A couple of days ago I discovered AutoMCF, a way to automate your multi-channel fulfillment with Amazon FBA, and that includes fulfilling your eBay orders.
Barry, a long time Tamebay reader suggested I take a look so I had a chat with Brian Nolan, Co-Founder & CEO of Sellbrite, the company behind AutoMCF. Over the years we’ve had a lot of readers ask for a simple inventory management system that would synch their stock across all channels, AutoMCF does this and then gets Amazon to ship your stock for you. Sound interesting? Get ready to shut your warehouse and read on.
Basically AutoMCF connects your marketplace listings to Fulfillment by Amazon, automating order entry and syncing inventory across all channels. Once you’ve connected your marketplace accounts (Amazon (US and EU), eBay (US and EU), Rakuten Shopping, Newegg and Sears) to your Amazon-fulfilled inventory, items get imported into AutoMCF. You select which products you’d like autoMCF to take care of and you’re all set ready to go.
From then on every time you get an order, regardless of platform, the order will be retrieved by AutoMCF, reformated to Amazon’s requirements and sent to Amazon for fulfillment. Once Amazon has picked, packed and despatched your item the tracking number is retrieved from your FBA account and added back to the original marketplace order which is then marked as shipped.
Finally, your Amazon-fulfilled inventory quantities are synced and updated on your eBay, Rakuten, Sears and Newegg marketplace accounts to prevent overselling!
The cost is $79 per month so seems like an absolute bargain, less than the price of a featured eBay shop. Of course AutoMCF can only work to it’s full potential for FBA products, but once they’re taken care of you’ll have a lot less work to do. There’s also a free 15 day trial available and no need to enter your credit card for billing during the trial period.
11 Responses
It’s a brilliant idea but how do you manage the actual shipping time for orders via Amazon versus the projected delivery times for eBay?
If I view an item on eBay today with standard delivery I am told it will be here Friday. When I go to Amazon to create a fulfilment order the delivery won’t happen till Saturday – and that’s witrh first class post. If I want Friday I have to pay them for Express.
So unless I have a lot of slack in my margins aren’t I just heading for problems with eBay buyers?
Great article. I’ll defo be checking them out.
Has anybody had any experience with using AutoMCF ?
How long has it been established?
Looks great. Does it integrate with Tradebox and sage?
As usual Chris, you bring all the best hidden gems … Gotta love tamebay :). I will look at this software for sure 🙂
It should be noted that several of the multi-channel applications (e.g. Linnworks) already offer this facility which is effectively a special case of dropshipping as far as these systems are concerned.
This may be a more sophisticated bit of software but it also costs quite a lot for what it appears to do.
For those looking to place orders on Amazon FBA for non-Amazon orders we would urge extreme caution and do the sums carefully.
Firstly you are going to pay over twice the standard FBA cost to ship via an Amazon warehouse to a UK customer and nearly six times to Western Europe for a 800g package.
Unless you have no option and/or have nice juicy margins or product/distribution exclusivity you could be in for a nasty shock.
There are some categories where this might make sense but certainly not for us unless we had a stock out locally but stock in FBA for example.
One other issue is that it all ships in Amazon boxes with their documentation and they will be watching your sales!
Basically Amazon FBA is for Amazon site orders period and for other non-Amazon orders you should look to use other fulfilment houses if you can.
Came across this yesterday: Selro Multi Channel Inventory and Order Management. Does anyone have any experience with them?
https://channel.selro.com/