Mastering Amazon Inventory Management: How to Never Be Out of Stock
The first rule of selling on Amazon is to always have your product in stock. Out of stock is from Amazon’s point of view a negative experience. If people come to buy your product on Amazon, they need to find it, if not, they are going to buy it somewhere else and Amazon doesn’t want that.
As a result, Amazon created a system to penalize products that are out of stock. When your product is out of stock, your seller ranking drop. You can see this when you click on the SKU in inventory. Below is a chart with an example. The blue line is sales and the green line is seller ranking. When the product is out of stock, seller ranking drops and when the product is back in stock, it usually takes 6 to 10 weeks to get some traction again.
Consistent inventory management directly influences these critical metrics.
The Growth Scalers Inventory Forecasting Approach
Our inventory management approach will give you visibility into your stock levels and help you make decisions faster that drive growth.
Preparing Your Inventory Management Template
Step 1: Access the Inventory Forecast Template
Open the "Product Listing Amazon (inventory forecast)" template
Locate the two key sheets:
1. Inventory Overview
2. FBA Inventory
Step 2: Add all active listings SKU’s
To retrieve all our active listing SKUs, follow these steps:
Download the Active Listings Report:
- Log into your Amazon Seller Central account
- Navigate to Inventory Reports > Active Listings Report
- Click on Request Report
- Once the report is ready, download it.
Upload the Report to the Template:
- In your template, go to File > Import > Upload
- Select the downloaded report
- For Import location, choose "Insert new sheet"
- Click Import data
Copy and Paste Data:
Copy all SKUs from the report and paste them into the SKU column of the Inventory Overview sheet.
Optionally, copy the product titles as well.
Note: Since the Active Listings Report is customizable, column names and their order may vary. This could cause formulas to pull incorrect data. To avoid issues, paste the titles in the same order as the SKUs are pasted.
Retrieving FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) Inventory Report
Step 3: Navigate to Seller Central
- Log into your Amazon Seller Central account
- Navigate to Reports > Fulfillment
- Select "FBA Inventory" from the Inventory section
- Request the CSV download
- Wait for the report to generate
- Download the report once it's ready
Importing the FBA Inventory Report
Step 4: Upload to Template
- In your template, go to File > Import > Upload
- Select the downloaded report
- For Import location, choose "Replace current sheet"
- Ensure you're on the FBA Inventory sheet
Final Formatting and Verification
Step 5: SKU Column Formatting
- Check SKU column formatting
- For numeric SKUs:some text
- Convert to plain text
- Ensure formulas can be processed correctly
Step 6: Verify Automatic Calculations
- Allow template formulas to pull and calculate data
- Double-check that all information is populating correctly
Pro Tips for Inventory Management
🔹 Always plan 3 months of inventory: You should monitor your inventory level every month. If you have more than 6 months of inventory, you will have to pay long term storage fees so a good trade off is 3 months.
🔹 Keep some min inventory: If you have only a handful of products, they might be really far away from your end customer. If you need to ship from California to New York for instance. So you should have a minimum number of units in stock (10 -20 depending on your sell-through). This will allow you to have faster delivery time and therefore higher conversion rate.
🔹 Create a FBM back up SKU: You can forecast as good as possible inventory but you don’t control on Amazon’s logistic. It might take longer to get products checked in, shipment can be lost or damaged so to stay on the safe side, if you have a warehouse or a 3PL, you should create an FBM back up SKU for the same FBA listing. This will allow you to make sure that your products are always in stock.
Why Choose Growth Scalers for Inventory Management?
We don't just provide a service—we become your strategic partner. Our approach combines:
- Advanced technological tools
- Expert analysis
- Predictive forecasting
- Continuous optimization
Ready to transform your Amazon inventory strategy? Contact us now!