There are several scenarios that Amazon may owe you money but they didn’t automatically reimburse you. Getting your money back is crucial for your business as an FBA seller.
Here are several scenarios that you can get reimbursment from Amazon
- For lost inventory in the warehouse
- For damaged inventory
- Reconciling shipment (the number of items recevied should match the number of items you sent)
- For return items that didn’t receive it back from customers.
Get reimbursement for lost inventory
Sometimes I carried out one of the scenario, reconciling shipments, can get me $800 in a refund from Amazon. Only 1hr of work, not bad. So let’s get started with the first scenario: get reimbursement for lost inventory.
According to Amazon policy, if something got lost for 30 days, they will reimburse you for that product or replace the product. Amazon allows us to go back 18 months to request reimbursement.
Inventory adjustment report
Step 1: Get your report by going to Amazon seller central; Reports -> fulfillment -> inventory adjustment. Or through this URL.
Step 2: Set the date range for 18 months back, download the report.
Make sure you check all the “reason group”.
Step 3: Open the txt file, copy and paste it to a google sheet.
It looks like the image below. Create a filter by clicking the first row, Data -> Create a filter.
Step 4: Get the misplaced inventory.
Go to column H, reason -> select “M” -> ok. M means the item was misplaced in the inventory. Select all that are misplaced, color them “red”, copy and paste them on a new spreadsheet.
Step 5: Get the inventory that was found.
Repeat step 4, we select “F” this time. F means that the item was found in the inventory. Select all that were found, color them “green”, copy and paste them on the same spreadsheet you just pasted the misplaced inventory.
Step 6: Get the inventory that was reimbursed.
Repeat step 4, we select “N” this time. N means that the item was reimbursed by Amazon. Select all that were reimbursed, color them “dark green”, copy and paste them on the same spreadsheet you just pasted found inventory.
Step 7: Sorting by sku from A -> Z, and reconcile your inventory.
After sorting by sku, you will see the red and green colors all over. If you see an item in a green matching an item in the red, it means that it was misplaced but found or reimbursed later. What you are looking for is the item that only appears in red but not in green.
There are several things to look for:
1. check if the last 3 digits of the transaction id match. For example, -072 (in B3 cell) matches -072 (in B5 cell), which means it got lost on 6/8/2020 but was found on 8/18/2020. So you can just delete row 3 and row 5, and move on to the next item.
2. check if the “missing” date is earlier than the “found” date. For example, item in B5 cannot not be correspond for B2, because the item cannot be found earlier than the missing date.
If you only see red, but no green to cancel each other, those are the item you can ask Amazon to reimburse for. I will send them 5 items at a time.
Step 8: Contact Amazon support.
Tell them: I have reconciled the inventory adjustment report and cross-referenced the found and reimbursed products already.
The one that is left over does not show ever being found or being reimbursed. They should be reimbursed.
That’s it. Hope you got your money back from Amazon!
