Complete Guide to FBA Reimbursements:

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2 Complete Guide to FBA Reimbursements: 10 Step by Step Processes to Make Sure You Are Getting the Reimbursements You Deserve Disclaimers: While the purpose of this guide is designed to show how I am able to obtain reimbursements owed from Amazon, I know that each person reading this will achieve different results. This book is based on my personal experience. There is no guarantee that you will earn any money using the techniques described in this document or mentioned in this guide. Any information presented here is not to be interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. The amount of reimbursements received is entirely dependent on the person applying the techniques, and the number of payment errors occurring in your Amazon account. Your level of success in attaining these types of results depends on the time you devote to the business, your financial situation, and your knowledge/skill level. Due to the fact that all of these factors vary widely between individuals, I cannot guarantee or predict your success or income level from using the strategies outlined in this guide. All mention of promises to earn money either stated or implied are strictly based on my opinion. I do not intend to render any legal, accounting, or other professional advice in the document contained herein. I am not a representative of Amazon or any other company mentioned in this book. Certain links included in this guide are affiliate links for which I will receive a commission if you make a purchase through them. All links within this book are for products I use personally and believe are worth the investment. Copyright 2016, Ryan Grant Except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 2

3 Foreword by Jim Cockrum Perhaps my greatest role as an educator in the online business arena is filtering out the noise for my students and delivering actionable, profitable advice and content right when and where my customers and students want and need it. I take that role seriously and I'm well aware that you measure my relevance by my ability to do just that. My team and I evaluate numerous projects monthly, and the default response we have to virtually all products, ideas and courses is a resounding "no". When Ryan brought us this concept I was skeptical at first as I always am, but as we dug in to the simple yet powerful concepts he shares it became evident that we'd found a winning idea (we call these ideas "right" ideas because "good" ideas simply aren't good enough for us). The bottom line is this. If you are selling on Amazon, then Amazon probably owes you money that they are mistakenly not paying you. If you are selling a LOT on Amazon, then are you probably leaving a LOT of money with Amazon that belongs to you! I assure you, Amazon wants to get it right and I'm sure you do to! Ryan's guide will get you taken care of and help you create a system that will make your payouts bigger. There's nothing sneaky or illegitimate about what you'll learn here. This is all about getting the number right - something we should all strive for! You won't get what you are due without a process. This book is that process. I'm honored to endorse this strategic, systemized approach to managing the reimbursements you are due from Amazon as a seller on the Amazon platform. - Jim Cockrum Creator of ProvenAmazonCourse.com COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 3

4 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Lost / Damaged / Destroyed Inventory 2 Reconciling Customer Refunds & Reimbursements 3 Reconciling Inbound FBA Shipments 4 Other Customer Concessions 5 Returns Over 30 days 6 Verifying Customer Exchanges 7 Customer Return Issues 8 Warehouse Damaged Units 9 Tips for Success COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 4

5 Introduction Selling on Amazon is an amazing opportunity. The ability to tap into their world class fulfillment network, and have access to sell products to millions of customers is unparalleled on any other platform. I am a huge fan of being able to sell on Amazon, and overall enjoy the vast majority of it. Unfortunately, there are a few things about selling on Amazon that are a bit of a pain to deal with. One of those things that is cumbersome is making sure that you are properly reimbursed for every situation that you deserve to be. In theory, Amazon s systems would be accurate to the point of being able to identify all of these instances where we are owed reimbursements, but in reality when they are processing millions of transactions per day, a few things are bound to slip through the cracks. That is exactly what this guide is designed for. To help you identify instances where you were incorrectly charged for something that you shouldn t have. We are all selling on Amazon to make a profit, so any time we are picking up the tab for something we shouldn t be it cuts directly into our net profit. Throughout this guide I will show you 10 different situations where you might not be getting the reimbursements that you deserve. This guide will walk you step by step through each process to see if you are owed reimbursements, as well as specific details on how to go about opening cases with Amazon to ensure you are reimbursed. The goal of this guide is to do two things. The first is to make sure that you go through ALL of your eligible previous transactions from selling on Amazon to identify instances where you are owed money. Whether you have only sold a few thousand dollars on Amazon so far, or if you have sold millions, I am willing to bet there are some reimbursements out there waiting for you. In my business, I know that going through these processes recovers in the ballpark of $1,000 per month that otherwise would have slipped through the cracks. These are very material numbers, and if you haven t done these processes before, there s likely a good amount of money sitting out there waiting to be returned to you. The second goal of this guide is to make sure that you go through these processes on a regular basis. My recommendation would be monthly. However, weekly, quarterly, or really any other COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 5

6 timeline can work, it s just important to do it consistently. It will add to your bottom line. Hopefully after you see a few reimbursements flow in you won t have too much trouble finding room for these processes on your monthly to do list. A quick note on the layout of this guide. The order in which each of these processes are included is not random. I have gone through and put the processes in order in terms of the priority of which I would recommend going through them. Going through every step of this guide will be well worth your time, but if you go through in order, I am willing to bet you will get some quick wins, and happily go through the whole thing. The dollars are out there waiting for you, let s get right into the process of recovering as many of them as possible! Wishing you much success! -Ryan Grant COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 6

7 Lost/Damaged/Destroyed Reimbursement With huge amounts of inventory moving throughout Amazon s warehouses there are times when items are either lost, damaged, or destroyed. In theory you should be reimbursed for a large majority of these instances, but in practice that doesn t always happen. This guide begins with the process of recovering reimbursements for inventory that is lost, damaged, and destroyed. Keeping track of this manually would be a difficult and daunting task, fortunately, Amazon has reports that we can run to find instances where inventory is lost, damaged, or destroyed. Just about every item that will show up on these reports will be eligible for reimbursement. By running a few reports we can quickly identify items that we should be reimbursed for. The following steps walk you through how to pull all of the information and assemble it into cases for Amazon to review. (Note: This method for opening cases in seller central can be applied to all methods of reimbursement for lost, damaged, and destroyed) 1. Hover over the Reports tab and click on the Fulfillment option as shown below: COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 7

8 2. After clicking on the Fulfillment button, the screen below will open. Click on the Show more link in the left hand column under the title heading, Inventory. 3. Once you click on Show more under the inventory section, you ll want to click on Inventory Adjustments. This is the report we will be running to determine items due for reimbursement. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 8

9 4. Now that the report has been selected, depending on the number of items you will be submitting for reimbursement, you ll want to decide if you want to view the products online or by download. I recommend for more than 50 items in each potential reason group (Lost/Damaged/Destroyed), you will want to do the Download feature. If you have less than that you can just run the report in the View Online option. a. If you re choosing the Download feature skip down to step 6. b. For the View Online option continue to step 5 below. 5. For the View Online option you will want to: a. As shown below, select Lost (Red Arrow) and then select Exact dates (Yellow Arrow) in the drop down for Event Date. i. When running this report for the first time, make sure to go back to your account inception to recover all of the potential reimbursements. After running each report, open cases for the affected items. This will allow you to go back to the inception of the account to recover every potential item that might be eligible for reimbursement. b. Click on Generate Report (Green Arrow). c. All of the items that will display in the report should be reimbursed. Some of these items have likely been reimbursed previously, although from my experience less than 20% of them have been for my account. The best practice would be to go through each item before opening a case to verify if it has been reimbursed previously or not. However, I have found that it works to open cases COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 9

10 directly with Amazon for all items on this report, and they will go through and only issue reimbursements for items that have not been reimbursed previously. If you want things to be 100% accurate then I d recommend reconciling each item, but if you have literally hundreds of items in these reports it might be better to just open a case for every 5-20 SKU s in the report. I highly recommend only opening cases for reconciled items, but as my goal with everything I do, I want to share the full picture of how I do things. The recommended way to go through this process is to reconcile each item. d. To create a case view, How to Create Cases on page 19 for the step by step instructions. e. Repeat step 5 for both Damaged, Destroyed, and Other items. These will be included options to choose from in the Reason Group drop down. i. For the Other items, we are only interested if the Reason column says Damaged miscellaneous. f. Create cases for these affected items just as you did for the Lost items. g. If you choose to reconcile every item on these reports prior to opening cases, skip to step 11 for the details of how to reconcile. Note: It is a best practice and keeps you in line with Amazon s policies by reconciling every item before opening a case. 6. For the people who chose the Download feature here s how to complete that process: a. Make sure to choose Exact dates in the drop down for Event Date. You want to set your start date as the inception of your account and the end date as of the day you are going through the items. Enter in those dates, and then click Request Download. b. After you have selected Request Download the report will show up as shown in the screenshot below as soon as it is available for download. Click Download next to the appropriate report. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 10

11 7. Once you click on the Download button you ll be prompted to open a.txt file. Open this file. The next step is to get this data transferred into an Excel file. To do this: a. Click anywhere in the text file, and press the control key and A (ctrl+a) which is the keyboard shortcut for select all. b. Once all the data is selected, press the control key and C (ctrl+c) which is the keyboard shortcut for copy. c. Next, open up Excel and click in cell A1. d. Now press the control key and V (ctrl+v) which is the keyboard shortcut for paste. 8. Once the text has been copied over to an Excel spreadsheet you ll then want to add filters to the top row of the document. You can see this process in the screenshot below. a. Click the Data tab (Red Arrow) b. Highlight the top row by clicking on the number 1 (Yellow Arrow) c. Click the Filter button (Green Arrow) COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 11

12 9. Once the filters are in the top row, you can click the drop down on the reason column (Red Arrow). a. Note: Short hand reason code for the excel sort is as follows: Damaged E, Destroyed D, Lost M, Damaged (miscellaneous) Q. b. Select the check box next to E, D, M, and Q (Yellow Arrows). Then click OK (Green Arrow). COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 12

13 10. Now you have a report showing only items that were lost damaged or destroyed. All of the units that are displayed at this point should have been reimbursed. a. I would recommend opening cases to ask for reimbursements for all the items on the spreadsheet at this point. Though you can go through reconcile each item, we ve found 80%+ of items are being reimbursed when submitting the items in bulk without reconciling previously. Seeing as you are using the download method, it will likely be much more efficient to open a case for everything as opposed to reconciling each item individually. b. Lastly, save a different Excel spreadsheet for every 5 to 20 SKU s (depending on how many you are going to be submitting per case). This will make it easy to COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 13

14 attach a different spreadsheet for each case. See step 5c in How to Create Cases on page 17 for labeling instructions on each spreadsheet. Note: 5 items per case is the recommended amount. 11. If you choose to reconcile each item before submitting for reimbursements, here s the process: a. Hover over Reports and select Fulfillment as shown below. b. Then, under the Payments heading in the left hand column, click on Reimbursements. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 14

15 c. That will open the screen below. From here you can look up your reimbursements via the View Online option. (If you want, you can choose the Download option and compare the lost, damaged, and destroyed items in Excel as well) i. Use either the Merchant SKU (MSKU / Red Arrow) or the Fulfillment Network SKU (FNSKU / Green Arrow) fields. ii. Make sure your Event Date field is going back to the account inception (Yellow Arrow) iii. Click Generate Report (Blue Arrow) COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 15

16 d. If you see the following screen, then you know you have been reimbursed for the lost/damaged/destroyed item: i. Important: Even if you see you have been reimbursed, make sure to check if you should ve been reimbursed for multiple of the same units as they will often share the same SKU. ii. Using the search function in the lost/damaged/destroyed spreadsheet should make it easy to see if there were multiple items that had the same SKU. Hold control and press the F key (ctrl+f) and then search for the SKU to see if more than one exists. iii. If you re using the Download feature this should be easy enough if you are using formulas to compare matching SKU s. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 16

17 e. If you see the message, No results found message, then you know this is an item that still has to be reimbursed and this item should be included when creating cases: COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 17

18 How to Create Cases for Lost/Damaged/Destroyed Inventory: Creating cases is a fairly simple process. The only issue with submitting cases is that Amazon only wants to see 5 SKUs per case. This may present a problem as it is possible that you are looking at a report with hundreds of items you need to open cases for. You will see a potential workaround for this issue in step 5 below. 1. When in seller central, click on the Help button in the top right hand corner as shown below. 2. After you click on the Help button the window below will slide out from the right hand side of the screen. Click on the, Contact Us button as shown below. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 18

19 3. This will open a new screen where you will have to tell Amazon what your issue relates to. a. First click on Selling on Amazon COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 19

20 4. Then you ll want to click on the Fulfillment by Amazon button and then the, FBA Issue button, and then click Something else. 5. Lastly, this will open the contact form where you can select to contact Amazon via . We will select to contact Amazon via . I ve included text below of what I say when I am opening a case with Amazon for this issue. a. Here is the text if you wish to copy/paste it as you are creating your cases: Hello, Please review the following items and reimburse for the lost/damaged/destroyed units. Due to being a small business and having time constraints, I've attached 20 items because opening cases in smaller amounts isn't feasible. Thanks in advance. I appreciate your help in this matter. Sincerely, INSERT NAME HERE b. Feel free to add anything to this message as it relates to your products. Just an FYI, Amazon reps don t want more than 5 units to be included in each case as noted above. We ve had success with units per case by using the exact message above. It is recommended to just go with 5 items per case. c. Notice on the screenshot on the next page that I also numbered the Contact Reason (Yellow Arrow) subtitle to keep track of the number of submissions. This will help you especially those who are using the Download method. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 20

21 i. If you are saving separate Excel documents with 5-20 items each, then I recommend you name each spreadsheet with the same title as the Contact Reason field to make for an easy process to attach the correct file to each case without accidentally uploading the same thing more than once. d. If you choose to use the View Online method then I would proceed as follows: i. I would use the exact message above, but add in that the items you want to be reviewed are pasted below the text of your message. Then paste 20 SKU s and their corresponding FNSKU s in the body of the case message. e. If you choose the Download method follow this process: i. Select the Add attachment (Green Arrow) button and upload a spreadsheet. ii. Upload a spreadsheet that has 5-20 rows/items from the spreadsheet we finalized in step 10 above. Note: you will likely have to copy/paste from the initial file into a new file with only 5-20 items to open the case. f. Opening cases takes time, but there is most likely significant amounts of money that will be recovered by going through this process, so even if you have to open cases of 5 units per case, it will be worth your time! That s the process! Repeat as many times as necessary to go through all of your items. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 21

22 Reconciling Customer Refunds & Reimbursements This process will help you recover reimbursements for items that customers were issued refunds for, but ultimately they never returned the item. This happens a lot more often than you might initially think. In theory when a customer is refunded but never returns the item, you will be issued a reimbursement 45 days from the date of the refund. In practice, these reimbursements are only issued some of the time. Using this method consistently brings in reimbursements month after month. Let s get into how to recover these missing reimbursements: 1. First to find the items that were refunded, we need to pull a report. Hover over Reports and select Payments as shown below. 2. The following Payments screen will open and you want to fill it out as follows: a. Click on Transaction View. (Red Arrow) b. If you haven t done this before and need to reconcile refunds back to the inception of the account, choose Custom Date Range and enter the appropriate dates. If you have done this before, enter the dates that correspond to the last time you completed this process through 45 days prior to the date you are going through the process. The reason for going 45 days prior is the fact that those are the ones that will be eligible for reimbursement. (Yellow Arrow) COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 22

23 c. Choose to filter the view by Refunds. (Green Arrow) 3. Once you have selected the Filter view by section as Refund and the date range that you want to examine, click on the update button. 4. You should see a screen similar to this after you complete the process: COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 23

24 5. Now that we have easy access to all the Order ID s (note they are blurred out in the screenshot above, but should be easy to see on your screen), we can start to see if we have received a reimbursement for each these transactions. a. We want to take each Order ID separately and paste it into the Find a transaction field (Yellow Arrow) under the Transaction view page (Red Arrow) in seller central. Note I recommend doing this in a new tab so that you can leave the report in step 4 open. b. Hit the GO! button to examine this order (Green Arrow). See below for detail: 6. This will open the following page seen in the screenshot below. In this screen you are looking to determine if you have been reimbursed for the item or not. Reimbursements are easy to spot as the product details will say FBA Inventory Reimbursement, the number will be positive, and it will also be the color blue. So below is an example of what you will see once you ve entered in an order ID that does not have a reimbursement. Since we don t see a reimbursement under the Transaction type in this example, we have to look further into this order to see if it indeed was returned to our inventory. 7. The process to check if the item has actually been returned to your inventory will be COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 24

25 detailed in steps a. If you do see a reimbursement, that means things have been accounted for properly, and you have the reimbursement you are entitled to. Start over at step 6 with the next order id. Here s an example of what it will look like when a reimbursement has already been processed (note it may only be one line item, just make sure the amounts match the amount initially refunded to the customer): b. Be careful when looking for reimbursements. Don t just assume the reimbursement is there because there are 3-4 lines. Look closely! c. IMPORTANT: If you see a reimbursement that is less than the amount that was initially refunded to the customer I recommend opening a case. It can be more difficult to get these differences refunded, but if you are persistent and use the strategies outlined in the Tips for Success section at the end of this guide you should be able to get reimbursed the vast majority of the time. Here are the steps to open those cases: i. Click Help in the top right corner of your seller central account. ii. Click Contact us in the bottom left corner of your screen. iii. Click Selling on Amazon iv. Select Customers and orders v. Paste in the applicable order ID vi. Select Return and refund issues vii. Select Other customer and order issues viii. Send the following text: Hello, Upon reviewing the reimbursement amount issued for this order, it does not match the amount that was refunded to the customer. Please reimburse the difference. Thanks, INSERT YOUR NAME COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 25

26 ix. That s it for these, but as I mentioned be prepared to use the strategies mentioned in the Tips for Success section at the end of this guide to make sure you get these reimbursements. 8. If you re missing the reimbursement line item entirely from the refund spreadsheet data as shown in step 6 then we need to compare this info against the customer return report. We can find this by going to Reports and clicking on Fulfillment as shown below. 9. That will bring you to the following screen, and you ll want to choose the Returns link under the Customer Concessions subtitle on the left hand column. 10. Now that we have the Returns report open: a. We ll want to paste the order number for the item that we want to check to see if it has been reimbursed. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 26

27 b. Change the event date to Exact dates and input the desired timeline. You will want to use a start date that is prior to the date of the initial order and through the current day. I generally just use something like 1/1/2010 through the current day so that I know I for sure have my bases covered, and then I don t have to change the date when I am checking other order IDs as I leave this report open in a new tab as I am going through this process. c. After you ve pasted in the order ID, click Generate Report. 11. If the far right column displays unit returned to inventory then you know the item has been returned to your inventory. a. That means that things were handled properly and you are not owed a reimbursement. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 27

28 Here s the same message, but zoomed in on the far right column. When you see this, things went as they should, and you aren t owed a reimbursement. b. If you don t see unit returned to inventory then it s time to open a case. i. Make sure to double check your date range and verify that the report still doesn t display any results, and if there are no results then it s time to open a case. ii. Here s what it looks like when you don t see a confirmation message and you need to open a case. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 28

29 12. To open a case select the following options after clicking on Help in the top right hand corner of seller central, and then Contact Us. a. Select Selling on Amazon (Red Arrow) b. Select Customers and orders (Yellow Arrow) c. Enter the order number (Green Arrow). d. Then click Next (Blue Arrow) 13. Then you ll want to click on Return and refund issues and then Next again. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 29

30 14. Then you ll be routed to this screen and you ll want to select Other customer and order issues as shown below. Then click, Next. 15. That will bring you to the following screen and you ll want to type a similar message to the one I ve included below. Make sure to include anything else you may want to have reviewed. a. Here s text of the generic message we include in our cases below. Feel free to use as a starting point for your own cases: Hello, Looking through the details of this item it appears this customer was refunded but never actually returned the item. Please review this order and issue a reimbursement for INSERT AMOUNT OF THE REFUND. I appreciate your help with this matter. Thanks, INSERT YOUR NAME COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 30

31 Now repeat this step of opening cases for every item that was not properly reimbursed. A couple notes on this section: 1. In this process in particular, it s very important to follow up and make sure you get reimbursed the correct amount. If you don t get reimbursed for the full amount that was initially refunded to the customer, I recommend reopening the case and using the text similar to step 7 above. 2. If you are an InventoryLab user, it s very easy to combine doing this process with marking your returns as sellable or defective. Basically you have to copy/paste the order IDs either way to check on the status in the return disposition post above, so depending on how often you go through and set the status of your returns in InventoryLab, it might be worth doing this process at the same time. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 31

32 Reconciling Inbound Shipments In this part, I ll show you how to reconcile all of your inbound FBA shipments to make sure all your items have been correctly received at Amazon FBA warehouses. If there is a discrepancy between what you sent and what was received, you can open cases and get reimbursed for missing items/products. Let s get started. 1. Go to Manage FBA Shipments in seller central. 2. You will see all of your inbound shipments here. a. You will want to go through every shipment since the last time you completed this reimbursement method. If you have never done this before, go back as far as Amazon will let you. I recommend opening every shipment in a new tab by clicking on the shipment link as shown below. (Note: you can open them in a new tab by either right clicking and selecting to open in a new tab, or holding the control key and then clicking on the name of the shipment) COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 32

33 b. Here s a close up relating to the above screenshot. These are the links that you will want to open each tab for. 3. When you click on the shipment names, each one will bring you to the following screen. a. From here, you ll want to click on the tab that says, Reconcile. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 33

34 a. Here s a close up to show the reconcile tab in more detail 4. If it brings you to the following page with the message about your inventory being received in full, then you re good to go for this shipment and you can move on to the next shipment to review by going back to step 2. (Or if you have the tabs open, just go to the next tab). COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 34

35 a. Here s a close up of the above message so it is clearer. 5. If you see a screen like the one below, then that means you have some discrepancies and possible reimbursements coming your way. To get started, you ll want to select an option for each drop down on each item listed. In this case, there are two potential discrepancies with this shipment (the 2 Red Arrows). Again, here is a more zoomed in version to view what it looks like: 6. For each discrepancy you can see how many items have been located vs. how many items you originally shipped. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 35

36 a. The +1 items are units that they received in excess of what you shipped i. For most discrepancies that are a +1 you ll want to choose Extra units shipped. This signifies that you had sent additional units than you otherwise indicated according to your inbound shipments. This is an acknowledgement that you sent items that weren t supposed to be part of the shipment. No other action will be needed and these items will be added to your inventory if they haven t been already. If you didn t send these additional units then you can select Unexpected Please Research. This option will have them look into the units and determine if they are yours or if they should be attributed elsewhere. If you know you didn t ship extra units, then select Unexpected Please Research. b. The -1 items are shortfalls of items that you re missing and that haven t been received into your inventory i. For the -1 discrepancy items, most of the time you ll want to choose Missing Please Research unless you know that you didn t send the items. This signifies that you sent the item and Amazon has misplaced the unit/never received the item. This triggers an investigation into the units once you submit your request and a reimbursement will be made if they can t locate the units. Alternatively, you can choose Units not shipped, if you never shipped the items. This is an acknowledgement that you didn t send the units into the FBA warehouses and no action will be taken by Amazon to further investigate these items. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 36

37 7. It is possible that Amazon will require you to provide additional documentation in order to be reimbursed. If applicable, you ll see this portion become required in the Upload documents section. a. 99% of the time they won t ask for any additional information, but if you re shipment has a lot of discrepancies and you say the units are missing (5+) then they could require invoices. Also, if the shipment is more than 6 months old, it s highly likely you will be required to upload documents. b. If it s required to upload documents, then we will provide the invoices for the affected units. You ll know if you have to add this in when it s required, since you can t submit the reconciliation without providing invoices. This doesn t happen overly often, but when it does, I simply find the applicable item receipts/invoices from my Shoeboxed account. This service makes it very easy to find receipts, and I can save them as PDFs to immediately upload to Amazon. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 37

38 8. More often than not the Upload documents section will have a message stating, No additional documents required. In this case you will proceed to step 3, stating Provide additional information. a. I ve never used this field. Of course, if you feel there is something you should note here, feel free. 9. Once these are complete, then you ll want to select the Preview your request button. 10. This will then pop-open this box as shown below. Confirm your selections and hit the Submit Request button. 11. You ll then get this confirmation message and you have completed the process of having your products submitted for review! COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 38

39 Other items to note regarding reconciling inbound shipments: If you see this message at the reconcile tab, then you simply have to wait for them to complete the check in process at the fulfillment centers before reconciling the units. If you see the word, Submitted in the discrepancy part where the drop down used to be, that means you have already gone through the shipment reconciliation process. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 39

40 Here s a close up to illustrate the above point. This is what it looks like when items have been reconciled already. If you want more detail, you can always click the Case ID link that s associated with this item. When in doubt about a shipment, feel free to open a case the old fashioned way and supplying the shipment ID so they can review the issue. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 40

41 Other Customer Concessions Other concessions are amounts that Amazon will charge to your Amazon seller account for an amount that is refunded for a reason outside of your control. This could be due to the customer receiving the item late, or Amazon issuing the customer a refund as a goodwill gesture if anything went wrong with the fulfillment end of the transaction. Basically it is amounts that Amazon gives out at their discretion that you are initially charged for. In theory, you will be reimbursed after 45 days for all of these instances, but in practice it only happens some of the time. Let s get into the details of how to check and see if you are owed reimbursements for other concessions. To begin, you will need to run a report to identify all of your refunds. Here are the details on how to run that report once you are logged into your Amazon seller account: 1. Hover over reports at the top of your Amazon Seller account and then click Payments. 2. Then click on Transaction View towards the top of the screen. 3. Then select Custom date range and enter in the dates that you want to check through. Note: I d recommend going pretty much back to the beginning of your account if you haven t done this type of check before. Also noteworthy is this report will only display 600 transactions at a time, so if you have more refunds than this, you will have to either run this report multiple times, or use date range reports. 4. After you ve selected the dates, then filter the view by Refund using the drop down menu. 5. Then click update to have your search populated. 6. Then click download to obtain a text file with all of the transactions included. 7. Open up the text file, then click anywhere in the text file, hold the control key, and press A (ctrl + A) and this will highlight the entire document. 8. Then copy all of the info in the text file by holding control and pressing C (ctrl + C) or right clicking and selecting copy. 9. Then open up excel or a google spreadsheet and paste the information into the spreadsheet. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 41

42 10. Click on the far left row that has the titles in them, for me row 4, to highlight the row (see the arrow in the screenshot below) 11. Then go to the data tab and click filter. This will create drop down arrows by each column heading. 12. On the Payment Detail heading use the filter option to show only Other concession which should look something like this: You now have the report you need to be able to verify that you have been properly reimbursed for any other concessions. In order to verify these, copy the order number from each order and paste into the payment details section of your account. This can be accessed by hovering over Reports at the top of the screen and then clicking Payments. You can see that screen here: COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 42

43 Then if things are reimbursed properly you should see something like this: If you see something like the above where you were reimbursed for the other concession amount (in this case $20), then no further action is needed. However, if you see something like this further action will be needed: In this case I can see that the customer was initially refunded $32.54, and then another $36.98 was refunded to them. These will almost always be other concessions, but you can verify the reason by clicking on the hyperlink of the dollar amount in question (in this case the $36.98) and you will see this: This indicates that a customer was indeed issued a refund for an other concession and you were not reimbursed for it, so it s time to open a case to request a reimbursement from Amazon. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 43

44 To open the case: 1. Click Help in the upper right hand corner of your Amazon seller account 2. Click Contact Us in the bottom right corner of the screen 3. Click Selling on Amazon 4. Select Customers and orders 5. Enter the order number and click next 6. Select Return and refund issues 7. Select Other customer and order issues 8. Enter details and submit case, here s the text I am using: Hello, On this order, the customer was issued a $INSERT AMOUNT refund for other concession. Please issue a reimbursement for this amount. Best Regards, Ryan That s it for this process. You shouldn t get much push back on these, but if you do, definitely reopen the cases as you should be reimbursed for the other concession portion of the refund every time they are issued from your account. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 44

45 Returns Over 30 Days Amazon in their quest to provide excellent customer service will occasionally refund customers beyond the normal return period of 30 days. This will hold true for all orders unless they are in the baby category which has a return period of 90 days. Or if it falls under the holiday return policy. The holiday return policy allows any item purchased by customers from November 1 st through December 31 st to be returned until January 31 st. From my experience, Amazon will not reimburse all of the situations where refunds have been accepted greater than 30 days from when the customer receives the item, but they will a large percentage of the time. I find that reopening the case a second time can go a long way in getting these types of reimbursements issued. We ll walk through the process I follow to identify and get reimbursed in these scenarios. This method works best for InventoryLab users as the reports they provide include both the order date as well as the date of the return. Here are the steps if you are logged into InventoryLab: 1. Click the Accounting tab in the top center of the screen 2. Select Refunds 3. Click Advanced in the top right corner of the screen 4. Change the far left box to From and then select the date range that you want to go through and click search. 5. Click Export in the top right corner of the screen 6. Click OK (You can change the name if you like, but it s not necessary) 7. Open the Excel file that downloads Note: If you don t use InventoryLab, then you will want to create a file using your systems to get the order date and refund date in the same file. You should then be able to follow the steps below with minimal editing. We now have the file with all of the info that we need to identify returns that were accepted over 30 days from the initial order date. Here are the steps within Excel: COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 45

46 1. Title the far right column that is blank # of Days (this will be column L if you are using InventoryLab). 2. Create a formula in this cell that subtracts the return date from the order date. This formula will be =A2-I2. 3. Then double click in the bottom right corner of this cell (L2) to copy this formula to all cells. 4. Then select row 1 by clicking on the 1 on the far left of row 1 (Red Arrow), select the Data tab (Green Arrow), and click Filter (Yellow Arrow): COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 46

47 5. After it is filtered, click the arrow on the # of Days column (Red Arrow) and then select largest to smallest (Yellow Arrow). (Note: in this step you can also do a number filter, select greater than, and then enter 30 to get the needed info. I prefer the method sorted largest to smallest as the ones that have very large numbers have a very high probability of being reimbursed.) 6. Now, you have a file with the instances isolated where customers were refunded greater than 30 days from the order date. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 47

48 It s time to open cases. I recommend opening cases for every order that is at least 30 days old. Just know that you will have a much better chance of getting refunded on the items that were refunded significantly beyond 30 days. Once you start getting into the day range the percentage that get reimbursed goes down. Here s the process for opening cases: 7. Copy the order number from the excel file 8. Paste the order number into the payment reports to see if it has been reimbursed previously. Process for that is below: a. Login to your Amazon Seller Account b. Hover over Reports at the top of the screen and then click Payments c. Paste the order number into the Find a transaction search bar and hit GO! : d. Then if there s a reimbursement already showing then there s nothing further to do. The reconciling reimbursement section above has screenshots showing what it looks like when you have already been reimbursed. e. If there is not a reimbursement, then it s time to open a case. 9. To open the case, begin by clicking the Help button in the top right corner of the screen: 10. Then right click on Contact Us (Red Arrow) and select Open link in a new tab (Yellow Arrow) so that you will have the payments report open when you go through your next item. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 48

49 11. Click Selling on Amazon 12. Click Customers and orders COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 49

50 13. Paste in the Order ID from the excel file and click Next. 14. Select the Return and refund radio button and click Next : 15. Select Other customer and order issues and click Next : COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 50

51 16. Describe the issue, and the submit the details: Here is the standard template that I use to open the case with Amazon for this issue: Hello, This customer returned this item over 30 days from the initial order. As the return window was supposed to be closed when the return was allowed, please issue a reimbursement for INSERT AMOUNT REFUNDED TO CUSTOMER. Thanks, INSERT YOUR NAME That s about it. Note that I prefer to insert the exact amount of the refund I am expecting for COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 51

52 the order. This makes it very clear to the Amazon rep, and also makes it clear when going back through the details of the case to make sure you are refunded the right amount. On all of these refunds Amazon should be at a minimum reimbursing you for 20% of the amount of the order. You can find the details on their return policy which states these percentages HERE. That policy states that if an item is returned when the return window is supposed to be closed a refund of only 80% will be issued. So on all of these orders you should receive at least 20% back, but a decent percentage of the time you will likely get a full reimbursement. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 52

53 Verifying Customer Exchanges Occasionally on some orders, a customer will request to have a replacement of an item sent as opposed to having a refund issued. I have found a few instances where Amazon has issued both the replacement item, as well as the refund in cash. Obviously, this is not the way things are supposed to work. In this section, we ll walk through the steps you need to take to identify orders this will apply to, and the process for obtaining reimbursements if there was an error. The easiest way to view this report is if you are user of InventoryLab is to download a report of all of your FBA orders. To do this, you need to: 1. Login to InventoryLab 2. Click on the tab Accounting at the top of the screen and click FBA Sales 3. Click Advanced 4. Input the date range you would like to go through 5. Click Search 6. Then click Export in the top right corner 7. Open the Excel file that downloads 8. Select the top row of the file, select the Data tab, and click Filter This is outlined with screenshots in step 11 of the Other Customer Concessions section. 9. Then sort the sales value from low to high 10. The zero dollar orders are the ones that you want to go through to see if they have been handled properly. If you don t use InventoryLab, then all you will need to do is view your order report in the format that you usually do and sort the order price from low to high, and then follow steps 7 through 10 to manipulate the data in Excel. Once you have identified the orders that this applies to, then here are your steps: 1. Copy the order ID from the Excel file 2. Login to your Amazon Seller account, hover over Reports in the top center of your screen, and then click on Payments. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 53

54 3. Paste the order ID into the search bar of the Payments report. 4. You will end up with something like this: Based on this it shows that the customer had returned this item, and received a refund, but it still didn t explain the zero dollar sale I was seeing from the InventoryLab export. I then clicked on the $70.85 link from the above screenshot so that I could view the details of the order. This led me to this screen: I see that the customer was refunded, so nothing looks off immediately. What does catch my eye is that there are 2 orders from this customer, so I then click on the link circled in red in the above screenshot. I then find the other order which is for this exact same item: This was a replacement item for the first order. Essentially the customer chose to exchange this item for the exact same item as they weren t completely satisfied with the item from the first order. The interesting part of this order was that they were not charged despite the fact that COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 54

55 they had already received a refund for the order. This didn t look right, so I searched this order ID in my payments account to see if this was indeed correct: It turns out that things were as they appeared, the customer returned the item, received a refund, AND received a replacement item without being charged. Clearly this isn t how this was supposed to go, so I submitted a case to seller support letting them know that the customer received a refund and the replacement item, and asked to be reimbursed for one of the two transactions. Here is the process for opening the case: 1. Click Help in the top right corner of your Amazon Seller Account 2. Click Contact Us 3. Click Selling on Amazon 4. Click Customers and orders 5. Paste in the order ID and click Next 6. Select Other customer and order issues 7. Enter in the details of your issue, here s the text I used: Hello, It appears this customer was sent a replacement item for this order at no cost, but already had ordered this item with this order number: INSERT ORDER ID OF ASSOCIATED ORDER and was refunded. Essentially the buyer was refunded and sent a free item. Can you please issue a reimbursement for one of these? Thanks, INSERT YOUR NAME COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 55

56 Assuming things go as planned, you will get something like this: You will notice that I was reimbursed separately for the customer return fees (I had to reopen the case in this instance), so make sure that you get reimbursed for every amount that you are entitled to. That s it. Repeat this process of looking through in detail all of your orders where you had a $0 sale. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 56

57 Customer Return Issues Unfortunately, sometimes in this business you get returns. This is just a product of doing business, however, receiving fraudulent returns, or returns that don t fit Amazon s return policy, is another story and these are eligible for reimbursement. I m referring to selling a product to a customer and receiving a return for that item that is either an entirely different item, or is not in a condition fit for return. Please see this example as a more clear depiction of the problem at hand for an instance where a customer returned an entirely different item back: We sold some pants to a customer and they returned 10 year old jeans in the place of the original item that we sold. These were obviously worn and ripped to pieces. They still received a full refund and kept the brand new item. You will want to go through the process outlined below anytime you receive a return on a product that is not in brand new condition or when it is different from the product you initially sold. Amazon s return policy clearly states that items must remain in the initial condition to be refunded/returned. To request a reimbursement when these instances occur, you will need to open a case and supply the following information. Let s get started: 1. We ll start by creating a case. a. Click on the Help link in the top right hand corner of seller central b. Click on the Contact Us link in the slide out window on the right hand side of the screen c. Select Selling on Amazon d. Select Other issues i. Select All other issues e. Choose the tab to contact Amazon f. Input all the following information in the case from steps 2-6 and click Send for review COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 57

58 i. See the lost/damaged/destroyed guide to view How to Create Cases for screenshots if you need more detail on this process. 2. First, take a picture of the return label on the product return itself and add as an attachment to the case: 3. Then, take a picture of the return label that comes in the box that you receive when you request a removal order to your address. 4. Attach a picture of the product that you received back in place of the actual product that you had originally sent. 5. Submit these photos into a case and they should be able to look up the item and issue a reimbursement! 6. Here s an example for some text, if you want to copy a generic message for instances when a customer pulls a switcheroo on you: a. Hello, COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 58

59 Please review the attached photos and documentation. We have received a return of INSERT PRODUCT NAME that was sold on INSERT DATE. The return wasn't the original item that we sold and appears to be in violation of Amazon s return policy. They returned INSERT ITEM RETURNED which was not even the item I sold, and based on this does not adhere to Amazon s return policy. As this return should not have been accepted, please reimburse my account for the amount refunded to the customer. I appreciate your help in this matter. Thanks, INSERT YOUR NAME b. If the above doesn t work the first time, it can be helpful to cite Amazon s return policy and indicate that the items should not have actually been allowed to be returned. The link s that are likely helpful are HERE and HERE. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 59

60 Warehouse Damaged Units All units that have been marked in your inventory as Warehouse Damaged are eligible for reimbursement. There are a couple different ways to do this process. The first would be to pull the damaged report as we have detailed in an earlier section in this guide (Lost/Damaged/Destroyed), and the other way is to view your unfulfillable inventory. The latter will be discussed in this example. The point of breaking this out separately is that you will likely be creating removal orders for unfulfillable items on a regular basis. By requesting the reimbursement for these items upfront you will ensure you are reimbursed, as the reimbursement can be harder to obtain if you get the item shipped back to you. 1. To get started going through this process click on the Inventory link or the Manage Inventory link in seller central as shown below. (They both take you to the same place) 2. Next click on the Remove Unfulfillable Inventory link as shown below. COMPLETE GUIDE TO FBA REIMBURSEMENTS 60