How does ShipStation integrate BigCommerce with Amazon or eBay?

How to manage orders which originated in eBay or Amazon when your listings are managed by BigCommerce.

If you list your BigCommerce products for sale on Amazon, eBay, or both, and you use BigCommerce for your order and inventory management, you can still use ShipStation to create labels and notify your selling channels of your shipments.

ShipStation has two methods to handle this:

  • Method A: BigCommerce as Order Source

  • Method B: Amazon and/or eBay as Order Source

New BigCommerce Integration

The new BigCommerce Integration does not support Method B as an option to connect Amazon and eBay to ShipStation.

For details about how this works in BigCommerce, please review the BigCommerce resources about connecting Amazon and eBay to BigCommerce.

Method A: BigCommerce as Order Source

If all of your Amazon or eBay orders import into your BigCommerce account, then one method to handle those orders is to connect ShipStation to only the BigCommerce store. For help connecting your BigCommerce store, please review our BigCommerce article.

When using this method, orders will flow from Amazon and eBay into BigCommerce, then ShipStation will import all orders from BigCommerce into your ShipStation account.

Flowchart showing how orders import from order sources to BigCommerce to ShipStation

When you create a shipment in ShipStation, ShipStation will notify BigCommerce, who will then notify Amazon and eBay with the shipment details.

For this method, you do not need to connect your Amazon or eBay accounts to ShipStation. All orders will import to ShipStation via the BigCommerce connection, and ShipStation will send all shipment notification details back to BigCommerce.

Please be aware of the following limitations when using this method:

  • All Amazon and eBay orders must flow through BigCommerce. If you have listings or items not linked to BigCommerce, those orders will not import into ShipStation.

  • Orders qualified for the Seller Fulfilled Prime program cannot use the Amazon Buy Shipping carrier when imported through BigCommerce. Please review the Seller Fulfilled Prime section of the Amazon Marketplace article for more information.

Method B: Amazon and/or eBay as Order Source

If for any reason you need to process Amazon or eBay orders independently of BigCommerce, use the method described here. You will still connect BigCommerce to ShipStation, but you will also connect your Amazon and eBay stores to ShipStation.

Flowchart showing how orders can import from order sources into BigCommerce and into ShipStation

When you're ready to ship orders in ShipStation, you will import orders from the Amazon or eBay stores first, then import orders from the BigCommerce store.

When ShipStation imports orders from BigCommerce, ShipStation will check the newly imported BigCommerce orders against the existing Amazon and eBay orders in your account. If any orders match, ShipStation will hide the corresponding BigCommerce orders so you'll only see the Amazon and eBay version of the orders. This will prevent you from shipping the same order twice.

When you ship the Amazon or eBay orders, ShipStation will send a shipment update to Amazon and eBay, then will also send an update to BigCommerce for the matching hidden order. That way, both the order's true source and BigCommerce will update with the shipment details.

Warning

Since ShipStation checks and hides orders from BigCommerce by comparing them to existing orders, updating the BigCommerce store before Amazon or eBay may result in duplicate orders. If this happens, you can cancel the BigCommerce version of these duplicate orders in ShipStation to remove them from the Awaiting Shipment view.

If you find yourself with many duplicate orders, you can create a Do Not Import automation rule to prevent these orders from appearing in ShipStation and removing the need to manually cancel them each time.

Here's an example of how that would look:

ShipStation Automation Rule set to not import Amazon or eBay orders from BigCommerce

Criteria:

  • Marketplace :: Equals :: BigCommerce

  • Source :: Equals :: eBay, Amazon

Action:

  • Don't Import the Order

If you do not want ShipStation to notify BigCommerce when you create a shipment for your Amazon and eBay orders, please contact the ShipStation User Success team. We will disable the notification process to BigCommerce for matching Amazon or eBay orders. When this process is disabled, ShipStation will import all BigCommerce orders, regardless of the source. Thus, the above Do-Not-Import rule may be helpful to avoid duplicates.