
Is Your Inventory Out to Sea?
February 26th, 2021 Posted by Jenna Olischar 3rd party sellers, Amazon, Brand Management, MAP, Seller Central 0 thoughts on “Is Your Inventory Out to Sea?”Last week we discussed the issues and annoyances of suppressed listings. Though, if you are selling through Amazon FBA there is another label you are probably familiar with. That being, “stranded inventory.” This has more to do with keeping track of your company’s inventory, making sure it is accounted for, and how it’s performing. FBA inventory issues can include stranded listings and unfulfillable listings. They both can cost you extra fees but are caused and dealt with differently.
Unfulfillable inventory can have you racking up bills after each mid-month inventory cleanup until the issues are addressed and fixed. Stranded inventory can result in charges on your inventory such as monthly storage fees, overage fees, and long-term storage fees until the issues with the listing are resolved. The fix to stranded inventory is making your listing active again then relisting it.
Relisting your products is an imperative thing to remember, offers are not reactivated by default so sellers must relist their units themselves. Amazon should notify you if and when your inventory becomes stranded, it is up to you to take action within 30 days of the notification. A recent change made on June 30, 2020, is that Amazon no longer just classifies stranded inventory as unsellable after 30 days, it will actually remove the inventory automatically if no actions are taken. Do not totally rely on those Amazon notifications, you should always be on top of your inventory and check for issues. Now we’ve discussed what the problem is and how it is caused, but not the solution.
Here is how you can repair stranded inventory:
- In Seller Central you can manage and fix individual stranded listings under the Inventory tab, you can also download a stranded inventory report to get a full overview of all affected listings.
- When going over individual stranded inventory you can edit the listing or remove the products altogether (Whether the product is sent back to you or disposed of you must pay removal order fees.)
After fixing whatever errors were affecting your listings you now have to relist them. Before you do you should first determine why what caused it to become inactive. Since this isn’t always clear cut you can go through these 5 points on this to-do list one-by-one:
If you don’t want to do all of that manually there are automatic relisting options. Sellers can use the “edit automatic action settings” option while fixing stranded inventory. This tool lets you instruct Amazon to relist your products automatically. If there is an issue with your listing you can choose to auto-relist 1-30 days after the issue with the listing is fixed.
Do you or your company often find yourself going over stranded inventory while neglecting other tasks? How badly does this issue affect your brand or company? Leave a comment and let us know about your Amazon experiences. As for us at Avalanche Industries, we have a team that looks over and keeps track of all of our client’s inventory. We take on the hassle that comes with selling on Amazon and let our clients focus on other important tasks. If your company or brand is struggling to keep track of these things you can always contact us here to see how we can help out.