Amazon orders in Business Central: automate the order flow
Automate Amazon orders in Business Central. Get control of order import, SKU mapping, errors, FBA, FBM and automatic processing.
· 4 min read
How to automate Amazon orders in Business Central
Once Amazon starts generating more than a handful of orders a day, manual order processing quickly becomes a poor solution.
An employee has to check Amazon Seller Central, retrieve the order, find the item in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, check the delivery details and make sure the order moves on to the warehouse or to fulfilment.
That works. Until volume grows.
An Amazon order integration for Business Central makes it possible to let the order move automatically from Amazon to the ERP system and onward through the company’s existing order flow.
Amazon makes order information available through the Selling Partner API, and Amazon’s Orders API is specifically designed to retrieve order information and support order synchronisation. Amazon Developer Docs
But the technical ability to retrieve an order is only the easy part.
What is interesting is what has to happen to the order afterwards.
An Amazon order is not just a sales order
When Amazon sends an order, the integration has to decide how the information should be translated into the company’s structure in Business Central.
That can include, among other things:
- which customer account the order should be created on
- which Amazon marketplace the order originates from
- which currency should be used
- which Business Central item number an Amazon SKU corresponds to
- which location stock should be drawn from
- which dimensions should be set
- whether the order is FBA or FBM
- whether the order should move on to a WMS or 3PL
That is why a good order integration is not simply:
Amazon → Business Central
It is rather:
Amazon order → validation → mapping → business rules → Business Central → fulfilment
SKU mapping has to be in place
One of the most frequent causes of problems is that Amazon and Business Central do not use the same item keys.
Amazon works with seller SKUs and ASINs, while Business Central typically works with the company’s own item numbers.
If AMZ-BLACK-L on Amazon corresponds to 100542-BLK-L in Business Central, the integration needs to know that.
It becomes even more important with:
- variants
- multipacks
- bundles
- country-specific SKUs
- the same item on several marketplaces
We have written a separate guide on [Amazon SKU, ASIN and item numbers](/en/amazon-sku-asin-business-central/), because product mapping in itself deserves more than a couple of lines.
What happens if an order fails?
This is where the difference between simple data transfer and a reliable integration becomes clear.
Imagine that Amazon sends an order for a SKU that does not exist in Business Central.
The integration should not simply ignore the order.
There should be an option to:
- record the error
- show the cause
- prevent duplicates
- reprocess the order after it has been corrected
- notify the relevant people
The same applies to missing delivery data, unknown shipping methods or problems with Business Central.
On the Amazon side the APIs evolve continuously, while Microsoft offers both standard APIs and the option of custom API pages in Business Central. That is why the integration should be designed with monitoring and change in mind. Amazon Developer Docs
FBA and FBM orders do not necessarily have to be processed the same way
With FBA, Amazon handles fulfilment. The order will therefore typically be relevant to Business Central in connection with sales, stock movements, finance and reporting.
Read more about [Amazon FBA integration for Business Central](/en/amazon-fba-integration-business-central/).
With FBM, the company has to act on the order itself. Here the order often has to move on to the warehouse, WMS, shipping or a 3PL.
Read more about [Amazon FBM integration for Business Central](/en/amazon-fbm-integration-business-central/).
That is why it is important that the fulfilment method forms part of the order logic.
Example of an automated Amazon order flow
An FBM flow could for instance be:
Amazon → Connectify → Business Central → WMS → shipping → tracking → Amazon
Business Central receives the order and becomes the financial and administrative hub, while the warehouse and logistics systems handle the physical delivery.
With FBA the flow is different, because Amazon already handles the physical order.
The order import is not the most important thing
The most important question is not:
“Can we import Amazon orders?”
You can.
The relevant question is:
“Can Amazon orders become a natural part of our existing order flow without special handling?”
That is where the integration design creates value.
The less employees have to think about whether an order came from Amazon, the webshop or another channel, the more scalable the setup becomes.
FAQ
Can Amazon orders be created automatically in Business Central?
Yes. Order data can be retrieved from Amazon and created or processed in Business Central according to the company’s own rules.
How do you avoid duplicates?
The integration should store and check unique Amazon order numbers and have rules for reprocessing.
Can FBA and FBM orders be processed differently?
Yes. It is often necessary, because the fulfilment flow is significantly different.
Do Amazon orders need to reach Business Central without manual entry?
Connectify can help map the order flow and work out how Amazon can best become part of your existing Business Central setup.