Regional Settings - NARF, Pan EU, EFN and Custom Regions

A regional grouping in SoStocked means we are de-duplicating inventory levels as reported by Amazon, from multiple marketplaces into one group. The most common regional group is NAm or North America. This regional grouping will take the reported inventory from US, CA and MX and de-duplicate them into one inventory level and one single forecast. This is for products or accounts enrolled in the North America Remote Fulfillment (NARF) program.

Another common regional grouping is EU-B or Europe minus UK. Amazon refers to this as the Pan-EU program. Sometimes sellers are enrolled in the European Fulfillment Network (EFN). The regional grouping for that would be EU, where all EU countries are combined along with the UK.

How Regional Groupings Work:

Europe and UK Regional Groupings:

EU API reports default to the "Per Country" numbers. This is a much more accurate report than the "Available + Reserved" report that is used for North America. Since EU inventory is moving around from country to country on a regular basis, we highly recommend that you DO NOT use "Available + Reserved" reports in Europe. The reason is, that Amazon occasionally reports inventory as "Available" in one European country that is not available in another country. And that makes the de-duplication algorithm add these two numbers together. This could give you a false picture of your EU inventory. Whereas with the "Per Country" report, we merely add up everything from all countries directly from the API reports.

In this video, we will show you how to group by EU or EU-B. In short, EU should be used for the EFN program. And EU-B should be used for the Pan-EU program.

Edit Regional Groupings in Bulk from the Inventory Page

You can now edit (add or remove) regional groupings for a select number of products from the inventory page. NOTE: For custom regional groupings you will need to create the region within any product detail page first, save it, and then you can use the bulk actions drop-down from the Inventory page to assign them.

What Are Regional Settings?

When it comes to Amazon FBA inventory, a "marketplace" typically means a country where Amazon allows you to sell your products. The US is a marketplace, Canada is a marketplace, the UK, Germany, France, etc. are all marketplaces.

The SoStocked default setting to view inventory levels is by marketplace because Amazon's API sends information on a marketplace-by-marketplace level.

A region is a group of marketplaces. Two common examples of "regions" are North America and Europe. Each region is made up of multiple countries.

Recently, since Brexit, the UK has exited the European Union. The regional grouping for this setup, if you are selling in the UK and also in EU is usually "EU-B", also known as Pan-EU.

Double-Counting Inventory

Amazon's API sends information by marketplace, not by region. For example, if you are selling in the US, Canada, and Mexico, but all of your inventory is stored in the USA only (North American Remote Fulfillment program or NARF), Amazon's API will report 3 separate inventory levels, one for each marketplace.

In this example, the API is reporting the SAME INVENTORY 3 times, because technically that inventory is "available" in each of those 3 marketplaces. So we programmed in some fancy logic inside of SoStocked which will match up identical or near-identical inventory levels (within a small margin) and count it as the same inventory.

How to Save Regional Groupings

If you don't need to see all of these marketplace "available inventory" levels, the solution is to group the entire region as North America, vs each individual marketplace. The exception would be if you are actually sending SEPARATE inventory to each marketplace. Then we want to see those numbers separated. The same applies to EU, UK, etc.

To group by region, simply go to your Inventory page, select any product by clicking on it. Once inside the product settings, you'll see the Regional Settings. Area. Select the region to group by and save. You can also save to all active products.

To separate Pan-EU, for example, simply de-select the "Group by EU" option and check the "Group by EU-B" option. This removes the warehouse inventory from those UK countries from the EU inventory counts and now counts them separately.

Use Available & Reserved Inventory

If you are selling in the North American region, Amazon only allows you to view "Available & Reserved Inventory". The "Use Per Country Inventory" is a report that is only available in the UK and EU marketplaces, due to their smaller countries. If you are setting up regional grouping for the UK and EU, please select the "Use Per Country Inventory" option, as it will give you more accurate inventory counts.

Setting up Custom Regions

North America and UK+Europe are obvious examples of regional groupings. But occasionally a seller may want to make a custom grouping, based on where their inventory is physically stored in FBA fulfillment warehouses.

Start on the inventory page. Then select the specific product you're working on. From that product, scroll down to the Regional Settings section.

Create a new group by clicking the "Group by" box and giving it a name. For example, "EU B". Then select which countries you would like to include in this "EU B" grouping. Now you can toggle between "Use Available & Reserved" and "Use Per Country Inventory". Again, if you are setting up regional grouping for the UK and EU, please select the "Use Per Country Inventory" option, as it will give you more accurate inventory counts.

Forecasts

These grouping settings will help you to see your true inventory levels, and also better forecast your purchase orders and warehouse transfers. Now moving forward, you can update your filter settings to make sure they reflect these new groupings as well. i.e., dashboard views, etc.