FBA Inventory Discrepancies: Reconciliation Claims and Evidence

A Discrepancy Is a Category, Not an Accident

Sooner or later, the quantity Amazon records as received will not match the quantity your dispatch record says left the building. That mismatch is not one event; it is a family of events with different causes, different owners and different remedies. Sellers who treat all of them as "Amazon lost my stock" end up filing claims that cannot be approved, while sellers who sort the category first get reimbursed faster.

• Under-receipt. Cartons arrive and are scanned, but fewer units are recorded than the carton contained. The most common cause is a label that scanned once and then never scanned again.
• Missing shipment. The carrier's record shows delivery, the fulfilment centre's record shows nothing. This is a proof-of-delivery problem, not an inventory problem.
• Damaged on arrival. Counted but unsellable, which puts the conversation in a different queue than a quantity dispute.
• Over-receipt. More units recorded than sent. It happens, and it is worth catching early, because phantom inventory sells and then cannot be shipped.
• Transit loss. The carton never reaches the receiving record at all, which is a carrier claim rather than a platform claim.

The first step in every case is the same: identify which queue the discrepancy belongs to before writing to anyone.

The Nine-Month Clock Is the Whole Window

Amazon's published position for US fulfilment centres is that an inventory reconciliation claim on a shipment must be raised within nine months of the date the shipment was delivered to the fulfilment centre. Not from the date you noticed. Not from the date the units would have sold. From delivery.

That single sentence explains why the sellers who lose inventory permanently are usually the ones who were busy. A discrepancy found in month two is a routine form. The same discrepancy found in month ten is a business decision about writing off stock. Reconciling receipts against your own dispatch record is not bookkeeping hygiene; it is the expiry date on an asset.

Reconciliation itself is raised after the shipment's receiving has completed, and it is filed item by item rather than as one blanket statement about a container. That structure rewards a seller whose records are per SKU and per carton, and punishes one whose records are per shipment.

Two Documents Answer Almost Every Claim

An approved claim needs to establish two independent facts, and Amazon's own guidance frames them exactly this way.

Proof that the units belonged to you

For purchased goods that means the supplier's commercial invoice for that order. For goods you manufactured yourself, the published alternative is a packing list or manufacturing statement that you have signed, tying the quantity to the shipment. A screenshot of an internal spreadsheet is neither.

Proof that the units reached the building

This is where most self-prepared claims fail. The document that carries weight is the carrier's bill of lading or delivery receipt, and it needs to show two things the platform can check: the carton count and the total weight, together with a receiving signature at the fulfilment centre. A tracking screenshot that says "delivered" without a count or a weight proves only that something arrived.

If you are consolidating from China, ask your forwarder for a delivery receipt that carries carton count and gross weight, and keep it with the shipment reference rather than in the email thread where it was sent.

The Reconciliation Workflow, In Order

1. Confirm the shipment's receiving has finished. A claim raised while units are still being scanned competes with its own data.
2. Compare the platform's per-SKU received quantity against your dispatch record per carton, not per shipment.
3. Check the shipment for defect notices — a unit recorded as damaged is not the same as a unit recorded as missing.
4. Establish the delivery date, since the clock runs from it and the claim window is measured in months.
5. Assemble ownership and delivery evidence before opening the case, so the first response can be a complete one.
6. File per line item and record the case reference against the SKU, not against the container.
7. Diary a follow-up date. Silence is not a decision.

A case opened at step six without steps one to five complete is the pattern that produces a rejection followed by a closed window.

When the Units Are Not Coming Back

Not every discrepancy ends in reimbursement, and the platform's published recovery routes differ in what they return: cash, units, or a price.

• Removal. Units come back to you, at a per-unit fee, and can be re-prepped or redirected to another channel.
• Restock. The same units return into sellable inventory inside the network, again priced per unit.
• Liquidation. Units leave as a partial cash recovery rather than as goods, which is often the better answer for aged inventory than paying storage to hope.
• Grade and Resell. Introduced from 11 September 2025, this routes customer returns and unsellable units through a graded condition ladder — Like New, Very Good, Good, Acceptable — and lists them at a price matched to the grade instead of removing them.

The fee side moved in your favour at the start of 2026. Amazon published a reduction of twenty cents per unit in removal and disposal fees for aged stock in the lighter size tiers from 15 January 2026, which changes the arithmetic on the "leave it or take it back" question for slow SKUs. Anyone still running a 2024 clearing policy against 2024 numbers is making the decision on the wrong table.

What Origin Packing Can Still Do for a Claim

By the time a discrepancy surfaces, the goods are long gone from your building. The documents that decide the claim, however, were created there.

Three origin habits convert directly into claim outcomes. A per-carton weight record taken at sealing gives you a number to compare against the receiving record; a carton-count figure that appears on the delivery receipt gives you proof of quantity rather than an assertion; and a dated photograph of each sealed, marked carton gives you a description of condition at the moment it left. None of these cost more than a few seconds per shipment. All of them are unavailable after the fact.

A Standing Evidence Pack Worth Keeping

We assemble and retain that pack as part of the preparation job for FBA shipments handled in our Shenzhen, Suzhou and Dongguan warehouses: three networked facilities totalling 24,000 square metres, operated since 2011, with before-and-after photographs on each job and mis-picks and mis-ships held below 0.01% — a figure we report per order line, with the denominator stated beside it. If a discrepancy later turns out to be ours, the two-hour response and twenty-four-hour resolution commitment applies to the correction, not just to the email acknowledging it.

The point of an evidence pack is not to win arguments. It is to make the ninety-day version of the argument unnecessary.