Part 1: Overview of Upcoming Amazon Storage Fees – 1: 2/1/18
It’s that time of the year again. There are two fees coming in February, ones that Amazon Sellers have become all too familiar with. The next Bi-Annual Inventory Cleanup is scheduled for February 15th, 2018. Inventory that’s been in a U.S fulfillment center between 181 – 365 days will incur a $11.25 storage fee per cubic foot, and inventory that’s been in a fulfillment center for more than 365 days will incur a $22.50 storage fee per cubic foot. Ways to exempt yourself from FBA Storage Fees is to enable automated long-term storage removal or submit a removal request before February 15th. However, both of these remedies come with some not-so-desirable repercussions. If you submit a Removal Order before 2/15, you cannot send more units of that particular ASIN until July, 1, 2018. So, if you enabled automated long-term storage removals for your inventory, you probably won’t want to reorder that particular ASIN until it’s eligible again for Amazon warehousing.
If you are unsure how long your inventories been in an Amazon warehouse, you can use the Inventory Age and Inventory Health Reports for visual representation. Amazon buckets your products into 0-90, 91-180, 181-270, 271-365 and over 365 days.
Of course, the best solution for avoiding long-term storage fees is to not have stale inventory in the first place. You can achieve this by properly forecasting your future demand and inventory quantities. The revised approach allows you to keep plenty of fulfillable stock in FBA locations, but also keeps inventory turning. This can be a daunting task to handle by yourself, which is why a tool like ForecastRx can be invaluable to an Amazon FBA business. Its advanced algorithms handle demand forecasting and inventory planning, so you always orders the right product, in the right quantity, at the right time. Learn more about a few of the forecasting models that make it possible, here:
Note: Amazon accounts for inventory using a FIFO (first in first out) model.
