Amazon FBA, answered.

In practice you'll create an inbound shipping plan in Seller Central, print FNSKU labels, ship to the assigned FC, and Amazon receives the goods over the next 3–10 days. Once received, units become "Fulfillable" and you start paying storage from that day forward.

Three buckets. Referral fee (a % of sale price, varies by category — usually 8–17% on amazon.in). FBA fulfilment fee (per unit, based on size & weight). Storage fee (per cubic-foot per month, with a higher rate for inventory older than ~180 days). Aged inventory surcharges, removal fees and return-processing fees kick in only in specific cases.

You need an Amazon Seller Central account (Individual or Professional). Once registered, enrol any ASIN in FBA from the Manage Inventory page — set the fulfilment channel to "Amazon" — then create an inbound shipping plan with quantities, box dimensions and weights.

FBA wins for high-velocity, small-to-mid-size SKUs that benefit from Prime badges. FBM (you ship yourself, or via a 3PL) wins for oversize, slow-moving, hazmat, fragile, or low-margin items where FBA fees eat the entire margin. Most mature sellers run a mix.

Create the shipping plan in Seller Central — confirm units and box dimensions — print FNSKU labels and box labels — tape, palletise if needed, and hand to your carrier with the bill of lading. Track receiving from "Inbound Shipments" — partials and discrepancies are normal and reconcilable.

Referral % varies by category (e.g. apparel is higher than electronics). FBA fees scale with size and weight tier, not price.

Monthly storage is charged per cubic foot per month, with higher rates in Q4 (Oct–Dec). Long-term / aged-inventory surcharges apply to units stored more than ~180 days, escalating sharply past 271 and 365 days. The goal is to force you to keep stock turning.

An extra fee Amazon adds on top of normal storage for units that have been sitting at an FC for an extended period — typically starting at 181 days. It compounds with age. Selling through, discounting, or creating a removal order are the three escape hatches.

If a SKU isn't selling or you want it out, you can issue a removal order (Amazon ships units back to your address) or a disposal order (Amazon destroys them). Both are per-unit fees, usually lower than carrying a year of aged storage.

Start from sale price, subtract: referral fee, FBA fulfilment fee, monthly storage allocated by velocity, COGS (manufacturing + inbound freight + duties), advertising spend attributed to that ASIN, returns rate × unit cost, and any aged-inventory surcharge. The number that's left is your contribution margin — the only number that tells you if a SKU is worth restocking.

Most sellers want to stay above 500. The fastest ways up: clear aged inventory, fix stranded ASINs, and avoid running out of stock on top sellers.

Amazon caps how many units (in cubic feet) you can send into FBA, per storage type (Standard, Oversize, Apparel, Footwear). The cap is set by your sales velocity and IPI. You see it in Seller Central → Restock Inventory — "Shipment Limits".

Units sold in the trailing 90 days divided by the average units held over that period. A sell-through > 4 is healthy on Amazon; below 2 typically means you're overstocked and bleeding storage. Amazon weights this heavily in your IPI score.

Current fulfillable units ÷ daily sales velocity. If you have 600 units of an ASIN selling 20 a day, you have 30 days of cover. Add lead time (manufacturing + freight + inbound receive) and you know exactly when to place the next PO.

You need three numbers per SKU: trailing velocity, lead time, and your target days of cover. Multiply velocity × (lead time + target cover) and subtract current on-hand. Anything that comes out positive is what to reorder. Tools automate this and let you set per-warehouse thresholds.

Each bucket has its own evidence trail. Lost and damaged events show up in the Inventory Ledger; fee errors show up in your monthly Payments report; inbound shortages are visible in your Shipment Reconciliation report.

You generally have 18 months from the date of the discrepancy to file a reimbursement case. After that, Amazon refuses the claim regardless of evidence. Older sellers leave six figures on the table because no one was watching the Inventory Ledger.

Pull the Inventory Adjustments report, filter for negative adjustments with reason codes like M, F, or E. Match each event to your shipping/POs to prove ownership. Then open a Seller Central case attaching the Adjustment ID, FNSKU, quantity and dates. Amazon usually replies in 3–10 days.

Once you're past ~50 SKUs or doing > ₹40L/month, the volume of discrepancies usually justifies a service. They take 15–25% of recovered amount but typically find 3–10× more than a self-managed audit. Most reputable services are flat-rate-or-nothing.

Adjustment ID, FNSKU/ASIN, exact quantity, date of the adjustment, and a clean trail from your shipping plan or PO. Screenshots beat text descriptions every time. Keep your shipping plans and bills of lading for 24 months minimum.

FBA is great for Prime velocity but punishing on storage fees, restock caps, and oversize items. A 3PL fills the gaps: bulk reserve stock, off-Amazon channels (Flipkart, D2C, Quick Commerce), oversized SKUs, and slow movers. Most ₹1Cr+ sellers run hybrid.

Units physically sitting at an FBA centre that can't be sold because of a listing issue — suspended ASIN, suppressed listing, missing image, dimension mismatch. Find them in Seller Central → Stranded Inventory. Either fix the listing, create a removal order, or you'll keep paying storage on dead weight.

Not directly. Amazon places your inventory and distributes it internally; you don't control which FC holds what. The closest workaround is creating a removal order back to your address and then re-shipping to the desired region — usually only worth it for high-value, slow-moving SKUs.

Amazon India distributes inbound shipments across regional FCs (North, West, South, East) based on demand. You can opt into "Regional Inventory" to send a single shipment that Amazon then redistributes, or use "Distributed Inventory Placement" to send pre-split shipments yourself — cheaper inbound but more ops work.

If the two disagree, the Ledger wins. The Ledger is also the only place you can cleanly reconcile against your own shipping records.

Pull the Inventory Ledger in "Detailed View", group by FNSKU, and reconcile each adjustment against a known event (inbound, sale, return, removal). Anything you can't tie to a source is a candidate reimbursement. Most sellers find 1–4% of inbound goes missing on first audit.

Reports → Fulfillment by Amazon → Inventory section. Request the report for your date range; large date ranges queue and may take 10–30 minutes. Download as CSV. For automated daily sync, you'll need SP-API — which is what most inventory tools use under the hood.

CSV is "manual but free" — you download from Seller Central and upload. SP-API is "automatic but needs auth" — once connected, your tool pulls fresh data on a schedule. Most tools accept either. Start on CSV; move to SP-API once you stop wanting to re-download every Monday.

Three honest signals: (1) you have > 50 active SKUs and copy-pasting takes > an hour a week; (2) you've started missing reorder windows because the sheet wasn't fresh; (3) you can't reconcile what Amazon says you have against what you think you have. Any one of these means it's time.