FBA Inventory Performance Index (IPI)
Hello Sellers,
Thank you for your patience. The Amazon Business team has provided the information below. I ask that you please post your questions here and I will extract them and send them to the Business team.
-Susan
Good inventory management can lead to reduced costs, improved profitability, and more business growth for FBA sellers. Improved inventory management will also help your products be received and delivered to customers more quickly. The Inventory Performance Index (IPI) measures inventory management over time, including how well you balance inventory levels and sales, fix listing problems that make your inventory unavailable for purchase, and keep popular products in stock. We will continue to improve the IPI score to ensure it encourages and reflects inventory management best practices.
As there has been some confusion about the new metric, here are answers to frequently asked questions:
What does my IPI score mean?
An IPI score above 450 means your FBA inventory is performing well, and a score above 550 indicates your inventory is a top performer. A score under 350 could lead to limits being placed on your FBA storage and to overage fees, as outlined in the new storage limit policy.
Why have I seen my IPI score go down even though I recently improved my influencing factors?
Your IPI score combines the past three months of sales, inventory levels, and costs into a single rolling metric updated weekly. You may have seen your score decline coming out of the holiday season. Typically, when sales are high, as they often are during December, it’s easier to maintain healthy inventory levels. But if sales start to drop off, you still need to continue to manage your inventory levels, using the four influencing factors as guidance.
If, for example, you removed some inventory last week, you may not see an immediate change in your IPI since that’s only one week out of the three months that factor into your score. By maintaining good to excellent influencing factors daily, you should see your IPI score improve over time.
How do the different influencing factors affect IPI?
Influencing factors are designed to advise you of opportunities to improve your IPI score. By ensuring your inventory product settings are accurate and by designating your non-replenishable inventory, you can better inform inventory planning recommendations and more accurately identify the opportunities to improve your inventory performance metrics. The best way to increase your IPI score and minimize your FBA storage fees is to reduce unproductive inventory and keep your productive inventory at lean levels while ensuring you have enough on hand to minimize lost sales.
Excess inventory percentage: Excess inventory percentage helps you decide when to mark down or remove your products. Reducing excess units may help you increase your IPI score. Continuing to hold excess inventory and paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees may reduce your score.
FBA sell-through rate: Improving your sell-through rate can help you increase your IPI score. Conversely, a decrease in sell-through (holding too much inventory compared with sales) may decrease your score over time. If you recently shipped a lot of units in anticipation of sales, you may see your FBA sell-through rate temporarily decrease. However, as long as you ramp up your sales to balance your inventory volumes, you should see your sell-through rate improve.
Stranded inventory percentage: Inventory that incurs storage fees without the possibility of sales may hurt your IPI score. As with excess inventory, stranded inventory can contribute to you paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees, which may reduce your score.
FBA in-stock rate: The FBA in-stock rate indicates how much value you are getting out of your products by keeping replenishable ASINs in stock. A low FBA in-stock rate doesn’t lower your IPI score, but if you go out of stock on a popular product, your lost sales represent a missed opportunity to increase your IPI score.
Marking a SKU as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, removes it from your FBA in-stock rate calculation. It’s not in your best interest to hide replenishable SKUs in an effort to increase the FBA in-stock metric, due to three reasons. First, doing so does not directly change your IPI score. Second, an inaccurate FBA in-stock rate may cause you to miss valuable restock opportunities. And third, the SKUs you hide will no longer display restock recommendations.
How is the FBA in-stock rate calculated?
FBA in-stock rate is the percentage of time that replenishable FBA products have been in stock for the past 30 days, weighted by the number of units sold in the past 60 days. Here is an example:
FBA in-stock rate = (% of past 30 days SKU was in stock) * (60-day sales velocity) / (60-day sales velocity)
In this example, the FBA in-stock rate for these two replenishable SKUs would be calculated as follows: [(2x50%) + (3x100%)] / (2+3) = 80%.
How does hiding not replenishable items affect FBA in-stock rate and the IPI score?
Hiding SKUs affects only your FBA in-stock rate, not your IPI score directly.
For example, let’s assume SKU #2 in the example above is seasonal inventory and not replenishable. If you keep it designated as replenishable, your in-stock rate for all SKUs will look higher than it really is – in this case, 80%.
If you properly designate SKU #2 as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, your in-stock rate drops to 50%, since the rate now factors in only your replenishable inventory: SKU #1. The in-stock rate drop doesn’t affect your IPI, however, because your inventory levels didn’t actually change; you still have zero units of SKU #1 and 10 units of SKU #2.
Rather, the in-stock rate change from 80% to 50% reveals the opportunity cost of SKU #1 being out of stock. By replenishing SKU #1, you can likely sell more – and that, in turn, could lead to a higher IPI score.
When will I find out how much my storage is limited?
Starting July 1, 2018, Amazon will adjust storage limits for sellers whose IPI score has fallen under the minimum threshold on two dates during the previous quarter. If your score is less than 350 six weeks before the end of a quarter, you will be notified of your potential storage limits. If your IPI is still below 350 at the end of that quarter, limits will apply for the following quarter. For example, if your IPI is below 350 on May 19, 2018, you will get a notification informing you of your storage limits. And, if your IPI is still below 350 on June 30, 2018, those storage limits will go into effect on July 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018. See the new storage limit policy for more details.
967 replies
Seller_k9gKxYXv4ZEHu
What are the storage limitation parameters?
Are there bands in place related to score or is storage space reduced by a certain percentage?
Seller_eoks2ZELtTL0o
Other than seeing that neat green bar creep right-ward, how does the Inventory Performance Index affect me as a seller?
Seller_nkBcHPWfscgWg
I understand that they don’t want tons of stuff cluttering up their valuable warehouse space, but if I get penalized for sending in too much stuff, and also for letting things go out of stock, how is a seller supposed to survive without being able to see the future to know exactly how many sales they will have this month?
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
Glad to see this here. It confirms the theory some of us was able to figure it out about the sharp decline some of us saw in the last few weeks. I also take this as somehow good news, since those high scores are completely off the chart now, the “normal” values are in the algorithm. So: less bad surprises, aka less sharp declines.
I would like to know if the new storage limits will be in terms of UNITS or VOLUME, or if it will be different for different category sellers.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
@SEAmod Thank you for your update, as always it is appreciated.
It seems to me that the main purpose of the IPI is to further incentivize Sellers to maintain low inventory amounts and send replenishment orders in more often.
Fair enough, I can understand Amazon’s desire to do this as storage space is limited and costly and they make more money on sales than they do on storage fees alone.
It also tries to incentivize having your inventory in stock constantly (As if that weren’t the goal of every seller ever).
My main concern is the quickly growing delay from when I send in my inventory to when it is available to sell. When I started selling, our inventory was available to purchase within a day or two of the warehouse receiving it. Now? It seems that the first trickle of inventory (maybe 1 or 2 units) is available 5 days after it is received with the entirety of the inventory taking 2 weeks to be made available.
If this increase in time frame continues and even if it stays at current levels we’ll need to be sending inventory CONSTANTLY which increases costs (increased shipping costs as well as increase labor costs for our shipping department) as well as difficulty in predicting how much inventory to send in order to surf that thin line of “lean inventory levels” that the IPI is trying to push while not getting lost sales from being out of inventory due to slower processing speeds of Amazon warehouses.
I’m not against the idea of the IPI but I am terrified about my ability to keep inventory in stock when being coerced to send smaller shipments while at the same time having longer processing times from your warehouses.
Seller_qAugRk38pcRAY
My question is if my score is above 350 on the first date (6 weeks before the end of the quarter), but it become below 350 on the 2nd date (at the end of the quarter), will I also get storage limit? I’d appreciate an answer fr the business team.
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
Nice to see how 'In Stock" is calculated. Mine has shown 0% from day one. Since almost all of my items (used books) are one-off offers, if I read this right, it will always be zero, since either the amount in stock, or the amount sold is going to be zero, and those numbers get multiplied together.
But since this does not affect the IPI, it’s nice to know that I can totally ignore it.
Thanks for the information.
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
I just received the “Free inventory removal for a limited time” e-mail from Amazon. This is good news and could solve a lot of sellers excess inventory issue.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
EDIT
I want to edit this comment and say that @SEAmod opened a case and refunded the amount of the recalled inventory we just brought back and I didn’t want this example of wonderful customer service to go unnoticed. I didn’t expect to ever see this and was going to chop it up to bad timing but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. This has fixed that. Thank you Susan for making this right!
/EDIT
Ok this definitely irks me a little bit. I (and I imagine many of you) just received the following email:
That all sounds great and wonderful but I and I know a lot of you in an attempt to be proactive and good acting sellers have already recalled most or all of your excess inventory in order to be compliant. We just paid $200 just last week. You would think they would have announced this earlier instead of now after all of the good boys and girls of the Amazon seller world have already attempted to take care of the problem.
Seller_eKF1L3i4LxO1i
Thank you for the updates.
2 quick questions:
-
Does the “Manage Excess Inventory” page list all of the excess inventory that is negatively impacting our IPI?
-
Assuming the answer to #1 is ‘Yes’, why is the # of excess units metric and the corresponding percentage always wrong? Is it using data from xx days ago?
Metric said ~380 for weeks, even though actual number of excess units was ~120.
Metric finally updated to ~180, which was still much too high.
Metric stuck at ~180, even though actual number further reduced to ~75.
Metric just updated to ~150, still approximately double the actual number.
(Note: The number of excess SKUs seems to update in real-time. But the number of excess units and the corresponding percentage is always off.)
FBA Inventory Performance Index (IPI)
Hello Sellers,
Thank you for your patience. The Amazon Business team has provided the information below. I ask that you please post your questions here and I will extract them and send them to the Business team.
-Susan
Good inventory management can lead to reduced costs, improved profitability, and more business growth for FBA sellers. Improved inventory management will also help your products be received and delivered to customers more quickly. The Inventory Performance Index (IPI) measures inventory management over time, including how well you balance inventory levels and sales, fix listing problems that make your inventory unavailable for purchase, and keep popular products in stock. We will continue to improve the IPI score to ensure it encourages and reflects inventory management best practices.
As there has been some confusion about the new metric, here are answers to frequently asked questions:
What does my IPI score mean?
An IPI score above 450 means your FBA inventory is performing well, and a score above 550 indicates your inventory is a top performer. A score under 350 could lead to limits being placed on your FBA storage and to overage fees, as outlined in the new storage limit policy.
Why have I seen my IPI score go down even though I recently improved my influencing factors?
Your IPI score combines the past three months of sales, inventory levels, and costs into a single rolling metric updated weekly. You may have seen your score decline coming out of the holiday season. Typically, when sales are high, as they often are during December, it’s easier to maintain healthy inventory levels. But if sales start to drop off, you still need to continue to manage your inventory levels, using the four influencing factors as guidance.
If, for example, you removed some inventory last week, you may not see an immediate change in your IPI since that’s only one week out of the three months that factor into your score. By maintaining good to excellent influencing factors daily, you should see your IPI score improve over time.
How do the different influencing factors affect IPI?
Influencing factors are designed to advise you of opportunities to improve your IPI score. By ensuring your inventory product settings are accurate and by designating your non-replenishable inventory, you can better inform inventory planning recommendations and more accurately identify the opportunities to improve your inventory performance metrics. The best way to increase your IPI score and minimize your FBA storage fees is to reduce unproductive inventory and keep your productive inventory at lean levels while ensuring you have enough on hand to minimize lost sales.
Excess inventory percentage: Excess inventory percentage helps you decide when to mark down or remove your products. Reducing excess units may help you increase your IPI score. Continuing to hold excess inventory and paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees may reduce your score.
FBA sell-through rate: Improving your sell-through rate can help you increase your IPI score. Conversely, a decrease in sell-through (holding too much inventory compared with sales) may decrease your score over time. If you recently shipped a lot of units in anticipation of sales, you may see your FBA sell-through rate temporarily decrease. However, as long as you ramp up your sales to balance your inventory volumes, you should see your sell-through rate improve.
Stranded inventory percentage: Inventory that incurs storage fees without the possibility of sales may hurt your IPI score. As with excess inventory, stranded inventory can contribute to you paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees, which may reduce your score.
FBA in-stock rate: The FBA in-stock rate indicates how much value you are getting out of your products by keeping replenishable ASINs in stock. A low FBA in-stock rate doesn’t lower your IPI score, but if you go out of stock on a popular product, your lost sales represent a missed opportunity to increase your IPI score.
Marking a SKU as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, removes it from your FBA in-stock rate calculation. It’s not in your best interest to hide replenishable SKUs in an effort to increase the FBA in-stock metric, due to three reasons. First, doing so does not directly change your IPI score. Second, an inaccurate FBA in-stock rate may cause you to miss valuable restock opportunities. And third, the SKUs you hide will no longer display restock recommendations.
How is the FBA in-stock rate calculated?
FBA in-stock rate is the percentage of time that replenishable FBA products have been in stock for the past 30 days, weighted by the number of units sold in the past 60 days. Here is an example:
FBA in-stock rate = (% of past 30 days SKU was in stock) * (60-day sales velocity) / (60-day sales velocity)
In this example, the FBA in-stock rate for these two replenishable SKUs would be calculated as follows: [(2x50%) + (3x100%)] / (2+3) = 80%.
How does hiding not replenishable items affect FBA in-stock rate and the IPI score?
Hiding SKUs affects only your FBA in-stock rate, not your IPI score directly.
For example, let’s assume SKU #2 in the example above is seasonal inventory and not replenishable. If you keep it designated as replenishable, your in-stock rate for all SKUs will look higher than it really is – in this case, 80%.
If you properly designate SKU #2 as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, your in-stock rate drops to 50%, since the rate now factors in only your replenishable inventory: SKU #1. The in-stock rate drop doesn’t affect your IPI, however, because your inventory levels didn’t actually change; you still have zero units of SKU #1 and 10 units of SKU #2.
Rather, the in-stock rate change from 80% to 50% reveals the opportunity cost of SKU #1 being out of stock. By replenishing SKU #1, you can likely sell more – and that, in turn, could lead to a higher IPI score.
When will I find out how much my storage is limited?
Starting July 1, 2018, Amazon will adjust storage limits for sellers whose IPI score has fallen under the minimum threshold on two dates during the previous quarter. If your score is less than 350 six weeks before the end of a quarter, you will be notified of your potential storage limits. If your IPI is still below 350 at the end of that quarter, limits will apply for the following quarter. For example, if your IPI is below 350 on May 19, 2018, you will get a notification informing you of your storage limits. And, if your IPI is still below 350 on June 30, 2018, those storage limits will go into effect on July 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018. See the new storage limit policy for more details.
FBA Inventory Performance Index (IPI)
Hello Sellers,
Thank you for your patience. The Amazon Business team has provided the information below. I ask that you please post your questions here and I will extract them and send them to the Business team.
-Susan
Good inventory management can lead to reduced costs, improved profitability, and more business growth for FBA sellers. Improved inventory management will also help your products be received and delivered to customers more quickly. The Inventory Performance Index (IPI) measures inventory management over time, including how well you balance inventory levels and sales, fix listing problems that make your inventory unavailable for purchase, and keep popular products in stock. We will continue to improve the IPI score to ensure it encourages and reflects inventory management best practices.
As there has been some confusion about the new metric, here are answers to frequently asked questions:
What does my IPI score mean?
An IPI score above 450 means your FBA inventory is performing well, and a score above 550 indicates your inventory is a top performer. A score under 350 could lead to limits being placed on your FBA storage and to overage fees, as outlined in the new storage limit policy.
Why have I seen my IPI score go down even though I recently improved my influencing factors?
Your IPI score combines the past three months of sales, inventory levels, and costs into a single rolling metric updated weekly. You may have seen your score decline coming out of the holiday season. Typically, when sales are high, as they often are during December, it’s easier to maintain healthy inventory levels. But if sales start to drop off, you still need to continue to manage your inventory levels, using the four influencing factors as guidance.
If, for example, you removed some inventory last week, you may not see an immediate change in your IPI since that’s only one week out of the three months that factor into your score. By maintaining good to excellent influencing factors daily, you should see your IPI score improve over time.
How do the different influencing factors affect IPI?
Influencing factors are designed to advise you of opportunities to improve your IPI score. By ensuring your inventory product settings are accurate and by designating your non-replenishable inventory, you can better inform inventory planning recommendations and more accurately identify the opportunities to improve your inventory performance metrics. The best way to increase your IPI score and minimize your FBA storage fees is to reduce unproductive inventory and keep your productive inventory at lean levels while ensuring you have enough on hand to minimize lost sales.
Excess inventory percentage: Excess inventory percentage helps you decide when to mark down or remove your products. Reducing excess units may help you increase your IPI score. Continuing to hold excess inventory and paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees may reduce your score.
FBA sell-through rate: Improving your sell-through rate can help you increase your IPI score. Conversely, a decrease in sell-through (holding too much inventory compared with sales) may decrease your score over time. If you recently shipped a lot of units in anticipation of sales, you may see your FBA sell-through rate temporarily decrease. However, as long as you ramp up your sales to balance your inventory volumes, you should see your sell-through rate improve.
Stranded inventory percentage: Inventory that incurs storage fees without the possibility of sales may hurt your IPI score. As with excess inventory, stranded inventory can contribute to you paying a higher percentage of your FBA revenue in fees, which may reduce your score.
FBA in-stock rate: The FBA in-stock rate indicates how much value you are getting out of your products by keeping replenishable ASINs in stock. A low FBA in-stock rate doesn’t lower your IPI score, but if you go out of stock on a popular product, your lost sales represent a missed opportunity to increase your IPI score.
Marking a SKU as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, removes it from your FBA in-stock rate calculation. It’s not in your best interest to hide replenishable SKUs in an effort to increase the FBA in-stock metric, due to three reasons. First, doing so does not directly change your IPI score. Second, an inaccurate FBA in-stock rate may cause you to miss valuable restock opportunities. And third, the SKUs you hide will no longer display restock recommendations.
How is the FBA in-stock rate calculated?
FBA in-stock rate is the percentage of time that replenishable FBA products have been in stock for the past 30 days, weighted by the number of units sold in the past 60 days. Here is an example:
FBA in-stock rate = (% of past 30 days SKU was in stock) * (60-day sales velocity) / (60-day sales velocity)
In this example, the FBA in-stock rate for these two replenishable SKUs would be calculated as follows: [(2x50%) + (3x100%)] / (2+3) = 80%.
How does hiding not replenishable items affect FBA in-stock rate and the IPI score?
Hiding SKUs affects only your FBA in-stock rate, not your IPI score directly.
For example, let’s assume SKU #2 in the example above is seasonal inventory and not replenishable. If you keep it designated as replenishable, your in-stock rate for all SKUs will look higher than it really is – in this case, 80%.
If you properly designate SKU #2 as not replenishable, by hiding it on the Restock Inventory page, your in-stock rate drops to 50%, since the rate now factors in only your replenishable inventory: SKU #1. The in-stock rate drop doesn’t affect your IPI, however, because your inventory levels didn’t actually change; you still have zero units of SKU #1 and 10 units of SKU #2.
Rather, the in-stock rate change from 80% to 50% reveals the opportunity cost of SKU #1 being out of stock. By replenishing SKU #1, you can likely sell more – and that, in turn, could lead to a higher IPI score.
When will I find out how much my storage is limited?
Starting July 1, 2018, Amazon will adjust storage limits for sellers whose IPI score has fallen under the minimum threshold on two dates during the previous quarter. If your score is less than 350 six weeks before the end of a quarter, you will be notified of your potential storage limits. If your IPI is still below 350 at the end of that quarter, limits will apply for the following quarter. For example, if your IPI is below 350 on May 19, 2018, you will get a notification informing you of your storage limits. And, if your IPI is still below 350 on June 30, 2018, those storage limits will go into effect on July 1, 2018 through September 30, 2018. See the new storage limit policy for more details.
967 replies
967 replies
Seller_k9gKxYXv4ZEHu
What are the storage limitation parameters?
Are there bands in place related to score or is storage space reduced by a certain percentage?
Seller_eoks2ZELtTL0o
Other than seeing that neat green bar creep right-ward, how does the Inventory Performance Index affect me as a seller?
Seller_nkBcHPWfscgWg
I understand that they don’t want tons of stuff cluttering up their valuable warehouse space, but if I get penalized for sending in too much stuff, and also for letting things go out of stock, how is a seller supposed to survive without being able to see the future to know exactly how many sales they will have this month?
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
Glad to see this here. It confirms the theory some of us was able to figure it out about the sharp decline some of us saw in the last few weeks. I also take this as somehow good news, since those high scores are completely off the chart now, the “normal” values are in the algorithm. So: less bad surprises, aka less sharp declines.
I would like to know if the new storage limits will be in terms of UNITS or VOLUME, or if it will be different for different category sellers.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
@SEAmod Thank you for your update, as always it is appreciated.
It seems to me that the main purpose of the IPI is to further incentivize Sellers to maintain low inventory amounts and send replenishment orders in more often.
Fair enough, I can understand Amazon’s desire to do this as storage space is limited and costly and they make more money on sales than they do on storage fees alone.
It also tries to incentivize having your inventory in stock constantly (As if that weren’t the goal of every seller ever).
My main concern is the quickly growing delay from when I send in my inventory to when it is available to sell. When I started selling, our inventory was available to purchase within a day or two of the warehouse receiving it. Now? It seems that the first trickle of inventory (maybe 1 or 2 units) is available 5 days after it is received with the entirety of the inventory taking 2 weeks to be made available.
If this increase in time frame continues and even if it stays at current levels we’ll need to be sending inventory CONSTANTLY which increases costs (increased shipping costs as well as increase labor costs for our shipping department) as well as difficulty in predicting how much inventory to send in order to surf that thin line of “lean inventory levels” that the IPI is trying to push while not getting lost sales from being out of inventory due to slower processing speeds of Amazon warehouses.
I’m not against the idea of the IPI but I am terrified about my ability to keep inventory in stock when being coerced to send smaller shipments while at the same time having longer processing times from your warehouses.
Seller_qAugRk38pcRAY
My question is if my score is above 350 on the first date (6 weeks before the end of the quarter), but it become below 350 on the 2nd date (at the end of the quarter), will I also get storage limit? I’d appreciate an answer fr the business team.
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
Nice to see how 'In Stock" is calculated. Mine has shown 0% from day one. Since almost all of my items (used books) are one-off offers, if I read this right, it will always be zero, since either the amount in stock, or the amount sold is going to be zero, and those numbers get multiplied together.
But since this does not affect the IPI, it’s nice to know that I can totally ignore it.
Thanks for the information.
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
I just received the “Free inventory removal for a limited time” e-mail from Amazon. This is good news and could solve a lot of sellers excess inventory issue.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
EDIT
I want to edit this comment and say that @SEAmod opened a case and refunded the amount of the recalled inventory we just brought back and I didn’t want this example of wonderful customer service to go unnoticed. I didn’t expect to ever see this and was going to chop it up to bad timing but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. This has fixed that. Thank you Susan for making this right!
/EDIT
Ok this definitely irks me a little bit. I (and I imagine many of you) just received the following email:
That all sounds great and wonderful but I and I know a lot of you in an attempt to be proactive and good acting sellers have already recalled most or all of your excess inventory in order to be compliant. We just paid $200 just last week. You would think they would have announced this earlier instead of now after all of the good boys and girls of the Amazon seller world have already attempted to take care of the problem.
Seller_eKF1L3i4LxO1i
Thank you for the updates.
2 quick questions:
-
Does the “Manage Excess Inventory” page list all of the excess inventory that is negatively impacting our IPI?
-
Assuming the answer to #1 is ‘Yes’, why is the # of excess units metric and the corresponding percentage always wrong? Is it using data from xx days ago?
Metric said ~380 for weeks, even though actual number of excess units was ~120.
Metric finally updated to ~180, which was still much too high.
Metric stuck at ~180, even though actual number further reduced to ~75.
Metric just updated to ~150, still approximately double the actual number.
(Note: The number of excess SKUs seems to update in real-time. But the number of excess units and the corresponding percentage is always off.)
Seller_k9gKxYXv4ZEHu
What are the storage limitation parameters?
Are there bands in place related to score or is storage space reduced by a certain percentage?
Seller_k9gKxYXv4ZEHu
What are the storage limitation parameters?
Are there bands in place related to score or is storage space reduced by a certain percentage?
Seller_eoks2ZELtTL0o
Other than seeing that neat green bar creep right-ward, how does the Inventory Performance Index affect me as a seller?
Seller_eoks2ZELtTL0o
Other than seeing that neat green bar creep right-ward, how does the Inventory Performance Index affect me as a seller?
Seller_nkBcHPWfscgWg
I understand that they don’t want tons of stuff cluttering up their valuable warehouse space, but if I get penalized for sending in too much stuff, and also for letting things go out of stock, how is a seller supposed to survive without being able to see the future to know exactly how many sales they will have this month?
Seller_nkBcHPWfscgWg
I understand that they don’t want tons of stuff cluttering up their valuable warehouse space, but if I get penalized for sending in too much stuff, and also for letting things go out of stock, how is a seller supposed to survive without being able to see the future to know exactly how many sales they will have this month?
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
Glad to see this here. It confirms the theory some of us was able to figure it out about the sharp decline some of us saw in the last few weeks. I also take this as somehow good news, since those high scores are completely off the chart now, the “normal” values are in the algorithm. So: less bad surprises, aka less sharp declines.
I would like to know if the new storage limits will be in terms of UNITS or VOLUME, or if it will be different for different category sellers.
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
Glad to see this here. It confirms the theory some of us was able to figure it out about the sharp decline some of us saw in the last few weeks. I also take this as somehow good news, since those high scores are completely off the chart now, the “normal” values are in the algorithm. So: less bad surprises, aka less sharp declines.
I would like to know if the new storage limits will be in terms of UNITS or VOLUME, or if it will be different for different category sellers.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
@SEAmod Thank you for your update, as always it is appreciated.
It seems to me that the main purpose of the IPI is to further incentivize Sellers to maintain low inventory amounts and send replenishment orders in more often.
Fair enough, I can understand Amazon’s desire to do this as storage space is limited and costly and they make more money on sales than they do on storage fees alone.
It also tries to incentivize having your inventory in stock constantly (As if that weren’t the goal of every seller ever).
My main concern is the quickly growing delay from when I send in my inventory to when it is available to sell. When I started selling, our inventory was available to purchase within a day or two of the warehouse receiving it. Now? It seems that the first trickle of inventory (maybe 1 or 2 units) is available 5 days after it is received with the entirety of the inventory taking 2 weeks to be made available.
If this increase in time frame continues and even if it stays at current levels we’ll need to be sending inventory CONSTANTLY which increases costs (increased shipping costs as well as increase labor costs for our shipping department) as well as difficulty in predicting how much inventory to send in order to surf that thin line of “lean inventory levels” that the IPI is trying to push while not getting lost sales from being out of inventory due to slower processing speeds of Amazon warehouses.
I’m not against the idea of the IPI but I am terrified about my ability to keep inventory in stock when being coerced to send smaller shipments while at the same time having longer processing times from your warehouses.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
@SEAmod Thank you for your update, as always it is appreciated.
It seems to me that the main purpose of the IPI is to further incentivize Sellers to maintain low inventory amounts and send replenishment orders in more often.
Fair enough, I can understand Amazon’s desire to do this as storage space is limited and costly and they make more money on sales than they do on storage fees alone.
It also tries to incentivize having your inventory in stock constantly (As if that weren’t the goal of every seller ever).
My main concern is the quickly growing delay from when I send in my inventory to when it is available to sell. When I started selling, our inventory was available to purchase within a day or two of the warehouse receiving it. Now? It seems that the first trickle of inventory (maybe 1 or 2 units) is available 5 days after it is received with the entirety of the inventory taking 2 weeks to be made available.
If this increase in time frame continues and even if it stays at current levels we’ll need to be sending inventory CONSTANTLY which increases costs (increased shipping costs as well as increase labor costs for our shipping department) as well as difficulty in predicting how much inventory to send in order to surf that thin line of “lean inventory levels” that the IPI is trying to push while not getting lost sales from being out of inventory due to slower processing speeds of Amazon warehouses.
I’m not against the idea of the IPI but I am terrified about my ability to keep inventory in stock when being coerced to send smaller shipments while at the same time having longer processing times from your warehouses.
Seller_qAugRk38pcRAY
My question is if my score is above 350 on the first date (6 weeks before the end of the quarter), but it become below 350 on the 2nd date (at the end of the quarter), will I also get storage limit? I’d appreciate an answer fr the business team.
Seller_qAugRk38pcRAY
My question is if my score is above 350 on the first date (6 weeks before the end of the quarter), but it become below 350 on the 2nd date (at the end of the quarter), will I also get storage limit? I’d appreciate an answer fr the business team.
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
Nice to see how 'In Stock" is calculated. Mine has shown 0% from day one. Since almost all of my items (used books) are one-off offers, if I read this right, it will always be zero, since either the amount in stock, or the amount sold is going to be zero, and those numbers get multiplied together.
But since this does not affect the IPI, it’s nice to know that I can totally ignore it.
Thanks for the information.
Seller_nRFmxiQg4EGrw
Nice to see how 'In Stock" is calculated. Mine has shown 0% from day one. Since almost all of my items (used books) are one-off offers, if I read this right, it will always be zero, since either the amount in stock, or the amount sold is going to be zero, and those numbers get multiplied together.
But since this does not affect the IPI, it’s nice to know that I can totally ignore it.
Thanks for the information.
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
I just received the “Free inventory removal for a limited time” e-mail from Amazon. This is good news and could solve a lot of sellers excess inventory issue.
Seller_7gZ11UfksxzWl
I just received the “Free inventory removal for a limited time” e-mail from Amazon. This is good news and could solve a lot of sellers excess inventory issue.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
EDIT
I want to edit this comment and say that @SEAmod opened a case and refunded the amount of the recalled inventory we just brought back and I didn’t want this example of wonderful customer service to go unnoticed. I didn’t expect to ever see this and was going to chop it up to bad timing but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. This has fixed that. Thank you Susan for making this right!
/EDIT
Ok this definitely irks me a little bit. I (and I imagine many of you) just received the following email:
That all sounds great and wonderful but I and I know a lot of you in an attempt to be proactive and good acting sellers have already recalled most or all of your excess inventory in order to be compliant. We just paid $200 just last week. You would think they would have announced this earlier instead of now after all of the good boys and girls of the Amazon seller world have already attempted to take care of the problem.
Seller_TWoGLSIYxUwwq
EDIT
I want to edit this comment and say that @SEAmod opened a case and refunded the amount of the recalled inventory we just brought back and I didn’t want this example of wonderful customer service to go unnoticed. I didn’t expect to ever see this and was going to chop it up to bad timing but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. This has fixed that. Thank you Susan for making this right!
/EDIT
Ok this definitely irks me a little bit. I (and I imagine many of you) just received the following email:
That all sounds great and wonderful but I and I know a lot of you in an attempt to be proactive and good acting sellers have already recalled most or all of your excess inventory in order to be compliant. We just paid $200 just last week. You would think they would have announced this earlier instead of now after all of the good boys and girls of the Amazon seller world have already attempted to take care of the problem.
Seller_eKF1L3i4LxO1i
Thank you for the updates.
2 quick questions:
-
Does the “Manage Excess Inventory” page list all of the excess inventory that is negatively impacting our IPI?
-
Assuming the answer to #1 is ‘Yes’, why is the # of excess units metric and the corresponding percentage always wrong? Is it using data from xx days ago?
Metric said ~380 for weeks, even though actual number of excess units was ~120.
Metric finally updated to ~180, which was still much too high.
Metric stuck at ~180, even though actual number further reduced to ~75.
Metric just updated to ~150, still approximately double the actual number.
(Note: The number of excess SKUs seems to update in real-time. But the number of excess units and the corresponding percentage is always off.)
Seller_eKF1L3i4LxO1i
Thank you for the updates.
2 quick questions:
-
Does the “Manage Excess Inventory” page list all of the excess inventory that is negatively impacting our IPI?
-
Assuming the answer to #1 is ‘Yes’, why is the # of excess units metric and the corresponding percentage always wrong? Is it using data from xx days ago?
Metric said ~380 for weeks, even though actual number of excess units was ~120.
Metric finally updated to ~180, which was still much too high.
Metric stuck at ~180, even though actual number further reduced to ~75.
Metric just updated to ~150, still approximately double the actual number.
(Note: The number of excess SKUs seems to update in real-time. But the number of excess units and the corresponding percentage is always off.)
