Inventory performance

The Inventory Performance dashboard is the hub for optimizing your FBA business. From this page you can identify opportunities to grow your sales, reduce costs, track key performance metrics, and compare your performance to other sellers.

The Inventory Performance Index, or IPI, is a metric to gauge your inventory performance over time.

IPI score measures how efficient and productive you are in managing your FBA inventory. Multiple factors could influence your IPI score. However, the most important ones are your actions: 1) maintain a balanced inventory level between sold and on-hand inventory and avoid excess inventory (overstock), 2) avoid long term storage fees, 3) fix listing problems, and 4) keep your most popular products in stock at the right levels, when possible, to meet customer demand and maximise customer satisfaction.

For answers to common questions, refer to IPI frequently asked questions.

There are four categories of recommendations to help improve your IPI:

• Reducing excess (overstock) inventory
• Improving your 90-day rolling sell-through by maintaining the right balance of inventory over the same time period
• Ensuring inventory is buyable by fixing listings that are stranded
• Increasing sales by keeping popular items in stock

The IPI dashboard displays a performance bar for each of the four categories:

• Excellent (dark green)
  
  

• Good (light green)
  
  

• Fair (yellow)
  
  

• Poor (red)
  
  

The Inventory Performance page also provides additional metrics of interest within each factor, which you can see by selecting Show more details. Clicking on the Show more details box associated with each category will take you to related inventory management tools, which provide recommendations to improve your performance.

We consider an item excess (overstock) if it has over 90 days of supply based on the forecasted demand.

Track your Excess inventory percentage, which is the percentage of your FBA inventory units that have been identified as excess.

In addition to the performance bar, three related metrics of interest are displayed with the Excess inventory percentage on the Inventory Performance dashboard:

• Excess units is the number of units where it likely costs you more to do nothing and pay the storage fees instead of taking an action like marking down the price or removing inventory. This value is based on the customer demand of your product and product costs (including fees and cost of goods).
• Estimated total storage cost is the sum of estimated costs you would incur if you take no action and leave your inventory idle in the fulfilment centre over a 3-year period. This includes monthly storage fees and long-term storage fees.
• The Reduce excess inventory button shows how many SKUs you have with excess inventory. Click on the button to refer to the Manage excess inventory page and take action on the inventory.

When inventory is not available for purchase due to a listing problem it results in lost sales and storage costs. This inventory is referred to as Stranded inventory. Performance in this category is measured by the percentage of your FBA inventory units that are currently not available for purchase on Amazon, or Stranded inventory percentage.

In addition to the performance bar, two related metrics of interest are displayed with the Stranded Inventory percentage on the Inventory Performance page:

• The Stranded units quantity is your total count of units in a fulfilment centre without an active offer.
• The Fix listings button indicates in how many SKUs have units in a fulfilment centre but do not have an active offer. Click the button to visit the Fix Stranded Inventory page.

Maintain the right balance of inventory with your rolling 90-day FBA sell-through rate, which is your units sold and shipped over the past 90 days divided by the average number of units on-hand in our fulfilment centres during that time period.

In addition to the performance bar, two related metrics are also displayed with your FBA sell-through rate on the Inventory Performance dashboard:

• Units sold (past 90 days) are the total FBA units sold and shipped in the past 90 days.
• The Improve sell-through button shows the number of ASINs that have an opportunity to improve sell-through. Click on the button to refer to the Inventory age page to see recommendations.

Keeping popular, replenishable products in stock helps maximize your sales. You can track your performance in this category using FBA in-stock rate, which is the percent of time your replenishable FBA ASINs have been in stock during the last 30 days, weighted by the number of units sold for each SKU in the last 60 days.

You can indicate that a SKU is non-replenishable at Restock Inventory by clicking View details in the Action column and selecting Hide recommendation. Hiding all SKUs associated with an ASIN will exclude the ASIN from your FBA in-stock rate and estimated FBA lost sales.

In addition to the performance bar, two related metrics of interest are displayed under the replenishable FBA in-stock rate percentage on the Inventory Performance page:

• Estimated FBA lost sales in the last 30 days is equal to the forecasted unit sales on days your products were out of stock multiplied by the average sales price.
• The Restock today button indicates the count of SKUs where the days of supply is less than the restock lead time. Orders from your supplier may need to be expedited to avoid going out of stock.