Reports - Low-Inventory-Level Fees
As of April 1st, 2024, Amazon is charging its Low Inventory FBA fee. This fee is a per-unit fulfillment fee based on your 90 historical days of supply at FBA and your 30 historical days of supply at FBA. If both your 90 and 30 days of supply fall below the 28-day threshold, Amazon will charge an additional fulfillment fee for each item sold and shipped while this inventory is below 28 days of supply. You can avoid falling below this threshold by consistently keeping enough inventory in stock at FBA.
This first video explains how SoStocked's new Low Inventory Fees dashboard works, how to read it and what actions to take when your products appear in that dashboard. The second video is a more in-depth webinar training on Amazon fees. In that video, Chelsea teaches about Amazon's low inventory fees, how they are calculated, and the fee structure. Make sure to watch both videos to fully understand these fees and their impact.
The most important thing you can do to prevent these fees from occurring in the future is to always make sure you have at least 35 days of buffer stock at FBA. You can adjust your forecast settings in SoStocked to help you with this. If you haven't watched the Buffer Stock tutorial, you may want to do so now.
PARENT VS. CHILD VARIATIONS
The low inventory fees are calculated at a parent-level, meaning the average combined days of supply for all child variations of that parent listing combined. Since parent ASINs are merely placeholders and don't make sales themselves, Amazon takes the average of all variations to determine the days of supply and thus the 28-day threshold. Example: If I am selling a Garlic Press that has 4 variations and each of the 4 variations has its own 90-day average and 30-day average days of supply. Let's say my stainless steel variation has a combined average of 42 days of supply. But my black variation has only 10 days of supply. And my other two have 5 and 7 days respectively. Amazon will average all of these to get a combined days of supply of around 16 days of supply. 16 is under the 28 day threshold so all 4 of these ASINs will be eligible for the low inventory fees, even though my stainless steel model actually has 42 days of supply. The solution of course is to get the low-level variations well over that 28-day threshold to get your average back up.
HOW THE DASHBOARD WORKS
AMAZON FEES WEBINAR (March 28, 2024)
NOTE: The Low Inventory Fees section starts at the 1:01:30 mark
Important tip
When creating a new parent listing, be sure to enroll it in the FBA New Selection program which will waive any Low Inventory fees for the first 180 days after inventory checks in. See point #3 below.
Here are all the guidelines on what FBA inventory will be exempt from Low-Inventory-Level fees.
The low-inventory-level fee won’t apply to the following:
1) Non-standard size products.
2) New Professional sellers, for the first 365 days after the first inventory-received date.
3) New-to-FBA parent products for the first 180 days after the first inventory-received date. You must be enrolled in FBA New Selection to receive this benefit.
4) Products that are auto-replenished by Amazon Warehousing and Distribution.
5) The low-inventory-level fee will not apply to products that have sold less than 20 units in the past 7 days.
Fulfillment Fee Discount Programs
Ships in Product Packaging (SIPP)
Related references:
Pan-EU Low Inventory Fee Policy