In this article, let’s talk about the daily Amazon Seller Central daily checks that we do in my Amazon business.
Selling on Amazon is so much more than just buying stock and shipping it to amazon. There is so much more that you need to do in regard to administration, to keep your account in working order.
I’m going to share with you the daily seller central checks that my team and I, do in my business to keep our account active and in good working order. I’ll share with you all my admin tasks every day, if you’re interested in learning all these amazing Amazon seller central daily checks, then this article is for you.
Introduction
Business is more complicated than simply sending the stock to amazon and making sure your products are listed, this article will show you the administrative side behind that, making sure that your account is good and in working order.
Now, one of the most important things to build a successful Amazon business is that you spend time in your business, daily. To check the essential aspects of your business, just to make sure everything’s running as it should be. This is like checking behind message price alerts, IPI, etc.
The reason these are important is that if you leave your account to the administrative side without supervision for a long period of time, it can affect your account health in a negative way, as a result, this can cost you not only your time and energy but also money due to dealing with issues that have arisen from poor account health. These issues can lead to your account being suspended or maybe even shut down. That is why today, I’m going to share with you the daily checks that we as responsible business owners, need to do daily checks on.
Why is it important?
Carrying out these daily checks in your business is going to ensure that your account health remains in good standing at all times. Also, having these daily checks ensures that you have happy customers because you’re going to get good feedback.
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8 Amazon Seller Central Daily Checks
Buyer messages
Some messages are received from your customers. Now, the reason why you need to check these messages is that you might receive bad feedback regarding customer service if you are unresponsive, Amazon takes this very seriously, and they have a requirement that you should get back to all customers within a 24-hour period. If you fail to do that on multiple occasions that can have a negative impact on your business and your account.
Check your IPI
IPI stands for your Inventory Performance Index. This metric is to gauge your inventory performance over time. Quite simply, your IPI measures how efficient and effective you are in managing your FBA inventory. Having a higher IPI score indicates that you're managing inventory effectively. The net result of this is increasing sales, minimizing storage costs, but also increasing your restock limits.
If your IPI is too low, it’s going to affect your restock limits and how you can store stock or how much stock you can store on Amazon.
I have created a video about how to keep a good IPI score with has important points and reminders on improving and maintaining your IPI score.
Fix price alerts
These are basically when a listing is not priced competitively compared to other sellers in the Amazon marketplace. Your price is either too low or it's too high based on what Amazon thinks it should be. The reason this should be part of your daily checks is that, in seller central, Amazon will deactivate your listing if they see a ‘fix price alert’ on your account.
I have made a separate video about this fixing fixed price alerts on Amazon. It’s a step-by-step guide on how to do just that in detail.
Stranded inventory
It is when an Amazon FBA inventory item or Fulfillment center that has a product or one of your items in stock, is listed, and it so happens to get stranded, which might be due to it not being linked to the correct product on the Amazon page. If that happens, then the product is considered to be stranded, which requires manual intervention by you. They are not on sale, but they are taking up space in your storage. You’re going to be paying storage fees but can’t sell them because there’s a problem with them.
If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to fixing stranded inventory, then I’ve created a video on that in the past.
Unfillable inventory
You have inventory that has become either damaged or expired, or maybe for other reasons, and it cannot be sold on the Amazon marketplace. When this occurs, Amazon sets that item as ‘unfillable” and you usually have about 30 days to have the inventory returned or destroyed, before Amazon does what they please for them.
Unfillable inventory within Amazon’s warehouses takes up space within your restock limits while still costing you money because of the storage fees on it. So, getting it cleared out is going to save you money and also give you more space for other products that you want to ship in.
Do you need to check on these daily? The answer depends on your volume. If you are just getting started on Amazon, and are just selling a few items, then you can take time between the checks. But if you’re a successful Amazon business that manages to sell multitudes of products daily in different categories, then doing a daily check on these unfillable inventories may be the right decision for you.
If you need a step-by-step guide on how to deal with unfillable inventory, I’ve made a video on it in the past about doing just that.
Account Health
This is an overview of your account’s seller metrics that affect your overall health or eligibility to sell on Amazon’s marketplace. Failure to comply with Amazon’s terms and conditions, and having multiple complaints against your account may lead to account suspension or may even be a loss to your account.
You must check every single day that you stay on the right side of Amazon’s selling policies and also ensure that you keep your selling privileges and make that money. Which is what we want to be doing.
If you need a guide on how to keep your Amazon account healthy, I made a video on how to do just that. You can check that out here.
Case Log
The case log lets you track and manage cases that you’ve submitted to Seller Support through the Contact Us form, it’s communication between you and Amazon Seller Central support, and getting back to them as soon as possible means that you’ll be able to fix problems in a much cleaner and more effective way.
Checking your case log is going to help you reply to urgent inquiries and also solve those problems quicker with amazon's assistance by getting back to them and supporting them with immediate action.
Inventory shipments
Inventory shipment checks are the shipments that have been shipped by you into Amazon that need to be reconciled for reimbursement or any extra stock due to discrepancies in what you sent. For example, if a seller sent 10 units to Amazon, but only received eight. You’d want to investigate that, and you’d want to get your two units back or their value back. That is going to help you manage your stock, and be better. You don’t have to do these checks daily if your volume doesn’t need that sort of vigilance, but if your business has multiple shipments going out, then you’d need that daily check.
Top Tips
Make a list of all your daily checks
Just work your way through them. Considering that there are a lot of administrative tasks that need to be done just having that list that you work through every single day to make sure you avoid missing those tasks is going to help you tremendously.
What I recommend is to use the downloadable content mentioned above, it will help you out in understanding what you need to do to make sure you’re doing all these seller central checks at all times.
Document everything
This can help you track different admin issues you're having and ensures that you're giving attention to what needs to be done. Making an excel sheet is going to help you to just ensure that you’re staying on top of everything whether it be within Amazon Seller Central, maybe with your warehouse, or maybe even with suppliers. Keeping a documented case log of what you’re focusing on on the admin side means that when you come into that hour, you know exactly what you need to put your energy into.
Grow your Amazon business with these Amazon Seller Central daily checks!
These 8 Amazon Seller Centrail daily checks are game-changing, they’re going to help you keep your business in the right standing but also make sure you’re managing your inventory properly and getting your money back when necessary.
If you want more information about how to grow your Amazon business and some tips that you should look into, we have the articles for you: 4 Ways to prevent fraudulent transactions, How to create an invoice for non-VAT Amazon sellers, and How to add your product listing to an existing listing.