FBA Inventory Age
The FBA Inventory Age view gives you information regarding the age of your units in FBA. This page shows you the number of units in each age group, the number of units that will be subject to the long-term storage fee (LTSF) on the next charge date, and the estimated LTSF amount for those units (assuming no further sales). The view also shows your recent sales performance for each SKU and identifies opportunities for you to increase traffic or sales conversion to help sell through your aged inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is inventory age determined?
Inventory age is based on the number of days a unit is in a fulfillment center. FBA accounts for inventory on a first-in-first-out basis across our entire fulfillment network. This means that each sale or removal will be applied to the inventory that has been in our fulfillment network the longest, regardless of which physical unit was actually shipped or removed.
Which products are shown in the Inventory Age view?
Any product that has at least 1 unit available for sale in FBA is shown in the Inventory Age view.
What is the long-term storage fee (LTSF)?
Inventory that has been in a fulfillment center for 365 days or more is subject to a long-term. The LTSF is assessed on the 15th of each month. The Inventory Age page shows your LTSF-eligible units and the estimated LTSF amount as of the next charge date, assuming no further sales.
How should I use this page to manage aged inventory?
Our goal is to help you easily identify aged inventory that may incur long-term storage fees and provide recommended actions aimed at helping you better manage the investment return on your inventory. In some cases, the recommendation may be to remove units from your inventory, in other instances, we may not recommend any action if your inventory levels are not in excess. Select Improve Recommendation in the drop-down menu to ensure we have accurate information for these SKUs. Several factors influence our recommendations:
- Quality alert – Indicates that the listing may be incomplete or incorrect. Customers search and browse the Amazon catalog using specific product details. If your listing information is incomplete or incorrect, it becomes more difficult for buyers to find, evaluate, and purchase your inventory. Clicking Edit Listing will allow you to edit the listing and fix quality issues.
- Low traffic – Indicates that a low number of potential buyers have seen the listings. Use the Improve Keywords feature in the actions list to optimize how your listing appears in searches. The Advertise Listing feature allows you to advertise through Sponsored Products to drive additional traffic to your listing.
- Low conversion – Indicates that potential buyers are viewing the listing but do not follow through and purchase the product. Ensuring a high quality detail page through the Edit Listing feature and pricing competitively through Create Sale or Lower Price helps improve conversion rates. In some cases, due to low demand, we may recommend removing some of the inventory if removal is more cost effective than incurring storage fees.
Demand and Sell-through
In addition to the alerts, you can also view how many units of a product have been sold over the last 7, 30, 60, and 90 days by hovering over a product’s Units Sold column. The Sell-through column allows you to see your sales divided by the average number of units available at fulfillment centers during the past 90 days. If you find that you have items that you’d like to remove from your inventory, click Create removal order from the action menu.
In your Inventory Settings, you can enter details about your inventory cost structure to help us to make better recommendations. These settings include:
- Cost of purchase – The cost of your products as a percentage of their current selling price. The default value is 50%. You can also enter unit cost at the SKU-level for more accurate recommendations.
- Cost of capital – The minimum return you want to earn on your inventory. The typical range is 0-25%. The default is 15%.
- Recovery rate – The expected recovery as a percentage of the cost if you removed your inventory from Amazon and sold the inventory on your own. The recovery rate should refer to all of your inventory, not a single unit. For example, if there are 5 units of a SKU, and you can recover 50% on all units through liquidation, then the input should be 50%. However, if you can only recover 50% of 3 units and 0% for 2 units, the input should be 30%. The default is 30%. If you do not have a set channel to recover costs through, like a buy-back contract with your supplier, we suggest you set this value to 0%.
What if I want to use different inputs to identify potentially excess inventory?
You can set your own unit cost and recovery rate per SKU by selecting Improve Recommendations in the drop-down menu. You can make changes to your default settings by clicking the Inventory Settings link. After making changes, please allow up to 24 hours for the changes to be reflected in your recommendations.
How can I provide feedback about the Inventory Age view?
Your feedback is important for helping us improve our inventory management tools. If you think there may be an opportunity for improvement, please provide us feedback in one of the following ways:
- Rate the page using the Tell us how we're doing link on the Inventory Age view
- Email inventoryplanning@amazon.com
Glossary of Terms
Available quantity
The number of units that are available for fulfillment through FBA.
Cubic meters (m3)
The volume in cubic meters that the ASIN is taking up in Amazon fulfillment centers. Available units x volume per unit = cubic meters.
Storage type
Category of the product for which storage limits are set.
Inventory age (days)
Shows a breakdown of your FBA units by age group. We separate your units into the following age groups: 0 – 90 days, 91 – 180 days, 181 – 270 days, 271 – 365 days, and 365+ days.
Low conversion (yellow alert icon)
An alert that indicates that fewer buyers are purchasing the product after viewing the listing relative to other listings in the same category.
Low traffic (yellow alert icon)
An alert that indicates that the ASIN listing has a low number of viewers compared to other ASINs in the same category.
FBA sell-through
The rate at which your units sold and shipped over the past 90 days divided by the average inventory available at fulfillment centers during that time period. Tracking your sell-through rate can help you determine whether you need to take action to improve traffic or conversion for your products.
Recommended sales price (Create sale)
Sales price recommended to help you sell through your inventory based on your current inventory settings. This value may be different from the lowest price or Buy Box price. We recommend that you keep your product at this price until you have sold through your excess inventory.
Recommended sale duration (Create sale)
If a sale is recommended, this is the estimated sale duration in days that would likely help you sell through your excess inventory.
Recommended removal quantity (Create removal order)
Estimated quantity of inventory that would likely benefit from removal instead of being charged storage fees.
For a more detailed analysis of your FBA inventory age, you can download the full report as a .txt file by selecting the Download Report button in the upper left of the page.
