ASIN limits

How to Check if your Amazon FBA Inventory is Subject to ASIN Quantity Limits

In the past couple of days I have had a few people reach out to me with questions regarding ASIN quantity limit issues on some items in their FBA shipments.  They are seeing a restriction in Amazon at the point when they are creating an FBA shipment for certain items.  In today’s post, I will show you how to find items that are currently subject to ASIN limits, and how I plan to handle things going forward.

First, if you’ve never heard about these ASIN limits, you should read Amazon’s ASIN limits policy.  Effectively, it’s another way for Amazon to ensure the items in their warehouses will sell relatively quickly, and are not used as storage facilities. This is another measure in addition to the long term storage fees that are assessed every 6 months.

This is not a new policy related to ASIN quantity limits, but it does appear that these limits are beginning to be enforced on a much larger scale.

How to Check for ASIN Limits

Now, here’s the process for identifying items in your inventory that are subject to ASIN limits:

  1. Login to your Amazon seller account
  2. Hover over reports at the top center of your screen
  3. Click on “Fulfillment”
  4. On the left side of the screen under the Inventory header, click “show more”
  5. Click on “Inventory Health”
  6. Select the “download” tab in the center of the screen
  7. Click “Request Download”
  8. It may take a few minutes for this report to download, once it’s available click the “download” button toward the right hand side of the screen.
  9. This will download a text file, open this file
  10. Click anywhere in the text file, hold the control key and then press A (ctrl + A) to select all of the data
  11. Once all of the data is selected, copy the data (ctrl + C) or (right click and select copy)
  12. Open up Excel or google sheets and paste the data (ctrl + V) or (right click and select paste)
  13. Scroll to the column that is titled “asin-limit,” for me it’s column “AR”
  14. Scan through this column and you will be able to identify all of your asins that are affected.

Depending on the amount of inventory you have, I would recommend using a filter to be able to quickly sort all of the items that are affected.  This way you don’t have to scroll through an endless list of items.  To do this in Excel:

  1. Click to the left of cell A1 to highlight the entire row
  2. Select the “Data” tab within Excel
  3. Click “Filter”
  4. Now sort the “asin-limit” column from high to low to see all of your affected items at the top of the list

That’s it.  For me there are only a handful of items that have a limit, and some are as high as 100,000 units.  Overall it doesn’t look like it will have a huge impact on my current inventory.

Now, I will discuss how this changes my process going forward.  As this doesn’t have a huge effect on my current inventory, a drastic change is not needed.

However, there will be a slight change before I place any wholesale orders or make any new larger quantity buys.  That change will be creating the FBA shipments prior to actually buying the items.  By creating the FBA shipment prior to buying the items I will be assured that I am able to ship the items to FBA before they are actually in my hands and it is too late.  Again for clarity, this will only come into play on items that I am purchasing significant quantity of.

On smaller quantity purchases, I don’t plan on changing anything, and will deal with any affected items on a case by case basis.  Most likely I will just merchant fulfill the items instead if ASIN limits are restricting me from being able to send via FBA warehouses.

That’s all I have for today.  Hopefully this post helps to clear up some of the questions you have about ASIN quantity limits.  How many items do you have affected by this? How do you plan on handling this? Let me know in the comments.  If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments as well.

21 thoughts on “How to Check if your Amazon FBA Inventory is Subject to ASIN Quantity Limits”

  1. For those of you still struggling with this all you need to do is go to your Inventory planning screen —> Restock inventory. On the Days of supply column the total available units at Amazon is listed as a hyperlink. Click the link and that will tell you everything you need to know. I tried this trick to see if it worked. The entire column is 0 and I definitely have ASIN limits across the board. Everyone does – they are just higher on some products than others. Higher velocity sellers have thousands allowed to be shipped. New products default to 200. I hope this helps.

  2. Pingback: Tamebay : Blog : Amazon FBA rejecting incoming shipments of some ASINs

  3. Ryan, in my case (I just started) nothing appear on that column, no limit, no zero, just empty, that still OK? I also created a “fake” Send/replenish inventory and shipping to double check, where I suppose to see the error or message? I went so far to “approve shipment”

    1. Hi Andy,

      My understanding is that blanks in that column indicate that the item does not have any limits. However, it appears that the data shown in the inventory health report is not a complete list for all users.

      If you didn’t see any warnings as you were creating your shipment, then none of the items were affected by the ASIN quantity limits.

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

  4. That report doesn’t line up with the items that I had rejected either. Two are blank and one of the items that was rejected shows my ASIN limit is 100,000, I was trying to send in 36 more of that item. Mind you it was a grocery replens with a rank of 5000 and only two other FBA sellers who had less than 50 in stock at Amazon. This item was also showing up on my Low Inventory Report, where Amazon was suggesting that I restock that item. I have also heard from others that this report doesn’t jive with ASIN’s that are being rejected.

    1. Hi Elisa,

      Thanks for sharing, that’s definitely odd. Have you opened a case with Amazon yet? and can you let me know what their response is?

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

      1. I found a workaround for those items, so I didn’t contact SC. I was able to click Restock on my Low Inventory Report for those items and could add those items through SC to an existing batch that I had started in Inventory Lab.

  5. Hi – It worked for me in that it I was able to get a listing of affected asins, but there are only a handful of them and they are all meltable items. I am having restrictions on Shoes and Clothing that are not showing up on this report. Do you know anything about this? Thank you so much for the helpful information.
    Cheryl

    1. Hi Cheryl,

      Thanks for the comment. I am not sure right off hand what’s going on there with the shoes and clothing. I will be sure to report back if I find any new info.

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

  6. That column isn’t correct for me as well. i currently have 2 ASIN’s being restricted and that column is blank all the way down. One item is in the report, one item is Merchant Fulfilled since I cant send any and is not in that report. I double checked just now and both are still restricted.

    1. Hi Brian,

      Thanks for reporting that. I would open a case with Amazon seller support and ask why that’s happening. It sounds like seller support has been able to change the quantity limits for some individuals so that might be worth asking. If you open a case, please let me know what you hear back. As it seems there is currently a discrepancy between the inventory health report and when actually listing the items for sale.

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

      1. I opened a case about this on the 17th but haven’t heard back. I have 5 support cases, aging in the system right now. I suspect support is overloaded from this change.

  7. Hey Ryan,

    In the last few days, about 25% of the books we attempt to list are being rejected with ASIN limit messages. The download of the IH file shows nothing but blanks in the ASIN limit column. I’ve got a case in to SC to see if they have anything helpful to say about it. But, clearly, this could be a big challenge for those of us selling single books where MF is not a viable option. We’ll see how Amazon responds.

    Thanks,
    Lauren

    1. Hi Lauren,

      Thanks for sharing, and sorry to hear that. Please do keep me posted on what Amazon says. Are these items that are being rejected items that you have in stock and are showing up on the inventory health report?

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

  8. Today’s blog is just what I needed. I have received 4 message to remove items from shipment out of the last dozen items I’ve listed. Ugh. The items are all standard size used games. None of them have ever been in my inventory. One of them says on the listing page, ” Only 7 left”. I spoke with FBA support person and she is asking a specialist if I can be allowed to list these 4 items. One of the used games sells for $150 and I really want to list it. Your information is hugely helpful. Thank you so much.

    1. Hi Jan,

      Great to hear this was helpful. Sorry to hear you’ve been having to deal with this issue, hope it works out to get the items sent in.

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

  9. There is no way to take a printout to source books..not practical..needs to be someway to define on phone..why can’t they place an “r” next to each title they restrict..i may have to open my half.com account back up..that way i’m listed on ebay and half..

    1. Hi Margie,

      I agree, there needs to be some way to check this in advance when actually sourcing products to see if they can be sent to FBA. Even if they are restricted for FBA, you would still be able to sell them MF on Amazon.

      Best Regards,
      Ryan

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