papy
March 14, 2023, 7:09pm
1
There is an Ask Amazon event on the NSFE today (Tuesday March 14) until 5pmPT/8pmET. Link to event: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/3c9cef3c-530b-4846-a3b3-a855ed62f241 .
Ask Amazon: Simplified FBA capacity limits Q&A with FBA team
by Kelly_Amazon
updated by moderator 3 hours ago
Hello Sellers,
Welcome to our Ask Amazon Q&A with the Fulfilled by Amazon team, focusing on our updated capacity limits and Capacity Manager. We recently announced that we’re replacing the weekly restock limit and quarterly storage limit with a single monthly capacity limit per storage type to give you more predictability and control over your inventory.
This topic will be open today, 3/14/2023 until 5 PM PST. We have moderators closely watching this thread throughout the day, and they may merge posts with similar questions so we can answer them all in one place.
We encourage you to use this thread to ask questions related to the updated FBA capacity limit, which is influenced by your IPI score, as well as other factors such as sales forecasts for your ASINs, shipment lead time, and fulfillment center capacity. The FBA team incorporated seller feedback to include the following improvements:
A single, month-long FBA capacity limit. You’ve told us that having weekly restock limits can make it difficult for you to plan how much inventory to procure and manufacture and that navigating two sets of limits that are measured differently, storage limits and restock limits, can be confusing. FBA capacity limits will resolve these pain points by offering a single monthly limit to determine how much inventory you can send to and store at Amazon. Capacity limits for the upcoming month will be announced in the third full week of each month via the Capacity Monitor in Seller Central and an email notification. To learn more, go to FBA capacity limits.
Estimated capacity limits to help you plan three months in advance. In addition to your upcoming monthly capacity limit, we’ll provide estimated limits for the following two months to help you plan. Estimates may vary up or down based on how efficiently you are using capacity, as measured by your Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score, and how much space and labor we have available to support you.
The opportunity to request a higher limit. With our new Capacity Manager, you can request additional capacity based on a reservation fee that you specify. Requests are granted objectively, starting with the highest reservation fee per cubic foot until all capacity available under this program has been allocated. When your request is granted, the reservation fee is offset by performance credits that you earn from the sales you generate using the extra capacity. Performance credits are designed to offset up to 100% of your reservation fee, so you don’t pay for the capacity as long as your products sell through. Our goal is to provide you with more control over how much space you can have while limiting unproductive use. We’ve piloted this feature with certain US sellers, and we’re excited to expand it so all sellers can request higher FBA capacity limits. To learn more, go to Capacity Manager.
FBA capacity limits in volume (vs. units) to better reflect your capacity usage. We’ll set capacity limits and measure your inventory usage by volume, which better represents the capacity that your products use. We know many sellers prefer to plan in units, so we’ll continue to show inventory usage in units and provide an estimate of how many units your capacity limits permit. Like restock limits today, capacity limits consider inventory that is on-hand in Amazon’s fulfillment centers and shipments you’ve created that have not yet arrived.
Like storage limits today, overage fees will apply if your on-hand inventory in Amazon’s fulfillment centers, not including open shipments, exceeds your capacity limit. Overage fees are calculated based on the highest estimated or confirmed limit that we provided for the given period. Overage fees help prevent excessive inventory levels and shouldn’t affect sellers who maintain healthy inventory levels. To learn more, go to FBA inventory storage overage fees.
Your FBA capacity limit is influenced by your IPI score, as well as other factors such as sales forecasts for your ASINs, shipment lead time, and fulfillment center capacity. You can view your capacity limit that will take effect on March 1, as well as your estimated limits, in the FBA dashboard .
Our FBA team is reviewing your questions and we’ll do our best to respond to them by 5 PM PST tomorrow (3/15).
Please note that the team cannot provide legal advice or otherwise interpret regulatory requirements on situations that are specific to individual sellers.
Ain’t this a kick in the teeth…
We all know that Amazon, at some point, is going to realize they don’t have the space or manpower to manage what they thought their capacity was and they are going to slash limits like they always do without a moments notice.
At that point, the cash register at FBA is going to ring as they collect tens of millions in “fines” from sellers for following the process correctly.
That’s some crazy, libelous, bat-shit craziness right there…
I was told something completely different by our SAS manager when asking the same exact question so either he was wrong, Bryce is wrong, or there’s something else foul in Seattle.
But seriously, are any of us really surprised?
How many times do we all need to be burned by the mothership before we just stop trusting Amazon altogether?
If Amazon is allowing a seller to store 8 months worth of goods right now, how the hell is 3 months of UNCONFIRMED notice going to allow them time to react? The forward looking period has to be longer than the estimated monthly hold for this to work.
I wish this was still the OSFE because I would be firing back on Bryce and I like him…
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the disclaimer (it’s about time)!
Moderators should never have been offering legal advice and speculating on specific individual Sellers situations.
Although that does make the moderators practically unhelpful…
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