Managing inventory is a very important skill for FBA sellers. Effective inventory management can greatly improve your delivery efficiency, save time, and improve the user’s shopping experience. It also affects the seller’s inventory performance indicators.

Frozen inventory is a problem that FBA sellers often encounter in inventory management. Retained inventory refers to those stocks that have been stored in the Amazon FBA center without flow. Let’s first talk about the circumstances that will cause inventory retention. ‍

• Stranded inventory

Some buyers may confuse the difference between unfulfillable inventory and stranded inventory. In fact, the difference between the two mainly lies in the listing status of the product.

Unfulfillable inventory means that the listing is active and effective, but the product may not be delivered due to damage, misplacement, or missing parts during transportation. In addition, incorrect listings and inadequate labeling will also cause inventory to fail to fulfill distribution, which will cause huge losses to sellers.

Retained inventory is the opposite, mainly due to listing reasons such as withdrawn, incomplete, or inactive products that cannot be sold.

In both cases, Amazon will continue to charge inventory fees, resulting in sellers eventually paying high inventory fees, including monthly storage fees and long-term storage fees.

• Common causes of stranded inventory

There are many situations that can cause stranded inventory. The first is the price error. For example, when the seller adjusts the price, it exceeds or falls below the maximum and minimum sales prices, which will cause the product to fail to sell.

Then when the product is sent to the warehouse, the listing is not created yet. Or the listing is deleted by mistake or maliciously deleted by a competitor. If there are still products in the warehouse, the inventory will be left behind.

Another common reason for inventory retention is that listings are frozen. It takes a little time for sellers to resolve the re-listing of listings, and it is worth noting that listings will not be automatically reactivated after the problem is resolved, and the sellers need to re-publish themselves.

• How to solve the problem of stranded inventory

The Amazon backend provides sellers with a stock inventory report. First login to Seller Center, then click Manage Inventory under Inventory, and then find Fix Stranded Inventory. On this page, you can see a form through which you can edit or remove stranded products.

It is recommended that sellers bookmark this page and check it once a week.

To remove stranded inventory, click the drop-down menu in the Action field, then click the option to Create Removal Order. Whether you return the product or give it to Amazon, you will pay the removal order fee. Wait for the form to refresh after you finish.

Sometimes you will also see the option to change to FBA (Change to Fulfilled by Amazon). This may be because you selected the MFN (self-delivery) product delivery by mistake when creating the FBA inventory. After clicking this option, you can Resume shipping to FBA.

To republish stranded inventory, you must first understand what is preventing the product from being sold, and then fix it. If you really don’t know what the reason is, you can refer to the experience summarized by other sellers:

• • Modify product price
  • View inventory files and re-edit data such as quantity and status (Condition Notes)
  • Delete listing recreate
  • Contact seller support and ask them to help you with this
  • Re-listing (uploaded in Add Products in Inventory)

• How to automatically re-post stranded inventory

Automatic re-listing of stranded inventory is simple. Amazon FBA sellers can find the Edit automatic action settings option in the upper right corner of the Fix Stranded Inventory page. This tool:

Can automatically relist your product. For example, the listing is turned off, or the product is discontinued, or the product information is incorrect.
It can also automatically correct the shipping method, changing from self-delivery to FBA.