When running Amazon, managing inventory is a daily job for sellers. Checking whether there is overstocking often can avoid unnecessary storage costs and inventory performance problems.

What is stranded inventory

Products stored in Amazon’s logistics center are classified as “stranded inventory” if they are not available for sale (inactive offer). And Amazon will continue to charge you monthly for inventory storage.

If you don’t regularly check whether there is a hold up inventory problem, you may have to bear a variety of expensive costs, including monthly inventory storage costs, FBA long-term storage costs, and excess costs.

Holding up inventory can also have a negative impact on your IPI. IPI is Amazon’s system to ensure sellers have optimized inventory. Stranded inventory takes up the space of Amazon’s FBA, which Amazon doesn’t want to see.

According to the notice issued by Amazon, from August 16 to the end of this year, if your IPI score is less than 500, the storage space will be limited.

Causes of inventory retention

There are many reasons for inventory retention, the most common ones include:

1. Pricing error

If the price is too high or too low, Amazon will block your listing. This problem is relatively easy to solve, as long as the minimum and maximum prices can be set in the managed inventory.

2. Listing is frozen

When listing lacks necessary information, such as pictures, bullet points, etc., or too many product returns, listing will be frozen.

3. Listing error

Listing error refers to that the inventory does not match the existing active asin, such as the product sent to the FBA warehouse does not match the listing, or the listing is deleted. Re publishing can solve this problem. In some cases, you may need to contact seller support.

4. Product expired

If the product is out of date, Amazon marks it as held in stock, in which case the inventory needs to be removed.

How to find stranded inventory

The seller can check whether there is stranded inventory at the Manage Inventory in the seller central.

If there is stranded inventory, fix stranded inventory appears at the top.

Click to enter the page, you can see the stranded inventory and the reasons for the inventory retention.

As shown in the figure above, the reason for inventory retention is listing error, and the solution proposed by Amazon is to remove inventory. What if you don’t want to remove inventory?

Amazon also offers another solution to contact seller support. The operation process of contacting the seller for support is as follows:

1. Click Help in the seller central, and then select get support under need more help:

2. In what service can we help you with?, select selling on Amazon > fulfillment by Amazon > investigate other FBA issues > stranded inventory or FBA no listing error.

3. Finally, enter asin or fnscu and click next. Amazon will tell you how to solve it.

4. If you still can’t solve the problem, you can click need more help with this issue? Contact us to contact the seller support team in the United States. It is recommended that the seller check the inventory once a week.

New regulations on inventory retention

To prevent Amazon from automatically removing inventory, the seller needs to click to enter fix stranded inventory, and then click the edit automatic action settings button:

Click in and there are two options:

·Automatic fixes – Amazon will automatically re publish inventory.

·Automatic removal – Amazon will automatically remove inventory.

There are four reasons for Amazon to automatically re publish inventory:

·Listing is closed;

·Stop production;

·Listing is closed and inventory is wrong;

·FBA listing is changed to FBM.

Even if the seller doesn’t take action within 30 days, Amazon will automatically re publish listing.

In the second option, Amazon’s default setting is to automatically remove inventory:

The seller can change the settings and choose to send back the product. If you don’t change the settings, you may lose a lot.

How to prevent stranded inventory

The seller can take the following measures to prevent inventory retention:

1. Before shipping to the FBA, do some research first, and make sure that Amazon allows products to be put on the shelves, especially those drop shipping sellers, before purchasing inventory.

2. Fill in the listing information before delivery, which helps to prevent listing errors. When creating a new listing for the first time, Amazon allows sellers to skip adding images, product features, and so on. However, before the inventory is sent to FBA, the seller must add complete information, otherwise the product is likely to become stranded inventory.

3. Another possible cause of inventory retention is that the inventory received by the FBA warehouse exceeds the quantity filled in by the seller’s delivery plan, or the delivered products are not in the delivery plan. When creating an FBA shipment, be sure to fill in the information accurately.

4. The price should not be higher or lower than the set maximum price and minimum price. Some sellers set the maximum price and minimum price for their products in the inventory management. If the seller’s price is lower than or higher than the set price, listing will be disabled.

5. Don’t delete your listing right now. If your inventory is sold out and you don’t plan to replenish it, don’t delete the product from the managed inventory immediately. Any potential inventory loss or customer return will become stranded inventory because there is no listing.