Secrets for Better FBA PO Management

Purchase orders are more than just historical records of what you bought from suppliers. If used correctly, they can serve as powerful catalysts for analyzing profitability in your business.

In this post, we'll share a few secrets for better (and more profitable) FBA PO management.

Generate POs Directly from Your Inventory Management System

Vendors typically require purchase orders (aka "POs") before they'll authorize fulfillment. A purchase order, once accepted, becomes a legally binding agreement between both parties. The vendor agrees to supply, and the buyer agrees to pay. For these reasons, some merchants mistakenly assume that POs are mostly a formality.

In reality, purchase orders can be extremely helpful for merchants, particularly when tracking COGS (cost of goods sold) and for holding suppliers accountable if shipments go wrong. The problem, however, involves data accessibility. For example, some merchants build POs in spreadsheets or document templates, which effectively isolates historical order data into individual files. Others generate PDFs using their accounting software, which offers better cost tracking but sheds little insight into SKU-level profitability. Surely there's a better way.

Automated FBA PO Management

For enhanced PO management, profit-minded FBA merchants are turning to integrated inventory management systems, such as RestockPro. Since RestockPro is fully integrated to your Amazon store via the Marketplace Web Service API, the system automatically collects FBA sales revenue, storage fees, and fulfillment costs for each item. Supplier costs can also be tracked (thanks to RestockPro's purchase order feature) providing a 360-degree view of profitability by SKU.

Creating POs with RestockPro is easier than you might think. When prompted to reorder inventory, RestockPro allows you to create POs on the fly. We've built it into our highly optimized restocking workflow, which saves you time and ensures your supplier cost assumptions are always accurate.

Now, instead of isolating cost data in external spreadsheets or other desktop files, RestockPro remembers the true cost (including inbound shipping fees) associated with each PO you build. Rather than building the PO and trying to import cost data later (or forgetting altogether), RestockPro reverses the equation by starting with your data in a useable, electronic format.

Create Links Between POs and Vendors

As you become more successful as an FBA merchant, it's possible that you could issue dozens or even hundreds of POs to a particular vendor. The more you buy, the more clout you have (or should have) with that supplier. Gaining clout can help you negotiate better shipping rates, larger discounts, and more favorable payment terms.

Unfortunately, if you're using spreadsheets or other document-based systems, quantifying order history at the vendor level can seem overwhelming. You need reliable data to make your case with the supplier, but digging through hundreds of documents is something you don't have time for.

RestockPro can help in this situation, too. By managing your POs in RestockPro, you'll be able to instantly see a complete list of all POs submitted to each supplier. For additional vendor insights, you can even determine:

• Average price paid for each SKU by supplier
• Average shipping expenses charged for each SKU by supplier
• Historical dollar amount spent with each supplier
• Number of SKUs you've stocked from a particular supplier

No more digging through folders on your computer before renegotiating. Everything you need is just a few clicks away in RestockPro.

Get More Value from Your FBA POs

If you feel like you're missing out on the valuable data residing in your POs, perhaps it's time you tried RestockPro for your FBA PO management. In addition to building a more scalable restocking model, RestockPro works behind the scenes and utilizes your purchase order data to help you make more profitable decisions.