IB (Inbound)

Amazon & D2C glossary · Harpy Media

IB (Inbound) is everything between your supplier’s dock and Amazon’s shelving: planning the shipment, labelling and prepping units to spec, booking appointments, moving the freight, and clearing receiving so stock becomes buyable. It’s the conveyor belt that feeds every sale that follows.

What is IB?

IB (Inbound) is everything between your supplier’s dock and Amazon’s shelving: planning the shipment, labelling and prepping units to spec, booking appointments, moving the freight, and clearing receiving so stock becomes buyable. It’s the conveyor belt that feeds every sale that follows.

Inbound is where supply chain meets account economics. Amazon measures it closely — inbound performance scores, compliance fees, receiving speed — because poorly managed inbound damages the marketplace directly: late, messy shipments become stockouts, extra handling, and chargebacks. Managed well, inbound is invisible; managed casually, it’s the quiet line item behind a surprising share of lost margin.

The inbound chain, step by step

Seven links, each with failure modes. Shipment planning: what to send, how much, in what carton structure — sized to demand and FC capacity rules. Prep and labelling: FNSKU labels, polybagging, bundling per the published spec — done at origin for cost. Appointment booking: dock slots for truckload and LTL (the CARP-style systems), aligned to your ASN so receiving doesn’t stall. Freight: carrier choice, mode choice, tracking — protecting cargo and the calendar. Documentation: the ASN/BOL/appointment trio that must agree, or the truck sits. Receiving and stow: Amazon scans, checks in, and shelves your goods — speed here (arrival-to-sellable) is directly sales. And the feedback loop: discrepancy reports inform the next shipment’s fixes. Sellers get burned at whichever link they ignore.

Running inbound like you mean it

The disciplines that separate clean operators: origin prep to published specs with first-article photo checks (see the prep-fee and D2FC entries — the same work prevents both fee categories), appointments booked with buffer and paperwork verified before the wheels turn, and arrival-to-sellable tracked as an actual KPI (a shipment that takes 11 days to become buyable lost you most of a fortnight’s sales invisibly). Beyond the mechanics, inbound planning connects to demand: the right inbound cadence keeps inventory where it sells and capacity limits respected — because inbound performance history feeds the very permissions that let you send more. Excellence compounds: clean inbound earns better slots and fewer fees, which funds faster cycles and stronger availability.

In practice

A vendor audits its inbound end-to-end for a quarter: average arrival-to-sellable is 8.4 days against a peer benchmark of about 5, driven by two fixable causes — labels that failed first-touch scans on one carton pattern, and appointments booked without buffer so a single late trailer cascaded. Both fixed in a month (label placement standardised, appointment lead time raised). Six weeks later the average is 4.6 days — roughly four extra selling days per shipment, on every shipment, forever.

How Harpy Media helps

Inbound is a full workstream in our vendor and FBA operations — prep specs, appointment discipline, and receiving-speed targets tracked shipment by shipment.

IB FAQ

What is inbound (IB)?

The full process of getting inventory into Amazon’s network: shipment planning, prep, labelling, appointments, freight, documentation, and receiving — for both vendors and FBA sellers.

Why does inbound quality matter so much?

Because its failures become fees (prep, compliance, chargebacks) and delays (arrival-to-sellable), while its quality earns better slots, fewer disputes, and faster availability.

How do I improve inbound?

Prep and label to spec at origin with first-article checks, book appointments with buffer and verify paperwork, and track arrival-to-sellable as a KPI.