Simplifying FBA capacity limits for your business
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 labor 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 program 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 fulfillment centers 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 fulfillment centers, 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 fulfillment center 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.
Seller_aDf3q9GPPGDTU
It sounds promising but I’m also skeptical that this will be “better” since it is unclear if the new limits will translate to similar, higher or much lower unit capacity.
Many of us could just bypass the FBA process altogether by using AWD / Amazon distribution. However Amazon Distribution doesn’t allow the use of partnered LTL or partnered SPD shipments making it a much less attractive option. Hopefully one or both of those shipping options will be available in the next few months.
Seller_9kxv7dY1Vfj9P
My IPI score was below 400 for most of 2022. I busted my rear sell through inventory and removed slow-moving inventory to get my score over 400. I finally reached that milestone on January 1. But now, it doesn't matter anymore!?!?!?!??! My IPI score is over 400, but I have "Capacity Limits" that will be imposed in March and April. These limits are for the same amount of storage space as when my score was below 400!!!
Amazon, you never cease to amaze.
Seller_bpNiq3Zy8k4KF
Mmmmmm Okay… I like that you can request more… Waiting for the haters to point out the flaws, but this overall seems okay. I guess. Who knows anymore? Please just don’t smack me with a limit that hinders my business too much? Right now it’s a guessing game of if I should cram shipments in on Sunday night because I might not be able to tomorrow — knowledge is power, but limits are limits.
Seller_OBMEc8OBQy4TW
Seller_Ggt6s7zXEwLbA
Looks like FBA turning into an Ads-like program - whoever pays the most gets their products into a warehouse.
Seller_B9cQnbg2oZzCm
One thing Amazon is not accounting for this the long lead times to get Amazon partnered LTL pickups. We had 4 pallets ready for Amazon on 1/9/23 they scheduled this pickup for 1/19/23. 10 days to get a pickup is killing us. We are selling 500+ units per day so we want to plan our next pickup since it will take 10 days to get picked up but we need to wait for inventory storage to even book the pickup.
Then it may take 2-3 more weeks to check in. It just isn’t sustainable, and I don’t think the new system will account for this.
Seller_WVxwoDsePiOrR
Based on the Capacity Manager my inventory space will increase by 70%!!! This is awesome. If this is true this March 1st can’t come soon enough. I wish it started today. I have over 150 SKU’s OOS.
Seller_B9cQnbg2oZzCm
Interesting our capacity manager shows we’ll have 4x more capacity than we’ve ever had allowing us to store 80,000 units. our current 20,000 cap, I don’t suspect we’d ever need over 30,000.
Question is will there still be a holiday limit come Q4 this year in addition to the capacity manager? They say they are replacing restock limits, but that doesn’t mean a witty new term will be used this coming holiday season for some new measure of limiting restocks.
Seller_ChZL6Aea85Cad
Amazon, a response to my question would be welcome.
Is there a similar plan for Canada? Stock limits remain extremely low there. For example, it takes 60 days to get my stock by sea from China and book it into Amazon warehouses but the limit I have is enough for about 70 days. No matter how efficient I am across my 35 SKUs I can’t stay in stock and Amazon also inform us they take shipping times into account.
Seller_nstkdGWZl0SW0
Typical of you people to find another way to milk sellers.
No one has a clue how any of this actually works. We have no idea how to improve our capacity.
We have no idea how to even get the buy box. Which means we have no way to guess what will sell on items. You give much larger capacity limits to sellers who have lower IPI scores than we do.
We had an item we sold next to nothing of all year and during November and December we just under 1300 units. Your bots have no means to predict this because computers cannot run businesses.
Your price fixing nonsense also makes it impossible to guess what we need. We have a toy that you killed the buy box all Christmas season over a “competitive” price that did not exist. We sold 60 of the item referenced here in 2 days once you stopped blocking the buy box and over an item that was not sold at the price you said it was. We cannot plan with the systems you have put in.
You incompetent hacks have ruined selling here.
You deserve far worse criticism than this.
I absolutely hate selling here and look forward to the day we are done doing business with you people.
