How to read the Amazon Inventory Ledger
The bank statement for your FBA stock: the two views, the columns and event types, how to reconcile a SKU, and the three traps that make stock look lost when it is not.
The first two figures come from the ledger of one Amazon India business, roughly 300 FBA SKUs, that agreed to share its data for this guide, 24 June to 23 September 2026. The third is from Amazon's Inventory Ledger help page.
A bank statement for your stock
Amazon's own description of the Inventory Ledger is the best one: it is like a bank statement of your inventory. It starts with a balance, lists everything that came in and went out - units received, customer orders, customer returns, adjustments, removals - and ends with a balance.
That framing tells you how to use it. A bank statement is how you check that the bank has not lost your money. The Inventory Ledger is how you check where your stock went - and, if some of it was lost or damaged in Amazon's custody, it is part of the evidence for a claim. A gap in the ledger is a reason to investigate, not proof of an Amazon error: it may be a transfer still in transit, a movement into another disposition, or a loss Amazon has already paid for.
If a unit looks missing, the ledger is the first place to look.
Summary view or Detail view
The report comes in two views, and they answer different questions.
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Summary view | Detail view | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers | How many units did I have, and how did the total move? | Which individual event moved it? |
| One row is | A product, a disposition and a period, with a column per movement type | One event: a date, a product, a quantity, a fulfilment centre |
| Grouping | By country or by fulfilment centre; by day, week or month | No grouping - every event is its own row |
| Best for | Stock levels per fulfilment centre | Investigating a gap before a claim |
To download it, Amazon's own help steps are: from the Reports menu, choose Fulfilment; under the Inventory section, choose Inventory Ledger; then pick the type of report - the Detailed view has an Event type filter, so you can pull only Receipts, for example - set the date range and generate it. Those steps describe the older Seller Central layout. In the redesigned layout we have confirmed the report page itself is called Inventory Ledger, and that the detail option can be labelled Full Details view; we have not confirmed which menu group now holds it, so if the Reports menu does not show it, use Seller Central's search for “Inventory Ledger”.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, FBA lost inventory reimbursement policy (amazon.in, read September 2026).
Source: Amazon Seller Central, Inventory Ledger report (amazon.in, read October 2026).
The form has a View Online tab and a Download tab. Leave ASIN, Merchant SKU and FNSKU blank to cover every product. The Summary view adds two choices, Aggregate report by location (Country or Fulfilment centre) and Aggregate report by time period, and you can narrow either view to one FC or one disposition.
Through Amazon's Selling Partner API the two views are the report types GET_LEDGER_SUMMARY_VIEW_DATA and GET_LEDGER_DETAIL_VIEW_DATA.
Under Aggregate report by location, choose Fulfilment centre, not Country. Country-level totals hide exactly the thing you usually need to see: stock sitting in Bengaluru while Delhi is empty.
The columns that matter
These are the Detail view columns you will work with most:
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Date | The event's calendar date. The files our parser reads write it MM/DD/YYYY; Amazon's help examples show day-first dates, so check your own file before parsing. |
| Date and Time | The event's timestamp in UTC. See the date trap below. |
| FNSKU | Amazon's fulfilment barcode for the unit. The most reliable key. |
| ASIN / MSKU / Title | The catalogue page, your own SKU, and the product name. |
| Event Type | What kind of movement this was. See the next section. |
| Reason | Amazon's reason for an Adjustments row, for example inventory misplaced, damaged at the fulfilment centre, or inventory found. |
| Reference ID | The ID behind the event - an order, a shipment, an adjustment. |
| Quantity | Units moved. Negative when units leave the balance. |
| Fulfillment Center | The code of the centre where it happened, such as BLR7 or DEL5. |
| Disposition | The condition bucket the units sit in - SELLABLE or one of the damaged states. |
| Reconciled / Unreconciled quantity | Amazon's help says the downloaded report and the API include these two columns. On Adjustments rows: how much of the adjustment Amazon has already matched to a found unit or a reimbursement, and how much it has not. We have not checked them against a real export, so look for them in yours. |
Source: Amazon Seller Central, Inventory Ledger report (amazon.in, read October 2026).
The Summary view instead carries one column per movement - Starting Warehouse Balance, Receipts, Customer Shipments, Customer Returns, Damaged, Other Events and so on - ending in Ending Warehouse Balance, with the fulfilment centre in a Location column. Amazon's help also lists an In transit between warehouses column there, which holds units that have left one centre and not yet arrived at another.
Disposition matters more than it looks. The ledger keeps sellable and damaged units as separate balances, so one product at one centre can have several rows. In one seller's ledger six dispositions appeared in three months: SELLABLE, CUSTOMER_DAMAGED, CARRIER_DAMAGED, DEFECTIVE, WAREHOUSE_DAMAGED and DISTRIBUTOR_DAMAGED. Only SELLABLE units can be sold.
What each event type means
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Event Type | What happened | Sign |
|---|---|---|
| Receipts | Units from your inbound shipments were received into a centre. | + |
| Shipments | Units left a centre to fulfil customer orders. | − |
| Customer Returns | A customer's return was received back at a centre. | + |
| Vendor Returns | Units left Amazon's network on a removal order. | − |
| Warehouse transfers | Units moved from one Amazon centre to another. | − then + |
| Adjustments | Amazon corrected the balance - units found, lost, damaged, or moved between dispositions. | + or − |
Amazon's API names the same six types without spaces - Receipts, Shipments, CustomerReturns, VendorReturns, WhseTransfers and Adjustments - but the file itself writes some with spaces: "Customer Returns" and "Vendor Returns". If you filter the file in a spreadsheet, filter on what the file actually says.
Reconcile one SKU
Pick one SKU at one fulfilment centre, for one month. Take the starting balance, add everything that came in, subtract everything that went out. The result must equal the ending balance. When it does not, the gap is what to investigate.
It is the same basic formula Amazon's policy gives for a suspected warehouse loss: total received inventory plus returns, minus sales, removals, adjustments and credits. Treat your version as a screening check for one SKU at one centre, not as Amazon's full method: Amazon also matches adjustments to found units and reimbursements, which is what its Reconciled and Unreconciled quantity columns report.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, FBA lost inventory reimbursement policy (amazon.in, read September 2026).
Scroll the diagram sideways to see all of it.
Do this for the few SKUs that matter most before trying all of them. The habit of reconciling ten SKUs a month catches more than a once-a-year attempt at a thousand.
Three traps
1. A transfer is not a loss
Amazon moves stock between its centres to put it closer to customers. In the ledger that looks like units disappearing from one centre and, separately, appearing at another - sometimes days later, because the units were in transit. Read either half alone and you will see a loss, or a windfall, that did not happen.
Scroll the diagram sideways to see all of it.
2. The date column you pick changes the totals
The Date column is the local calendar day. Date and Time is in UTC, which runs five and a half hours behind India. An event in the first five and a half hours of an Indian day carries that day's local date but the previous day's UTC date, so daily totals built from the timestamp will not match Seller Central's. Build daily figures from Date.
3. The Detail view does not know your opening stock
Adding up Detail events tells you how stock changed, not how much you had. If you start from zero, every SKU that already had stock will count down into negative numbers. Take the opening balance from the Summary view, then apply the Detail events on top.
From ledger to claim
When the arithmetic leaves units unaccounted for, that is a reason to look closer, not yet a claim. Check these before you open a case:
- Is there a matching transfer in at another centre in the same period?
- Did the units move into a damaged disposition rather than vanish? They will show as a SELLABLE decrease with an increase in another disposition.
- Has Amazon already matched or paid for them? On Adjustments rows, the Reconciled quantity and the reconciliation status show units Amazon has already accounted for as found or reimbursed. Also look up the FNSKU in the reimbursement report.
- Is the shortfall inside a claim window that applies to that kind of loss (below)?
If all of that comes back empty, you may have a claim. Amazon's own wording is that unreconciled quantities on adjustments with reasons such as damaged at the fulfilment centre or inventory misplaced may be eligible for reimbursement under its policy; whether and how much is Amazon's decision. Units damaged in the fulfilment centre are reimbursed automatically, so for those, look for the automatic payment before raising a case. The Detail rows - date, FNSKU, quantity, fulfilment centre, reference ID - are what you cite.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, Inventory Ledger report (amazon.in, read October 2026).
The window depends on the event, and it starts from that event's own date, not from when you noticed. On amazon.in: a unit lost in the fulfilment centre, within 60 days of the inventory adjustment; units missing from an inbound shipment, 60 days with the start date worded two ways by Amazon; a lost removal, 30 days from when it shipped; a removal delivered short or damaged, 7 days from delivery. Some cases need no claim: units lost in transit, and customer returns damaged by the buyer or carrier, are reimbursed automatically on a 45-day clock, and units damaged in the fulfilment centre automatically within 60 days of the inventory adjustment. The FBA reimbursement guide has the full table and what Amazon pays automatically.
Source: Amazon Seller Central, FBA lost inventory reimbursement policy (amazon.in, read September 2026).
Source: Amazon Seller Central, FBA inventory reimbursement policy (damaged inventory) (amazon.in, read October 2026).
Adjustment rows carry Amazon's own reason codes. Third-party sites publish lists of them, and those lists disagree with each other. Read the meaning of a code on the Inventory Ledger help page inside Seller Central, not from a blog - including this one.
The ledger, read for you
Unilytic pulls both views from Amazon's API, takes the opening balances from the Summary view and the movements from the Detail view, and keeps one row per SKU, fulfilment centre and disposition per day. That is what drives the stock dashboard, per-centre days of cover, and the send list.
See multi-warehouse inventory for the per-centre view, and Amazon sync for what is pulled and when.
Questions sellers ask
What is the Amazon Inventory Ledger report?
It is Amazon's record of every movement of your FBA stock. Amazon describes the Summary view as being like a bank statement of your inventory: a starting balance, received inventory, customer orders, customer returns, adjustments, removals and an ending balance. The Detail view lists the individual events behind those totals.
Should I use the Summary view or the Detail view?
Use the Summary view to see balances - how many units sit at each fulfilment centre on a date. Use the Detail view when you need to know why a number changed, for example before you open a reimbursement case, because it shows each individual event with its fulfilment centre and disposition.
How far back does the Inventory Ledger go?
Amazon's Inventory Ledger help page says you can view up to 18 months of historical inventory data in the report.
Why does a unit look lost at one fulfilment centre?
It may have been transferred. Amazon moves stock between its fulfilment centres, and a transfer shows as units leaving one centre and arriving at another. Before treating a drop at one centre as a loss, look for the matching arrival elsewhere, allowing for units still in transit between centres.
Why are some quantities negative?
Negative quantities are units leaving a fulfilment centre's balance - customer orders shipping out, removals, transfers out, or units adjusted away. Positive quantities are units arriving: receipts, customer returns, transfers in, and units found.
FBA reimbursements in India
Amazon now pays some losses without a case - but its report only shows what it paid, never what it missed. How to read the reimbursement report, what Amazon pays for a lost unit, and how to find what is still owed.
Reorder point and days of cover
When to create the next FBA shipment and how many units to send: the four numbers you need, the formulas, and the velocity mistakes that cause repeat stockouts.
FBA inbound shipment discrepancies in India
Amazon counted fewer units than you sent. How to reconcile the shipment on amazon.in, the 14-day and 60-day window, the documents it asks for, what it pays, and how to stop short receipts happening.
FBA damaged inventory reimbursement in India
What Amazon pays for a unit damaged in a fulfilment centre or by a buyer: the formula, flat and grade-based rates, what changed on 5 March 2026, worked examples, and how to check a payment.