FBA Inventory Report: Which One Tells You What You Need | Inventory Hero
·5 min readAmazon FBA
FBA Inventory Report: Which One Tells You What You Need
Amazon has several FBA inventory reports. What Manage FBA Inventory, the Inventory Ledger, age, and restock reports each show, and which to use for what.
The main ones are Manage FBA Inventory (current on-hand, inbound, and reserved by SKU), the Inventory Ledger (movement and balances over a date range, good for reconciliation), the Inventory Age report (how long stock has been stored, for storage-fee decisions), the Restock Inventory report (reorder recommendations and limits), and reports for reserved and stranded inventory. Each answers a different question.
Which FBA report shows how much inventory I have?
Manage FBA Inventory (under Inventory in Seller Central) shows your current available, inbound, and reserved units by SKU right now. For a specific past date or a period-end balance, use the Inventory Ledger report, which reconstructs your on-hand position over a date range and is better for accounting and reconciliation than the live dashboard.
Andrew Erickson is the founder of Inventory Hero. He has spent years working with Amazon FBA sellers on demand forecasting, restock planning, and the cash flow side of running a private-label brand. Inventory Hero exists because every spreadsheet-based inventory system he tried eventually broke — usually right before Q4.
Use the Inventory Age report (sometimes shown as the FBA Inventory Age or Inventory Health view). It breaks your stock into age bands showing how long units have been stored, which is what drives long-term storage surcharges. Pair it with the storage fee schedule to decide what to mark down, remove, or liquidate before an aging fee hits.
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Amazon gives you several FBA inventory reports, and each answers a different question, so the trick is knowing which one to pull. The short version: Manage FBA Inventory shows your current position, the Inventory Ledger reconstructs movement over a date range for reconciliation, the Inventory Age report drives storage decisions, and the Restock report drives reorder timing. This is a practical guide to which report does what. Below is each report and when to use it.
This is the day-to-day view, under Inventory in Seller Central. For each SKU it shows:
Available units ready to ship.
Inbound units on the way to Amazon.
Reserved units tied up in pending orders or transfers.
Use it for everyday questions: what is in stock, what is low, what is on the way. It is a live snapshot, which makes it perfect for operations and useless for "what did I hold at the end of last quarter," because it does not look backward. One practical note: past a handful of SKUs, do not work the dashboard UI, download the report as a CSV and filter and sort in a spreadsheet. For a 50- or 80-SKU catalog, that is the only sane way to see what is actually going on.
The Inventory Ledger report reconstructs your inventory over a date range: beginning balance, receipts, sales, adjustments, and ending balance. It is the report you want for:
Accounting and reconciliation, because it gives a period-end balance you can tie to your books. It is the source for calculating ending inventory.
Investigating discrepancies, because it shows the movements that changed your on-hand, not just the current number.
Where Manage FBA Inventory answers "now," the Ledger answers "over this period," which is what inventory accuracy work and month-end closes require. Worked through: a SKU opens the quarter at 50 units; the Ledger shows 300 received, 250 sold, and 0 recorded adjustments, so it closes at 100. If Manage FBA Inventory shows only 95, that 5-unit gap should appear in the adjustments column (say, an FC-damage entry), and it is exactly the kind of discrepancy worth a reimbursement check.
The Inventory Age report buckets your stock by how long it has been stored. This is the report that drives cost decisions:
Aging bands show which units are approaching long-term storage surcharges.
Paired with the storage fee schedule, it tells you what to mark down, remove, or liquidate before an aging fee lands.
If you only glance at one report for profitability, this is a strong candidate, because aged inventory is where storage quietly eats margin. It feeds directly into your excess inventory decisions.
The Restock Inventory report is Amazon's reorder view. It shows recommended reorder quantities, your days of cover, and your restock or capacity limits. Use it to:
Time reorders against Amazon's recommendations (as a starting point, not gospel).
See your capacity headroom so a reorder does not bounce off a limit.
Treat its recommendations as one input; your own restock planning math, built on your real lead times and safety stock, should drive the final decision.
Reserved inventory (Inventory > Reserved Inventory) shows units you own but cannot ship, tied up in customer orders, transfers, or FC processing. It explains a gap between what you own and what is sellable.
Stranded inventory (Inventory > FBA Inventory > Fix Stranded Inventory) shows units with no active listing, sitting unsellable. Work it down there, or see stranded inventory for how to fix each cause.
Both are worth a periodic check, because they surface inventory that is silently not working for you.
Most sellers live in Manage FBA Inventory day to day and pull the Ledger at month-end; the Age and Restock reports are the ones worth a standing weekly look, because they catch cost and stockout problems early. Nearly all of these are downloadable as CSVs, which is how you should work them once your catalog grows past a handful of SKUs, so build the habit of exporting rather than clicking through the dashboard every time.
No single FBA report tells the whole story; you use them together. Manage FBA Inventory for the live position, the Inventory Ledger for period balances and reconciliation, the Inventory Age report for storage and aging decisions, the Restock report for reorder timing, and the reserved and stranded views for problem-spotting. Know which answers your question and you stop exporting the wrong one. For the accounting side, see calculating ending inventory; for the planning side, FBA restock planning.