It’s that time of year again! The guys at RepricerExpress have reminded us that in just under four weeks (August the 15th to be exact), you could receive a hefty bill from Amazon for FBA long-term storage fees.
FBA fees changed on 22 February 2017. If you’re an Amazon UK seller, you can learn more info on UK long-term storage fees here. If you’re an Amazon US seller, go to Fulfillment by Amazon Fee Changes. What happens is that on the 15th of February and 15th of August of every year FBA conducts an Inventory Cleanup, at which time inventory Units that have been in their fulfilment centres will be assessed an upfront, semi-annual Long-Term Storage Fees.
Now, is the time to identify what items are worth paying the storage fees on and what items you should reprice to avoid paying fees on.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty cumbersome identifying those items and updating your pricing strategies quickly and you’ll probably want to undo pricing the adjustments after August 15th, if you still have affected items in stock.
If you are a RepricerExpress user, their new Automations feature can auto-detect SKUs that have 6 or 12-month FBA long-term storage fees due and move them to a more aggressive repricing rule to sell that stock off. What’s more, stock can move automatically back to their original repricing strategy or stay on the new one, all with the touch of a button. There’s no more checking reports, exporting and importing files and it’s all automated.
How to find out which items are going to be charged long-term storage fees
- Log in to Seller Central.
- Hover over Inventory and click on Manage Inventory.
- Click on Inventory Dashboard.
- Scroll down until you see the FBA Inventory Age box. Then, click View Details.
Another expert strategy to avoid long-term storage fees
“With Amazon, charging fees twice a year it’s a good strategy to possibly wait until after long-term storage fees are calculated on August 15th to send in items you think might take longer than six months to sell”.
– FBA seller, Stephen Smotherman
If you send in your inventory to Amazon right after August 15th, when Amazon calculates long-term storage fees on February 15th, they will only charge you the fee for any items that were stored in Amazon since before August 15th.
