Whether you’ve just sent your first shipment to Amazon, or you’ve been sending shipments for years, you’ll eventually have a shipment where some of the units have gone missing.  You can tell because the Shipped and Received unit numbers won’t match:

Amazon shipping plan showing 21 units in received column versus 28 shipped
Something isn’t right here…

Amazon isn’t perfect, so even if you haven’t experienced this yet, eventually you’ll have a shipment where Amazon receives fewer units than you sent them.

When that happens, you can ask Amazon to research the missing units, which (usually) results in being reimbursed for the lost units.  To get reimbursed, you need 2 things:

  1. Proof you purchased the quantity you sent them, in the form of an invoice from your distributor or whomever you bought the product from
  2. Upload a screenshot of this invoice through the “Reconcile” tab of the shipment that is missing the units.

Below is a step by step walk through to initiate the research/reimbursement process.  If you do this correctly, Amazon will reimburse you for your lost inventory.

Seller Central "Inventory" menu highlighting "Manage FBA Shipments"
Manage FBA Shipments shipping queue highlighting "Closed" shipments
Manage FBA Shipments "Reconcile" tab
Manage FBA Shipments shipping queue highlighting "Missing - Please Research"
Example invoice to submit as proof for missing units from a shipment
Upload documents image

Hint:  You know you’ve completed this step correctly if it shows the name of an uploaded attachment like the example here “invoice proof.png”:

Documents attached image
Additional information box to leave blank
Preview your request button image

…and finally click on the “Submit your request” button to submit to Amazon.

Submit request button image

A few minutes after submitting your request, you’ll get an automated email from Amazon support, explaining they are currently investigating your shipment.

After 1 to 3 days, you’ll get another email from Amazon, saying they weren’t able to find the missing units, and are initiating a reimbursement for the lost units.

I’ve personally submitted hundreds of these investigation/reimbursement requests, and I’ve gotten reimbursed every time they couldn’t find the missing units.

One important point to emphasize is as your Amazon business grows, and you send more and more shipments, you should regularly review your shipping queue for missing units to avoid losing money on lost inventory.  Amazon will not notify you of missing units from a shipment, so you have to proactively review your shipments yourself to make sure you don’t miss out on any reimbursements owed to you.


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