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How to successfully manage your FBA business

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Save time and money by making sure you have an optimal level of inventory in our fulfilment centres. Learn more about tools and resources below.

Set up Automated Long-Term Storage Removals

We like to make sure we have plenty of room in our fulfilment centres for the products Amazon customers like to purchase. That's why, from 15th August 2019 onwards, we will perform inventory cleanups on monthly basis, at which time inventory Units that have been in our fulfilment centres for 12 months or longer will be assessed an upfront, monthly Long-Term Storage Fee.

By enabling the Automated Long-Term Storage Removals settings, you are requesting the removal (return or disposal) of Units affected by the next inventory cleanup. These settings apply to Units that would be subject to a Long-Term Storage fee on the next inventory cleanup date. When the removal order is submitted, we will send an automated e-mail notification with the removal order ID to the e-mail address you provide. Standard return and disposal fees will apply to the removals requested through this programme.

Avoid stranded inventory in Amazon fulfilment centres

In Optimising Your Listings, we told you where to go to fix failed listings and improve listing quality. It is important to make sure your listings are optimised to improve your sales. You also want to make sure your listings are visible otherwise you could have inventory sitting in our fulfilment centres without a valid offer on Amazon.co.uk. This inventory could remain stranded without an active listing if you don’t remember to optimise your listings for all the products you sell. Check to see if you have any listing to fix on Suppressed Listings page.

Reconcile inventory regularly

In order to reconcile your inventory month by month, you need as much visibility as possible into your inventory movements in and out of our fulfilment centres. FBA makes it easier with a series of inventory reports.

Pro Tip: View the entire 18-month history to help you gauge demand and make better inventory decisions about the upcoming months. This can be a great way to gauge seasonal inventory needs.

Amazon Marketplace Webservice

When you have a Professional seller account, you can use Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) free of charge to manage your online business on Amazon. Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is an integrated Web service API that helps Amazon sellers to programmatically exchange data on listings, orders, payments, reports, and more. XML data integration with Amazon enables higher levels of selling automation. By using Amazon MWS, sellers can increase selling efficiency, reduce labour requirements, and improve response time to customers.

To be eligible to use Amazon MWS, sellers must have at least a Selling on Amazon Pro account, an Amazon WebStore account or a Checkout by Amazon account. Individual sellers are not eligible to register for or use Amazon MWS. If you have an Individual seller account and would like to use Amazon MWS, you can become eligible to register for Amazon MWS by upgrading to a Pro Merchant seller account from the Amazon Services Selling on Amazon page.

Amazon MWS provides the following major features:

Inventory management — You can perform batch uploads of inventory, add products, check inventory levels, examine pricing information, and perform other inventory management tasks.
Order management — You can download order information, obtain payment data, acknowledge orders, and schedule reports.
Reports management — You can use Amazon MWS to request generation of a variety of reports; you can query the status of these reports, and then download them.

For Professional sellers who use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), Amazon MWS also allows you to:

Create inbound shipments to the fulfilment centre — You can automate the process for creating labels for units you ship to a fulfilment centre.
Check status of inbound shipments — You can check to see if your shipment has reached a fulfilment centre and, if so, whether the shipment has been processed.
Track and manage outbound shipment requests — Once orders have left our fulfilment centres, you can track shipments and keep your customers aware of arrival times.

To get started with Amazon MWS go to the registration page and click the "Sign up for MWS" button.