First In, First Out is not available for Sellers' FBA stock in the Amazon FC
I was shocked to find out that the First In, First Out (FIFO) service is only applicable when calculating the long-term storage fee. however, items delivered to fill customer orders are optimised for cost and speed of delivery, not on a FIFO basis.
So it means Amazon does not take responsibility to use old stock ( FOR FOOD ) to fulfil the customer orders before shipping new products to customers.
What happens when this service is not available for your FOOD PRODUCTS SENT TO THE AMAZON FC?
- You are running out of FBA stock for your FOOD product.
- Amazon recommends sending new stock
- You see how many days your products will be available on Amazon regarding the orders for the last 30 days, for example.
- You ship new stock to the Amazon FC
- At the moment they receive your stock at the FC you still have available units from the previous delivery. For example 30 units. This is not too many when you sell 600units per month.
- Let’s say You repeat the steps above 6 times during the year and let’s say the cost of your product is 20£ per unit.
- You receive new deliveries from your supplier every 3 months and the goods with each delivery have a new expiry date.
- Here comes the interesting: At the end of the year, Amazon recommends for removal 180 units since only 45 days left to expiry for all of them.
This is the moment that you find out that the low inventory left before each new delivery have not been fulfilled and the Amazon FC fulfilled products from the new delivery leaving the products from the previous delivery to expire.
So, they follow your food products when they must be removed when they will expire, but Amazon is not responsible first to fulfil the stock from your previous delivery when they receive new stock.
What is the result of this? - Charges for the seller for the disposal/removal of expired products.
- Long term storage fees for the products with an expiry date for more than one year.
- Loss equal to the cost of the expired product including the Amazon preparation fees. Just because they were not sold during their shelf life and Amazon is not responsible for that!
How it is possible not to be responsible for First In, First Out (FIFO) service when it is for FOOD PRODUCTS??
31 replies
Seller_hC0hNVDuILaKO
Might this help?
Summary
Flagging Expiry-Dated Items on Seller Central
What is it?
Before sellers send in any perishable items to an Amazon fulfilment centre they must flag the item on their Seller Central account prior to creating a shipment. All sellers must:
Flag the SKU/ASIN on Seller Central prior to physically dispatching the products.
Cover any existing manufacturing barcode with an Amazon FBA Label (which sellers can download off Seller Central).
How to use it?
Download the FBA Fulfilment Attributes template*. In this Excel sheet, you will need to complete the tab titled “Template.” You can use the tab “Example” to see how the form should be filled in. In column A, enter the FBA SKUs which contain an expiry date. In Column B, select “TRUE.” Columns E to H require the dimensions of the product as well as the unit of measure (column H). You must fill in all columns.
Uploading the Flat File
As with most Amazon Flat files, once they are complete they must be saved as “text (tab-delimited)” documents before uploading. To upload the file on your Seller Central account, select Add products via Upload under your Inventory tab. In the drop-down menu, select Inventory Files for Non-Media Categories, then locate your file by selecting Browse > Choose File before selecting Download Template.
The file can take up to 45 minutes to upload. Once complete you can then convert your listings to FBA and continue working on your shipment.
Note: Failure to use the Attributes file for expiry-dated products can result in delays of receiving your shipment at the Fulfilment Centre of up to 10 days.
- FBA Fulfilment Attributes template can also be used to enter product dimensions in bulk. For more information, see How to List FBA Products in Bulk with Flat File Feeds.
Summary
EXPIRY DATE
To be eligible for FBA, food and beverage products and products that are shipped with food or beverages must be lot-controlled and have a minimum remaining shelf life that is greater than 90 days. Items within 50 days of the expiry date at the time of arrival will be marked for disposal by Amazon. Inventory subject to disposal cannot be returned to you.
For all other non-food and beverage items with an expiry date, the remaining shelf life must be greater than 18 months at the point of receipt.
Important: Expiry-dated products intended for regular application or consumption must have a remaining shelf life that includes the consumption period in addition to the 90 days. For example, a 240-count bottle of daily supplements must have a remaining shelf life of 240 days + an additional 90 days at the time of check-in at the fulfilment centre.
All expiry-dated case packs, multi-packs and display boxes must have the expiry date on the box or bundle, as well as on each individual item inside the box or bundle.
When you ship expiry-dated inventory to a fulfilment centre, only one expiry date per ASIN is allowed in the same shipping box. Multiple ASINs with differing expiry dates can be shipped in the same box only if all of the units of each ASIN have the same expiry date.
Lot numbers alone are insufficient.
Seller_QlN0mmCAFPtjZ
Its far from ideal , however the sheer volume of goods at FBA warehouses makes it a huge task to micro manage FIFO . It is something you as a seller need to manage by virtually letting your stock run out before shipping in new stock . Its the cost of doing business on Amazon
Seller_z6B2L9xab6HlP
This is dead easy to manage, but yes it’s a shame Amazon doesn’t do it automatically. Create 2-3 different SKUs for each ASIN (one for current stock, one for new stock and ideally one as a buffer).
Keep a spreadsheet with the earliest expiry date for each SKU. When one SKU is getting within a few (3-4) months of its earliest expiry date start running it down, then switch new inbound stock to the new SKU. You might still get products returned to the old SKU so keep an eye on it.
The same thing applies to the new SKU. When within a few (3-4) months of the earliest expiry date, start running the stock down and change to another SKU etc etc.
Seller_mvkinBkDMI5Sh
And if you have 100ASINs and have to do that for all of them on all EU market places? What then? You will open a new positions in the company to maintain this? this is total madness! And how you will follow the invntory when the returns and the refunds begin for each SKU ? We a strugling to follow the inventory when there is only one SKU per market place and what will happen to follow multiple SKUs on All EU marketplaces? Thousands of SKUs!!! Just becuase Amazon know the expiry date of each SKU, but refuse to fulfill the first in products. Ridiculous
