Disposition Management Prior to 2020

This is the Disposition Management process for prior to the year 2020. For 2020 and beyond, see the article Disposition Management.

The Disposition Management page, under the Accounting tab in Stratify, is where decisions on the Sellable or Unsellable condition of items that have been removed from Amazon FBA, or that are Merchant Returns (MFN). 

Not sure if it should be Sellable or Unsellable? When + Why to Change a Removal to Sellable or Unsellable explains this in detail. 

MFN Returns

If a Merchant Fulfilled item is returned by your customer, you can assess the disposition of the item once you have it, and mark it as Sellable or Unsellable on this page. 

Note: Only MFN returns dated on or after July 1st, 2019 will appear in Disposition Management page. For refunds prior to that date, you will manage these in the Refunds page. If you were a Replenishments beta tester, MFN returns dated on or after January 1st 2019 will appear in the Disposition Management page.

 

Sellable

When you mark a refund as Sellable, we will provide a Cost/Unit Credit to offset the Cost/Unit captured in the original sale in your Cost of Goods Sold line of the Profit & Loss Report. This prevents a doubling of the cost of goods sold for this item when it sells again. 

When your item sells again, the Cost/Unit will be captured in the second transaction if sold through Amazon. In the event you want to send it back to Amazon, list it as you normally would. Listing it again will add that item back into your inventory, with the relevant information (cost, purchase date, supplier, etc). 

If you sell it through another marketplace, then you would create an entry under Accounting>Other Income for the sale and one under Accounting>Other Expenses to account for the cost of the item and any selling expenses. 

The support article "Can inventoryLab Handle Additional Marketplaces" has more information on this process.  

 

Unsellable

As a rule of thumb, any item that you can no longer sell again, you will mark as Unsellable. This will keep the buy cost attached to the original sale, and the Cost of Goods Sold or COGS is still being counted in the Profit and Loss Report.  

In the event you receive the item and it is in Sellable condition, make sure you mark it Sellable and list it again, as outlined under the Sellable section above. 

 

Removals

Once you make the decision to remove an item from an FBA warehouse, it will be removed from your inventory in Seller Central upon completion of the removal order. This will also be removed from your inventory in Stratify once the inventory sync has completed since the removal. Once the item is returned to you, you can decide whether the disposition from Amazon was correct for that item. 

To view any Order ID's associated with these removals, simply click on the number within the Returned column.

This will cause a pop-up to appear listing these Orders:

*Clicking on this Order ID will open a new tab displaying this order within your Refunds report*

As noted above, you can set the default to SELLABLE, UNSELLABLE, or go with the AMAZON DISPOSITION. You can make manual changes once you receive the item and assess its condition.

We will capture the buy costs as follows:

If the item is Unsellable:

- If the removal is due to a customer return, the buy cost will remain with the original sale and the COGS line on your P&L.

- If the removal is not due to a customer return, the adjustment is shown on the Disposition Management page, which subtracts from the COGS line of P&L

 

 

If the item is Sellable:

- If the removal is due to a customer return, we will provide a buy cost credit so that you may account for the buy cost when you sell the item again.

- If the removal is not due to a customer return, the buy cost will show as $0 and you can account for the item manually in Other Expenses if you sell it on another marketplace, or send it back to Amazon to be accounted for when the item sells again.

 

For more information, see Accounting for Removal and Disposal Orders

 

 

Disposals

When you have an item disposed of by Amazon, the item will be removed from your inventory. InventoryLab will automatically capture the fees that Amazon charges to dispose of items for you or to send them back to you.:

For disposals, we will capture the buy costs as follows:

- If the disposal was due to a customer return, the buy cost remains with the original sale.

- If the disposal was not due to a customer return, we capture the buy cost for the item as a loss.

 

 

For more information, see Accounting for Removal and Disposal Orders 

 

Main Page

This page displays the following columns:

• Date
• Type of Disposition
• Amazon ID for the transaction
• Item Information, including the Title, MSKU, and ASIN, along with the Disposition selected for the item, Sellable or Unsellable (or if Amazon Disposition was used)
• Returned 
• Date Edited
• Buy Cost (if applicable to this disposition and adjustment is made to the COGS in the Profit and Loss report)

 

 

You can sort the columns by Date, Type, Item Information, Edited, and Buy Cost Adjustment.  Do this by clicking on the column headers.

 

You can also export the page by clicking on the Export button in the upper right corner of the page. This will result in a sortable .csv file. 

 

Display Options

In the upper right corner of the page you can select to display only certain types of items on the page by clicking on the button that defaults to the label "All" : 

 

Your options are:

• All
• MFN Return
• Removal
• Disposal
• Liquidate

 

 

 

Disposition Status

The Disposition Management page shows the current disposition, which is either set on this page, defaulted based on settings by the user (see Default Disposition below), or defaulted to the Amazon disposition: 

 

 

If the Amazon Disposition is in blue, it means you have manually chosen the disposition or it is set to default to this disposition. By clicking on the Use Amazon Disposition link, it will immediately change the disposition for ALL of the items in this return to the disposition Amazon chose: 

 

 

To change this back, click on the down error for Sellable or Unsellable. You can either input the number or use the up/down arrows to make the selection on how many to change: 

 

 

After changing it back, the Use Amazon Disposition becomes active again, and can be used again in the future. 

 

Default Disposition

The disposition status can also be set to default, if you find that most of them are coming in with one condition or the other. Or you can also choose to just accept the Amazon disposition as your default. 

To select a default disposition for items that have been removed, or for Merchant (MFN) returns, click on the small gear icon under the blue Advanced Search button:

 

Once clicked, your options appear below in a drop down (you can also access this by clicking on your name in the upper right corner of the page and selecting Settings>Advanced Settings): 

 

Search

Searching can be done on this page as well. You can search by ID, Title, MSKU, Return Order ID and ASIN.

Simply input the what you want to search for in the search field. It will perform the search as soon as you are done entering the information and display the results. 

If you need to change the default search period from All, you can do so by clicking on the blue Advanced button in the upper corner of the page, to the right of the search field: 

 

 

By clicking on the button labeled All, you can select one of the presets:

 

 

Or you can create a custom time frame by clicking on the Within button, and changing it to From. Once this is done, you will see two date fields to select a start date and an end date for the search:

 

 

Once you set the dates, click on the blue Search button and your results will populate the page.