As Prime Day approaches, Amazon says they are doing this to “make more room for your products.” A prompt has been sent to seller central account holders asking them to choose not to have their aged inventory automatically removed.
What is that update? & How does it work?
Amazon announces an update on 15 march 2022, that they will remove automatically aged inventory from their fulfillment center with the following conditions.
• The stock has been in fulfillment centers for more than 365 days and is subject to long-term storage fees.
• ASINs that haven’t sold any unit in 6 months or more and have been in fulfillment centers for more than 180 days.
If you don’t want to be automatically removed from the fulfillment center then you have to pay long-term storage fees if your stock reaches 365 days in the fulfillment center.
Sometimes people buy products at a good price if they buy a high number of units.
It is common for Chinese suppliers to offer Amazon sellers a discount for purchasing inventory in bulk. For example, if a seller intends to buy 1000 units, they will provide a quotation for 5000 units at a 20% discount. So many sellers do this for the sake of a discount and buy large quantities of inventory without first analyzing market demand, resulting in aged inventory and Amazon charging them long storage fees.
So, we usually create a removal order to avoid Amazon’s long-term storage fee, but with this update, Amazon will enable option automatically that if you provided your right address. Amazon will create a removal order for your aged inventory, and if you do not provide your right address and will dispose of your stock automatically if you do not disable it from the backend.
How to enable and disable that feature?
Depending on your inventory strategy, you may choose to enable or disable these parameters.
Enable:
By choosing Enable, you instruct Amazon to take your outdated inventory out of their fulfillment facilities.
Amazon will ask if you wish to return or discard your inventory after enabling these settings. A valid return address must be entered if you select return. Without a return address, Amazon will dispose your inventory.
Disable:
If you Disable automated fulfillable inventory removal, Amazon won’t dispose your outdated stock, regardless of whether it sells or not or how long it’s been sitting in their warehouse, it’ll stay in their fulfillment centers and will charge you long-term storage fees.
Whatever choice you decide, you must act as soon as possible. These options are simple to update. That’s how you can enable or disable that setting in your account and make updates:
• Log into Seller Central.
• Click on Settings, then “Fulfillment by Amazon”.
• Scroll down to “Automated Fulfillable Inventory Settings”.
• Select Edit to change the settings as desired (Enable/Disable).
So, in a nutshell, sellers must have to make proper plan / research when they are replenishing inventory to Amazon and make sure to send only the number of units that can easily sell in that time period. Seller needs to do proper research before launching any product so that there would be less chances for the stock to become aged.
Automated Fulfillable Inventory Settings
Automated fulfillable inventory settings refer to the system of automatically managing inventory levels for products that are available for purchase and can be fulfilled. These settings allow businesses to streamline their operations by automating the process of updating inventory levels and notifying customers when items are out of stock.
When a product is added to a website or marketplace, the automated system will monitor the inventory levels and update them in real-time as sales are made. This ensures that the business always knows exactly how much inventory they have on hand, and can make informed decisions about when to reorder products.
In addition, automated fulfillable inventory settings can be set up to send notifications to customers when items are out of stock, or when their expected delivery date may be delayed due to inventory shortages. This helps to manage customer expectations and reduce the number of inquiries or complaints received by the business.
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