Many sellers feel that keeping track of returns and damaged (unfulfillable) products is a waste of time. I love to find money that Amazon owes me, it feels satisfying to have them pay me instead of take, take and take.

Charlene Anderson walks us through the steps, using a few simple steps to catch most of the stuff that can fall through the cracks.

Things I Check Weekly
Repackaging settings
Unfulfillable inventory
Reconciliation of inbound shipments
Suppressed listings
Listing quality alerts
Things I Check Several Times a Day
Feedback
Pending Orders
Buyer Message
Performance Warnings

Things I Check from My Calendar
Refunds/returns/reimbursements

Warehouse Damage

Charlene tells us where and how to check for Warehouse Damaged products - on Manage Inventory Page (not the FBA inventory page), make sure you have the "unfulfillable" column set to show and then sort. You are looking for any qty in that column and then you will need to investigate why it's unfulfillable.

Returns

Returns are usually automatically reimbursed to you if the customer does not return the item back to Amazon. The reimbursement is a 45 day wait period, so you will want to create an easy (copy/paste) note in your online calendar (iCal for mac/Google calendar for PC).  Copy the order number, the dollar amount and the product name in an "event" on a date 45 days from the date Amazon contacts you (via email) telling you about a returned item.

Then, when the 45 day rolls around on your calendar, you will need to refer to 2 different reports - Reports>Fulfillment>Customer Concessions>Returns AND Reports>Fulfillment>Payments>Reimbursements. Paste in the order number to start the reconciling process.

If you don't find the item has been returned to Amazon and/or you don't see a reimbursement, it's time to open a case with Amazon Seller Support.

Reconciling Shipments To FBA

In the Amazon Shipping Que - sort by closed shipments. Look at the two columns "Shipped" and "Received" - they should both match.  Debra goes one step further and makes sure that all items in the shipping plan have been checked in correctly.  If you have similar products, the person checking in your shipment could check in 6 of one item and 0 of another very similar item, even if the shipment contents clearly states that 3 of each were shipped.

Once a shipment is closed - or 3 days have passed since the box was checked in - you have a tab you can click called "Reconcile". You can communicate your issue directly on this page.

Oh - we mentioned Charlene's Private FaceBook Group at the end of the podcast. If you are interested here is the link:

http://wholesalesourcingexperts.com/group/

That's my story... and I'm sticking to it...

Debra Conrad

Listen live to the show Wednesday's , 2pm ET at http://thriftingforprofit.com/listen