Amazon MCF: Limitations and Special Features

Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) Guides

Integration Setup | Settings | Products and Shipping | Cancel Orders and Removal Requests | Limitations and Special Features | Common MCF Errors | Sending Orders for Fulfillment

With Order Desk, you can connect to any Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) region to send your orders for fulfillment. The MCF integration has a few limitations and special features that are important to know about. This guide explains what those limitations and features are.

Limitations

When you send an order to MCF, a URL is passed through Amazon's API to pass the order data into Amazon's system. The size of this URL is determined by the amount of data in the order.

Amazon’s API has a limit on the size of this URL. What this means is that orders with more than 8 line items may not be accepted by MCF if the URL is too long. To avoid any potential problems, limit line items on a single order to 8 or fewer.

If you expect to receive large orders regularly, you can create a rule to send an alert to yourself for orders with more than 8 line items. Add any additional actions to your rule, such as changing folders to hold it for review or tagging it a specific color. 

An example rule for this scenario would look like this:

The order may need to be split into multiple orders or entered manually at Amazon.

For more information on setting up custom alerts in your store, read the How to Work with Rules and How to Work with Email Templates guides.

Special Features

Email Notification CC

MCF sends shipment notifications to your customers. If you want to be CC'd on these emails, you can add your email address to your orders using NotificationEmailCC as checkout data. Set the value as your email address.

Checkout Data can be found in the upper right corner of the order page:

If you want to add this automatically, use a rule with any applicable filters for the specific orders where it should be added. 

The action in your rule should say NotificationEmailCC|email-address replacing the email address with your own:

Marketplace ID

When sending orders to MCF, the Marketplace ID of the shipping country on the order will be included with the data sent to MCF.

If you need to specify a different Marketplace ID for the order, you can set checkout data called MARKETPLACE_ID and add the ID you need to send through in the value field:

If the value field is left blank for a MARKETPLACE_ID checkout data field, no Marketplace ID will be submitted with the order at all:

Checkout data can be set manually or automatically on your orders. See the Email Notification CC instructions above for how to set checkout data automatically with a rule.

Declared Value

The value of the products in an order is passed through to MCF in the declared value fields so they are in the same currency as the warehouse receiving the order. This may not always be the same currency as the original transaction.

This may not be an issue for your store unless your customer will be charged customs fees. If you need to ensure an approximate currency adjustment to account for exchange rate, set a checkout data field called DECLARED_VALUE_MULTIPLIER on the order. The declared value of each line item will be multiplied by this number.

If you would like to explicitly set the currency code, set checkout data on the order with a name of DECLARED_VALUE_CURRENCY.

If you are experiencing issues and would like to disallow the currency declarations completely, set a checkout data name of SKIP_DECLARED_VALUE with a value of 1:

See the Email Notification CC instructions above for how to set checkout data on orders automatically with a rule.

Packing Slip Notes

Amazon MCF includes a section for notes that should be included on a packing slip:

To pass information into this field from Order Desk, use  OrderComment as checkout data on the order. Whatever is entered as the value will pass into MCF in this field.

Replace source_id

If you need to replace the source_id for an order, you can set  DisplayableOrderID as checkout data to add a different value. If left blank, source_id will be used by default.

Click through to the next guide in the MCF series: Common MCF Errors.