries through RXO and Kuehne+Nagel. You see the rate in Seller Central, pay for it there, print labels and track deliveries, and schedule pallet collections⁸. To qualify, your warehouse must be in the UK or one of the listed EU countries, the shipment must go to a fulfilment centre in an eligible country, and it must not contain dangerous goods⁸.

Amazon’s own example gives a sense of the price: one 18 kg box from Cheltenham to its MAN4 fulfilment centre near Chesterfield cost £7.58 through the programme⁸. Rates depend on the collection point, destination and number of boxes or pallets, so check yours in the workflow. You can void partnered charges within 24 hours for small parcels and within 1 hour for pallets².

Your own carrier works too, with conditions: only professional carriers may deliver, private vehicles are not allowed, and parcels cannot be handed in at reception⁶. Carriers must provide proof of handover with a timestamp and the name or signature of an Amazon employee⁷. One workflow cannot mix partnered and non-partnered carriers².

From outside the UK, the Amazon SEND programme carries FBA stock by air or sea from the USA and China to UK fulfilment centres, with the carrier handling customs clearance¹⁵. For brands that hold stock in bulk, Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) has a UK facility for the UK store, which stores stock long-term and replenishes FBA based on demand; you need a UK VAT registration to use it¹⁴.

Placement and capacity: a cost-per-unit decision

Inbound cost is easiest to judge per unit. Here is one shipment of 1,200 units, packed 30 to a box, compared four ways. Amazon’s £0.15 manual processing fee is real⁵; the freight rates are illustrative.

Pallets win on freight here, and giving box contents halves the cost of the pallet option. But freight is only one part of the cost per unit. The rest is placement, capacity and time.

Placement. By default your stock may be routed to more than one fulfilment centre, chosen from what you ship and where from². For eligible shipments, the UK’s box-level inventory placement splits the boxes into groups for different destinations at no additional cost, and for partnered shipments Amazon says there is no impact on your carrier costs⁹. We could not find an inbound placement service fee in Seller Central UK’s help on 1 October 2026; the one in Amazon’s US help, which charges for choosing fewer destinations, does not appear on the UK site. Any placement charge would show at Confirm shipping, so check the charges there before you accept. With your own haulier, more destinations can mean more deliveries, so price each split before confirming, and look at merging shipments where Send to Amazon offers it².

Capacity. Because open shipments count against your limit¹¹, a large shipment booked early can block a more urgent one later in the month. Capacity Manager lets you bid a reservation fee for more space, with no upfront payment, and earns a £0.15 credit for every £1 of sales made using it¹¹.

Time. Stock in transit is cash you cannot sell. Slow receiving, from missing box contents, prep problems or a delivery outside the window, costs you the margin on every sale you miss while the product is out of stock. Our inventory management playbook shows how to build that lead time into reorder points, and our FBA fees guide and FBA calculator put inbound cost into the full cost per unit.

Common problems and rejections

Amazon records receiving problems on your Inbound Performance report: tracking, labels, prep, quantities, safety, damage, expiry, listing problems, restricted items and transport¹³. Repeated problems raise your coaching level for that problem group¹². These are the ones we see cost the most:

The coaching actions are from Amazon’s performance coaching page¹², the box rules from its routing requirements⁶ and the shipping-mode warning from the Confirm shipping page². One more to avoid: do not send stock against a shipment that is already Closed. Amazon warns that it may not be received properly and can lead to overage charges¹⁶. Create a new shipment instead.

After the shipment arrives

Amazon says stock is generally scanned and available for sale within a few working days of arrival¹⁶. When the shipment reaches Closed, compare what was received with what you sent, box by box. Our practice is to check every shipment within a week of closing. That is when discrepancies are easiest to evidence, and Amazon’s window for disputing an unplanned service fee is short (our prep guide has the details). Shipments sent with the Partnered Carrier programme are covered by Amazon’s FBA lost and damaged inventory reimbursement policy⁸, and our guide to FBA reimbursements covers how to claim.

Then feed what you learned into the next shipment: actual receiving time into your lead time, any problems into your packing checklist, and the real cost per unit into your margins. The Profit X-Ray shows what is left per product once all of it is counted.