The reports are there, the time is not
Amazon publishes an inventory ledger, adjustment records and a reimbursements report. In principle, anyone can work out which units were lost or damaged in a fulfilment centre and whether Amazon has already paid for them. In practice, doing it means exporting several reports, lining them up by FNSKU and date, allowing for units that were found again, and then checking each gap against the current policy.
Most small teams never get round to it. Some hand the whole job to a reimbursement agency and pay a share of whatever is recovered. Others would rather keep it in-house but cannot spare someone for a monthly reconciliation of a few thousand lines.
Why it is harder than it looks
The difficulty is not any single report. It is that an event and its resolution appear in different places, sometimes weeks apart. A unit is marked as misplaced, then found, then damaged, then reimbursed. Counting only the first event overstates what you are owed; counting nothing means you miss the real gaps.
- Lost units are often found again later, so a gap today may close by itself.
- Amazon reimburses many items automatically, so you must check existing reimbursements first.
- Reimbursements can be cash or replacement units, and both need matching.
- Eligibility rules and time limits change, and they differ by type of event.
- A claim without clean reference data takes longer and is more likely to be refused.
What goes missing when nobody checks
Unclaimed lost and damaged units are stock you paid for and will never sell or recover. The amounts per unit are small, which is why they get ignored, but they add up over a year of trading. More importantly for many sellers, an unreconciled ledger means your own stock records slowly drift from Amazon's, and every reorder and valuation decision rests on figures you cannot fully trust.
Agencies solve part of this, but their data and working stay with them. When they stop, the knowledge goes too.
The claims tracker we build
- A regular pull from the Selling Partner API of the inventory ledger, adjustments, customer returns and reimbursements for each marketplace.
- A matching step that follows each unit event through to its outcome: found, reimbursed in cash, reimbursed with units, or still open.
- A waiting period you set before an open event counts as a candidate, so items still being investigated by Amazon do not clutter the list.
- Candidate claims listed with FNSKU, dates, quantities, reference numbers and your unit cost, sorted by value and by how close they are to the time limit you have configured.
- A prepared case text for each candidate, using the facts from the reports, for a person to check and paste into a Seller Central case.
- A case log where your team records the case ID and the outcome, so the same item is never claimed twice and refusals can be reviewed.
| Event | What the tracker looks for |
|---|---|
| Warehouse lost | No later found or reimbursement after the waiting period |
| Warehouse damaged | No matching reimbursement for the damaged units |
| Customer refund, item not returned | Handled in its own returns check |
| Inbound shortfall | Handled in its own inbound check |
| Reimbursed but later found | Shown, since a reversal may follow |
We do not claim on your behalf and we do not promise any amount will be recovered. The tracker shows what the data suggests; your team decides and Amazon decides the outcome.
What your month looks like with it
Once a month, or more often if you choose, someone opens a short list of candidate claims with the facts ready. They check a few, raise the cases that look sound and record the IDs. Next month, the outcomes appear next to each case, and anything refused is visible for a second look.
Your stock records also stop drifting, because every lost, found and damaged unit is accounted for in one place that your own team can read.
You probably need this if
- You have never reconciled the inventory ledger against reimbursements.
- You would rather not hand a share of recoveries to an agency indefinitely.
- Nobody knows which lost units Amazon already paid for.
- Claims have been refused because the details were incomplete.
- Your own stock count differs from Amazon's and nobody can explain why.