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Act Now to Lower Your Long-Term Storage Fees
Stay on top of the latest e-commerce and marketplace trends.
Long-term storage fees are Amazon’s inventory clean-up fees that are implemented on the 15th of February and August every year. These fees are in addition to monthly storage fees and any FBA inventory aged over six months is subject to them. Any units sitting in Amazon fulfillment centers from six to twelve months will be charged a LTSF of $11.25 per cubic foot; any units sitting for over twelve months will be charged $22.50 per cubic foot. Prior to each inventory clean-up, Amazon notifies sellers of any items in FBA inventory that have in fact been in their fulfillment centers for six months or longer as of that date so that they are aware.
Although sellers can sign-in to Seller Central and use the Inventory Age and Inventory Health reports to identify which ASINs are subject to the long-term storage fee, an issue that sellers grapple with is getting a true handle on where they stand and quantifying exactly how much they will be charged on these two dates.
The reason that sellers need to understand any potential LTSF is crucial: drastic long-term storage fees will have a negative impact on profit margins.
At Feedvisor, we realize the importance that factors such as price, product assortment, and gaining Buy Box share make on your business decisions, so we released a custom LTSF report to our customers to help you make these critical decisions surrounding inventory that will be subject to these fees. As sellers are caught off guard by these fees more often than not, the report can be exported weekly leading up to the February and August dates from the Calendar tab or the Advanced Reports tab in the Feedvisor dashboard to help mitigate any issues.
The combination of this extremely user-friendly report with strategic recommendations from your dedicated Account Manager and our repricer and revenue intelligence dashboard’s ease-of-use allows us to illustrate exactly how much you will be charged in long-term storage fees. A screenshot of the report can be seen below:
We will also provide guidance on what you need to do from a repricing perspective to avoid the fee (or reduce it drastically) and show you the per-item cost if you decide to have Amazon dispose of the stale inventory or return it back to you. For example, the report details if an action is needed, what we recommend as a next step, and the profit that you can make after taking the cost of disposal and returns into consideration. Having all of this information in one place will help you determine what strategy is best to hit your goals and translate those strategies into action.
With just over one month until the fees are applied for the first time in 2018, it’s go-time for sellers to strategize around any inventory that will be subjected to these fees. We provide you with the relevant analytics so that you can make informed, real-time decisions to best navigate the long-term storage fees.