Suggested inventory

Suggested inventory

Suggested inventory answers one question: which of your FBA products are about to run out, and how many units does Amazon think you should send.

It is one of the four views on the Analytics screen, and like the rest of Analytics it is available on Growth and above.

Where the numbers come from

This report is not the app's opinion. The suggested quantities come from Amazon itself, calculated by Amazon's own demand forecast for each of your products, based on how that product has actually been selling and how long it takes to replenish it.

That is a useful distinction to keep in mind. Amazon can see things you cannot, including the seasonal shape of demand on its own marketplace. It also cannot see things you can, such as a promotion you are about to run, a supplier who has gone quiet, or a product you are deliberately discontinuing. Treat the report as a well-informed starting point rather than an instruction.

FBA only

The report covers FBA products only. FBA stands for Fulfilment by Amazon: stock that you have shipped into Amazon's warehouses, which Amazon then picks, packs and ships on your behalf.

The app detects fulfilment type per SKU. If a SKU shows up in Amazon's FBA inventory, it is treated as FBA. Everything else is FBM (merchant-fulfilled), meaning you hold and ship the stock yourself. FBM products never appear here, because there is nothing to send in to Amazon. See Inventory sync for how the app handles each type.

Note

An empty Suggested inventory report almost always means you have no FBA stock, not that something is broken. If you fulfil everything yourself, this report will stay empty, and that is correct behaviour. Amazon also has nothing to suggest for a product it has never held and never sold.

Reading the columns

Each row is one product in one marketplace, so the same product can appear more than once if you sell it in several Amazon marketplaces.

Available stock is the number of units Amazon is currently holding for you and can ship today. This is the figure that runs down as orders come in.

Inbound stock is the number of units already on their way to Amazon, or booked into a shipment that Amazon knows about. It matters because it stops you double-ordering. If a product looks alarmingly low on available stock but has a healthy inbound figure, a shipment is already handling it.

Days of supply is an estimate of how long the available stock will last at the current rate of sale. This is the column to sort by when you are deciding what to deal with first. A product with a single digit days of supply is the urgent one, regardless of how many units it has, because unit counts mean nothing without a sales rate to divide them by.

Send {n} is the badge carrying Amazon's suggested quantity for that product. It is the number of units Amazon recommends you ship in. The suggestion balances not running out against not tying up stock and storage fees in a warehouse.

Using it to make restocking decisions

A practical way to work the report:

  1. Sort or scan by days of supply and start at the bottom.
  2. For each low product, check Inbound stock. If a shipment is already covering it, move on.
  3. Compare the Send {n} suggestion against what you actually know. If you have a big campaign coming, send more. If you are winding the product down, send less or nothing.
  4. Group everything you have decided to send into a single inbound shipment, rather than sending products one at a time.
  5. Create the shipment itself in Amazon Seller Central. The app reports on what Amazon suggests, and does not create inbound shipments for you.

Warning

Running out of FBA stock costs more than the lost sales. A product with no available stock cannot hold the Buy Box, and the sales rank it built while selling starts to decay. Recovering both takes longer than the stockout itself. This is why days of supply is worth watching even on products that are selling steadily.

Export CSV

Export CSV downloads the report exactly as it appears on screen, one row per product and marketplace, with available stock, inbound stock, days of supply and the suggested quantity.

This is genuinely the most useful thing you can do with this report. Export it, open it in a spreadsheet, add a column for your own cost and your own supplier lead time, and you have a purchase order plan that reflects both Amazon's forecast and your own reality.

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