How dropship and Amazon POs differ from a standard PO
Most purchase orders (POs) bring stock into one of your own warehouses, where you receive it by hand. Two kinds of PO break that pattern:
- Dropship POs, where the supplier ships straight to your customer.
- Amazon FBA/AWD POs, where Amazon receives the goods on your behalf and reports the quantities back to SKU.io.
This page explains what makes a PO one of these types, why they behave differently, and what changes in the app.
- Dropship — the supplier ships the goods directly to your end customer; the stock never touches your own shelves.
- FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) — Amazon stores your inventory in its fulfillment centers and picks, packs, and ships customer orders for you.
- AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) — Amazon's bulk storage service that holds your inventory upstream and replenishes FBA as needed.
- FIFO (First In, First Out) — the cost method SKU.io uses to value stock: the oldest units in are the first units out. See How a PO becomes inventory.
- COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) — the recorded cost of the units you actually sold.
The destination decides the type
You never pick "dropship" or "Amazon" from a type menu. A PO's behavior is decided automatically by what it's linked to and where its stock is going:
- A PO becomes a dropship PO when it's linked to a sales order. It then ships to that sale's customer instead of into a warehouse.
- A PO becomes an Amazon FBA or Amazon AWD PO when its Destination is an Amazon FBA or AWD warehouse. (An ordinary supplier warehouse can never be a destination.)
Because the type is derived rather than chosen, everything downstream follows automatically — which action buttons appear, how receipt and shipment status are calculated, and which detail tabs show.
The three PO types at a glance
Here is how a standard PO, a dropship PO, and an Amazon PO differ across the questions that matter most.
| Standard PO | Dropship PO | Amazon FBA / AWD PO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the stock goes | Into one of your own warehouses | Straight to your customer's address — never onto your shelves | Into an Amazon FBA or AWD warehouse; Amazon holds it |
| What links it | Nothing special — a plain PO | A linked sales order and its customer | A Destination set to an FBA or AWD warehouse |
| How it's received | You click Receive and count units in | It's never received — nothing enters your stock | Amazon takes physical receipt; quantities come from Amazon's own records |
| What drives its status | Units you receive by hand | A standing Dropship receipt state, plus a shipment to the customer | Quantities Amazon reports back as it processes the inbound |
| Does it create FIFO layers / COGS? | Yes — receipt builds FIFO cost layers | No — stock never enters a warehouse | Yes — Amazon-held stock is costed through a separate Amazon FIFO layer system, not your standard warehouse FIFO layers |
| When it closes | When fully received (and invoiced) | When the PO is fully invoiced | Automatically, once Amazon reports it fully received |
| Header badge | None | Dropship badge | FBA or AWD badge with an Amazon accent |
The rest of this page walks through the dropship and Amazon columns in detail.
Dropship purchase orders
A dropship PO exists to fulfill one specific sales order without the goods ever touching your shelves. SKU.io marks a PO as a dropship whenever it carries a linked sales order (and that sale's customer) — usually created from the sales order's Dropship action. The PO header shows a Dropship badge so you can tell it apart at a glance.
Where the stock goes
The ship-to destination is the customer's address, not a warehouse. Because inventory never enters your own stock, a dropship PO deliberately skips every part of the standard flow that moves inventory:
- It has no Receive action. Instead, its receipt status is reported as Dropship — a standing state, not a count of units received.
- The Movements, FIFO Layers, and Adjustments tabs are hidden. No FIFO cost layers or inventory movements are created, because nothing is being added to a warehouse. (For what those tabs do on a normal PO, see How a PO becomes inventory.)
- The receipt-style tab is relabeled Dropship Shipments.
From submission to close
A dropship PO moves through its own short lifecycle:
- Submission is opt-in per supplier. Approving a dropship PO submits it to the supplier automatically only when that supplier has Auto-submit dropship PO enabled. Otherwise the PO is approved but held for you to submit by hand — nothing is sent to the supplier without your say-so.
- Shipping fulfills the sale. Click Ship on the PO, enter the carrier tracking number in the Ship Dropship Order dialog, and confirm. This sets the shipment status to Shipped to Customer and fulfills the linked sales order in one step.
- Invoicing closes it. Once a dropship PO is fully invoiced, its order status moves to Closed automatically. There is no warehouse receipt to trigger the close, so the invoice does it instead.
What you'll see: after you confirm the Ship Dropship Order dialog, the shipment status flips to Shipped to Customer, the linked sales order shows as fulfilled, and — once its invoice is recorded — the PO's order status reads Closed.
On a standard PO, receiving the last unit is what finishes the order. A dropship PO is never received, so that trigger doesn't exist. Instead, being fully invoiced is the signal that the PO is complete — see Invoicing and the 3-way match.
Deleting a dropship PO
Deleting a dropship PO unwinds its link to the sale: SKU.io recalculates the linked sales order's fulfillment status so the sale no longer counts the removed PO as its dropship source.
The usual PO deletion guards still apply. A dropship PO that already has supplier invoices, or receipts that have already been consumed, can't be deleted — delete is blocked to protect those financial and inventory records.
Amazon FBA and AWD purchase orders
When a PO's destination is an Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) warehouse, Amazon — not your team — takes physical receipt of the goods. SKU.io can't watch a receiving dock it doesn't control, so these POs are received through Amazon's own records instead of the standard receiving screen.
The PO header carries an Amazon accent and an FBA or AWD badge, and the detail page adds an Amazon FBA or Amazon AWD tab.
"Mark as Shipped" replaces "Receive"
Amazon POs have no manual Receive action. Instead, once the PO is open, a Mark as Shipped button records a pending inbound — SKU.io's placeholder for a shipment that's on its way to Amazon and awaiting confirmation.
| Type | How it's marked shipped | How it's received |
|---|---|---|
| AWD | Creates the pending inbound directly | Received through AWD Ledger uploads, not in SKU.io. The Receive control is disabled and points you to the AWD Ledger. |
| FBA | Requires a linked Amazon inbound shipment and its integration instance before you can mark it shipped | Received through Amazon's inbound processing; quantities flow back to SKU.io automatically |
Here a ledger simply means Amazon's running record of quantities it has received against a shipment — the equivalent of a receiving log, kept on Amazon's side.
SKU.io refuses the action if:
- The PO's destination isn't actually an FBA or AWD warehouse.
- An FBA PO has no linked Amazon inbound shipment.
- The PO already has a pending inbound — it has already been marked shipped.
Received quantity comes from Amazon, not a manual count
This is the single most important difference to understand.
On a standard PO, the received quantity is whatever your team counted in. On an FBA or AWD PO, the received quantity is whatever Amazon reports as it processes your shipment. SKU.io reads those quantities from Amazon's ledger and uses them to drive the PO's receipt status:
| Receipt status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Unreceived | Amazon hasn't yet reported receiving any units |
| Partially received | Amazon has reported some, but not all, units |
| Received | Amazon has reported the full ordered quantity |
Once Amazon reports the PO fully received, it auto-closes — no one on your team clicks Receive. Because the numbers come from Amazon, an Amazon PO's received quantity can climb over several days as Amazon works through the inbound.
A worked example
Say you send Amazon a PO for 200 units at $6.00 each into an FBA warehouse.
- You click Mark as Shipped and link the Amazon inbound shipment. The PO reads Unreceived — Amazon has the shipment but hasn't checked anything in yet.
- Two days later Amazon reports 150 units received. The PO now reads Partially received, and the received quantity on screen shows 150 — even though nobody in your warehouse touched it.
- A day later Amazon reports the final 50 units. The received quantity reaches 200 of 200, the status flips to Received, and the PO closes automatically.
At no point did your team receive stock by hand — the numbers tracked Amazon's progress on their own.
Units held by Amazon are incoming/Amazon-held inventory, not on-hand stock in a warehouse you pick and pack from yourself — so receiving on an Amazon PO doesn't add units to your own shelves. That's a warehouse distinction, not a cost one: Amazon-held stock is still valued through a separate Amazon FIFO layer system, so those 200 units at $6.00 each carry a cost basis and generate cost of goods when they sell.
FNSKUs and the Amazon tab
FBA lines carry an FNSKU (Fulfillment Network SKU) — Amazon's own barcode for the item — alongside the product's regular SKU. The FNSKU is shown only for FBA-destination POs.
The Amazon FBA / AWD tab is the reconciliation view for the whole inbound — that is, where you line up what you shipped against what Amazon actually recorded:
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Pending Inbound Details | The shipment's status, shipped date, and Amazon shipment ID |
| Per-Line Inbound Tracking | Shipped, received, and pending quantities for each line |
| Ledger Receipts | The individual receipt entries from Amazon, each flagged reconciled or not |
| Orphaned Receipts | Amazon receipts that couldn't be matched to any PO line — so you can spot FNSKUs that arrived without a matching order line |
| Inbound Shortage (FBA) | Any shortfall Amazon reported against what you shipped |
An orphaned receipt is a unit Amazon received that SKU.io couldn't tie back to a PO line — usually a FNSKU that arrived without a matching order. Checking this section keeps Amazon-held quantities and your POs in agreement.
Line editing locks once a shipment is linked
Once an Amazon inbound shipment is linked to an FBA PO, its product lines are locked. The detail page shows a banner explaining that editing is restricted because the PO has an associated Amazon shipment, and any attempt to change a product line is rejected.
This protects the match between what you told Amazon to expect and what Amazon later reports against it. Header-level and other non-product edits are still allowed.
To change quantities or products on a locked FBA PO, you would need to unwind the Amazon shipment link first. Header details (dates, notes, and similar) remain editable.
Next steps
- Ship dropship POs and mark Amazon POs as shipped — the step-by-step guide.
- How purchase order status works — how the receipt and shipment dimensions produce the Dropship and Shipped to Customer states.
- Purchase order status reference — every status value and what it means.
- How a PO becomes inventory — the standard receipt → FIFO → COGS path that dropship and Amazon POs bypass.
- Invoicing and the 3-way match — invoicing, which is what closes a fully invoiced dropship PO.
- Purchase orders overview