Simplifying FBA capacity limits for your business


#1

Effective March 1, 2023, 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.

Based on your feedback, this new capacity management system will provide 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 labour 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 programme 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 fulfilment centres 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 fulfilment centres, 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 fulfilment centre capacity. You can view your capacity limit that will take effect on March 1, as well as your estimated limits, in the FBA dashboard.

Thank you for using FBA and for all you do to provide an excellent customer experience by managing your business and inventory levels efficiently.


#2

Ok, so given the fact that manufacture lead times and shipping can often run into three months or even more, how will a monthly limit ‘resolve’ this pain point?

I fell foul of this a couple of years ago when you cut our limits WITHOUT warning not long after I’d placed an order with my supplier. This created a massive headache and ended up costing me more money.

If lead times are longer than a month, this doesn’t resolve pain points, it just creates them.

So it appears this takes NO account of seasonal demand, only the previous few months performance. Why aren’t you looking at historical data over a longer time scale (perhaps even several years) to get a true reflection of what sales are likely to be on products which have large seasonal fluctuations?

And will these fees be refunded based on what I would have sold if some ‘just launched’ fraudulent seller from China hadn’t hi-jacked my listings (or changed them) AGAIN, while Amazon stood back and didn’t nothing to stop them?

It’s bad enough that I loose sales every time this happens, and now you’re saying you want me to pay even more fees just because you can’t be bothered to police your site properly?

Well at least this bit is based on some common sense for once, so well done.

As for the rest of it, nice try but please go back to the drawing board and think again.


#3

Or when they sell well so you order more and Amazon jump on the listing in the meantime and sell cheaper


#4

Blockquote Ok, so given the fact that manufacture lead times and shipping can often run into three months or even more, how will a monthly limit ‘resolve’ this pain point?

You should always be keeping a certain amount of stock in your warehouse/garage anyways. If you are working with a Chinese manufacturer without a 3rd party QA no way inventory should be sent directly from the manufacturer to FBA anyways.


#5

I never said you should, 3rd party QA is a given if you have any common sense, but even if you have a warehouse sometimes it’s necessary to send direct.

Delays are common especially since covid, so sometimes you have to send direct to maintain enough stock, especially at peak demand. There is also the fact that with increasing costs, adding another step in the process means that some products are simply not worth selling any more, especaily if it means you now have to do it every single time.


#6

Hi @Blackadder

FBA capacity limits take seasonal selling patterns into account based on information available to Amazon, which is incorporated in our sales forecasts. If you have better information about your sales potential during certain periods of the year, you may request higher limits for those times through Capacity Manager.

Jessica


#7

Which we have to pay for…


#8

Hi Jessica,

That is certainly not my experience.

Two years ago when the limits were drastically cut without warning, I asked for an increase to cover my peak season. Based on many years experience with a particular product I knew what demand to expect and asked for a modest increase. Amazon point blank refused.

Then last year I created a shipping plan which took me to my limit. I only had a very limited amount of stock at Amazon which would all sell out before the new stock arrived. Therefore at NO point would there be more stock in Amazon than my limits allowed for. Amazon would know this to be the case based on sales volume.

I asked Amazon for an increase of just a few units simply in order to create the shipping plan. Again Amazon point blank refused. This resulted in me having to remove the remaining units from FBA, making the product unavailable for sale to Prime customers for several weeks until the new stock arrived.

I wouldn’t care but the product was quite small, so it’s not like it was taking up a load of volume. In addition, on my other storage types I had tons of unused capacity and there were other sellers who would have been quite happy to swap their unused storage types with mine, but Amazon didn’t allow this.

It’s good to see that Amazon are now going to base the limits on volume, but why has it taken so long for common sense to prevail.

It never used to be like this.


#9

Ah but now they may grant you extra space because you can bid for it


#10

Pay for it.


#11

Well I say bid because its not guaranteed. You can place a bid and whoever bids highest gets the extra space first By the sound of it


#12

Oh, yes.

Always on the look out for new ways to squeeze even more money out of us.


#13

I can see it working OK if you are savvy with seasonal stuff
It obviously depends on your bid though as you can offset it 15p per £1 of sales with promo credits
So if you have goods you are guaranteed to sell for Christmas say, you could work out how much to bid and using the performance credits , could get the extra storage for free


#14

It just adds to the risk.

I had a load of advent calendars this year. I bought a large quantity. They were discontinued stock and Amazon didn’t sell them.

They should have sold through easily in October/November.

They were flying out until Amazon suddenly got some stock and started selling at price below my cost price. I barely sold another unit.

If I had bought space for this stock I would be looking at a big cost. I have still got a problem to resolve though.


#15

That raises another issue I hadn’t thought of.

Obviously Amazon aren’t going to be bidding on extra storage space for their own stuff, so this is creating yet another unfair advantage for them. :frowning_face:


#16

Hello,

It has given us a tiny capacity for some reason. We should have 500 cubic, but we have only been given 100.