Aged inventory is stock that has sat in Amazon’s fulfilment network for a long time without selling. Once units pass 180 days, Amazon adds a surcharge on top of normal storage fees, and that surcharge rises at each later age band. The fix is rarely one big move. It is a routine: spot slow SKUs early, decide per product whether to discount, advertise, remove or liquidate, and do it before the penalties compound.
This guide explains how the age bands work, how to find affected stock in Seller Central, how to work out whether a unit is worth keeping, and what to do with it.
TL;DR
- Amazon sorts stock into age bands (0-60, 61-90, 91-180, 181-330, 331-365 and 365+ days), and stock reaching day 181 triggers escalating surcharges.
- The surcharge is charged on top of monthly storage, so a slow SKU gets more expensive every month, not just once.
- Review your inventory health around the 120 to 150 day mark, when you still have room to discount, advertise harder or remove units.
- Decide per SKU using real profit after fees and ad spend, not revenue or a gut feeling about how much you paid for the stock.
- Prevention beats clearance: tighter reorder quantities and better product research stop most aged stock from forming.
Table of Contents
- What counts as aged inventory on Amazon
- Why the surcharge hurts more than it looks
- How to find your aged stock
- Work out what each SKU really earns before you act
- Your options for clearing aged stock
- Compare the options side by side
- A simple timeline to follow
- Stop aged stock before it forms
- Our view: aged inventory is a data problem first
- Track profit and ads in one place with Osellpa
- FAQ
- Sources
What counts as aged inventory on Amazon
Amazon measures how long each unit has been stored in its fulfilment centres, and reports that age in time-based bands. The bands in Amazon’s own help pages run from 0 to 60 days, 61 to 90, 91 to 180, 181 to 330, 331 to 365, and over 365 days, as set out in Amazon’s aged inventory guidance for UK sellers.
Two points catch people out:
- Age is per unit, not per SKU. A SKU you restock every month will hold units of several ages at once. Amazon’s selling order is not something you control, so a pile of old units can hide behind newer ones.
- Age starts when the unit arrives at the fulfilment centre, not when you bought it from your supplier. Time spent in transit to Amazon is yours to absorb.
You will still see older articles quoting 271 or 365 days as the point where penalties start. Treat those with caution and check the current rules in Seller Central. At the time of writing, the 181-day mark is the one to plan around.
Why the surcharge hurts more than it looks
Most sellers treat storage as a flat monthly overhead. The aged inventory surcharge breaks that assumption. It is calculated by volume and steps up at each age band, so the cost of keeping one slow unit is not a straight line. Waiting until the 365-day threshold can turn stock into a liability that quickly exceeds the product’s whole landed cost.
That has a practical consequence for bulky or low-priced items. A £6 product that takes up a lot of space can cost more to keep than it will ever earn, while a small, high-value item can sit for months before the maths turns against you. The size of the problem depends on volume per unit and your margin, which is why a blanket rule such as “remove everything at 180 days” is usually wrong.
The fee structure also shifts from year to year. Amazon announced selective increases to monthly storage, return-to-seller and liquidation fees in its 2026 European fee update, so always check the current rate card before you run your numbers. Our worked examples below use round figures for illustration only, not Amazon’s actual rates.
How to find your aged stock
You have three places to look in Seller Central. Use all three, because each shows something different.
- Inventory Planning / Inventory Age report. This lists units by age band for each SKU, and gives you an estimated surcharge for the next charge date. Check this monthly at a minimum.
- Inventory Performance Index (IPI) dashboard. Amazon uses sell-through and excess inventory signals to assess whether you are keeping appropriate stock levels. Amazon’s inventory guidance says the aim is to avoid both under- and overstocking, and the IPI is the quickest way to see where you are drifting.
- Stranded inventory view. Listings that are suppressed, inactive or missing a valid offer keep ageing while earning nothing. Amazon’s own guidance notes that automated removal can take up to 90 days, so do not wait for it. A weekly manual check often finds image or compliance problems that stop an item selling even though stock looks healthy.
A useful habit is to export the age report into a sheet every month and add three columns: units in the 91-180 band, your current daily sales rate, and the days of cover that rate implies. If days of cover is longer than the days left before day 181, the SKU is a problem now, not later.
Work out what each SKU really earns before you act
The worst clearance decisions come from looking at revenue. A sale at 40% off may feel like a win, but if it falls below landed cost plus fees, you are paying to remove stock.
For each aged SKU, build a simple per-unit profit line:
- Selling price (after any discount)
- Minus referral fee, which generally ranges from 8% to 15% depending on category
- Minus the FBA fulfilment fee for the size tier
- Minus monthly storage and any aged inventory surcharge you will pay if the unit stays
- Minus advertising spend per unit sold
- Minus landed cost, if you still want to recover it
Then compare three outcomes for the same unit: sell it at a reduced price, pay to remove or dispose of it, or keep paying to store it. Often the best choice is the one that loses the least, not the one that makes a profit. We cover the method in more detail in our guide to SKU profitability on Amazon.
A worked example
Take a hypothetical SKU with 200 units, 90 of them nearing day 181. It sells two units a day at £18. Your landed cost is £5.50, the referral fee is 15% (£2.70), the fulfilment fee is £3.10, and ad spend averages £1.20 per sale. Margin per unit is £18 - £5.50 - £2.70 - £3.10 - £1.20 = £5.50.
At two sales a day, those 90 old units need 45 days to clear, but they will cross day 181 in 20. Two choices follow:
- Drop the price to £15. If sales rise to four a day, the old units clear in about 23 days, and unit margin falls to roughly £2.80 (after the referral fee falls to £2.25). You give up around £2.70 per unit but avoid every surcharge.
- Hold the price. You keep £5.50 per unit on the first 40 units, but the remaining 50 cross into the surcharge band and pay extra fees every month until they sell.
The example is illustrative, but the logic holds: compare the margin you give up with the fees you avoid, per SKU, with your own numbers.
Your options for clearing aged stock
Lower the price, deliberately
A price cut is the quickest lever, and the cheapest if you act early. Cut in steps rather than all at once, and give each step enough days to show a result. Avoid dropping below your break-even, which includes fees, unless you have decided that removal would cost more.
Promotions such as coupons or Lightning Deals can lift conversion without permanently lowering your listed price, but they carry their own fees and eligibility rules, so check the terms in Seller Central first.
Push the listing, not just the price
Sometimes a SKU is slow because the listing is weak, not because the price is wrong. Check that your title, images and bullets match what shoppers search for. If you are unsure how search terms influence ranking, this explanation of Amazon SEO is a good primer on the basics before you rewrite a listing.
On conversion, remember what you are working against: the average conversion rate on Amazon.co.uk is roughly 5.00 to 5.50%. If your slow SKU converts well below that, fix the listing before you discount.
Advertise the slow movers, with a cap
Sponsored Products can shift aged units, but only if the economics allow it. Set a target ACoS based on the discounted margin, not the original one. Audit performance weekly and allow time for attribution: our guide on auditing ads weekly and waiting 7 to 14 days for attribution explains why judging a campaign after two days leads to bad calls.
Two cautions apply. First, make sure the ads are not simply taking sales you would have had anyway, which our piece on ad cannibalisation and TACoS covers. Second, pause ads when stock runs out so you do not pay for clicks you cannot serve, as described in how to pause Amazon ads when a product is out of stock. If you are rethinking your wider advertising approach, this overview of PPC for ecommerce covers the tracking basics worth fixing first.
Remove the units
A removal order sends units back to you, or to another address. You pay a per-unit removal fee, and you then have to store, inspect and relist the stock yourself. This suits higher-value goods that you can sell through another channel, or items you want to bundle or relabel.
Liquidate or dispose
Liquidation sells stock in bulk to third parties at a heavy discount, and disposal destroys it. Both carry fees, and the 2026 update flagged changes to liquidation fees, so check the current figures before you decide. Disposal is the last resort, but it is sometimes cheaper than another six months of surcharges on a product that will never sell.
Compare the options side by side
| Option | Best when | Main cost | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price cut | Margin is still positive after the cut | Lower profit per unit | Fast |
| Listing and ad push | Conversion is low or visibility is poor | Ad spend, your time | Medium |
| Removal order | Units are valuable and sellable elsewhere | Removal fee plus handling | Slow |
| Liquidation | Volume is large and the value is low | Deep discount plus fees | Medium |
| Disposal | Stock is unsellable or fees exceed value | Disposal fee, full write-off | Fast |
Most sellers combine two or three of these. A common pattern is a staged price cut and a focused ad push over a month, then removal or liquidation for whatever remains.
A simple timeline to follow
- Day 60 to 90: Check sales velocity. If days of cover exceed what you can sell before day 180, flag the SKU.
- Day 120 to 150: Run your per-SKU profit numbers and choose a route. This is the point at which expert practice recommends auditing inventory health so you can act before penalties compound.
- Day 150 to 175: Execute: price cut, ad push, or submit a removal order. Allow time, because removal orders are not instant.
- Day 181 onwards: Review the surcharge estimate every month. Anything still sitting here needs a firm decision, not another month of waiting.
Stop aged stock before it forms
Clearance is expensive. The cheaper discipline is not to over-order in the first place.
- Size reorders to your sales rate. Order enough for your lead time plus a sensible buffer, not for the best week you ever had. Our guide to automating replenishment without letting FBA fees eat margins walks through the reorder logic.
- Know your limits. Capacity and restock limits affect how much you can send. See how to calculate FBA headroom and avoid blocked shipments.
- Check size and weight before you commit. Dimensional weight can make a product more expensive to store and ship than you assumed, as we explain in our note on the 5,000 rule behind UK FBA fees.
- Do product research that looks past BSR. Best Sellers Rank is category-specific and updates hourly, so a snapshot misleads. Industry research suggests the number of active sellers in a category is a steadier signal of sustainable demand. Our product research workflow for Amazon UK sellers puts this into practice.
- Plan peaks carefully. Prime Day and Q4 need stock in place early, and stockouts are costly, but over-ordering for a peak that does not materialise is how many sellers end up with January aged stock.
Our view: aged inventory is a data problem first
We talk to sellers who feel aged inventory arrives suddenly. It almost never does. By the time Amazon’s estimate shows a surcharge, the decision window has usually closed, and what remains is damage limitation.
The trouble is visibility. Age reports sit in one place, ad data in another, fees in a third, and landed cost in a spreadsheet that may be a month out of date. Putting them together by hand for every SKU is exactly the sort of task that gets skipped on a busy week.
That is why we built Osellpa around profit that is tied directly to your Amazon data through the API. When you can see what each SKU earns after fees and ad spend, the question “discount, push or remove?” becomes a calculation rather than a worry. Our advice is to put a recurring slot in your calendar, review SKU-level profit alongside the age report, and treat day 120 as your deadline rather than day 180.
We would also say this plainly: no tool replaces the decision itself. Software can show you which units are in trouble and what each option costs. You still need to choose, and the best choice sometimes is to take a small loss now.
— Harry
Track profit and ads in one place with Osellpa
If you are juggling spreadsheets to see which SKUs are ageing and what they earn, Osellpa brings profit tracking, PPC automation and inventory management together using your Amazon data. Plans on our pricing page are Launch at £10 per month (or £96 per year), Scale at £20 per month (or £192 per year) and Advanced at £40 per month (or £384 per year).
FAQ
When does Amazon start charging aged inventory fees in the UK?
The surcharge applies to units that have been in the fulfilment network for 181 days or more, according to Amazon’s help page on aged inventory. It then rises at each later age band. Check Seller Central for the current rates, as Amazon updates its fees regularly.
How do I check how old my stock is?
Open the inventory age and inventory planning views in Seller Central, which show units by age band for each SKU. Add the IPI dashboard to see overall stock health, and check stranded inventory weekly. Exporting the data monthly lets you spot SKUs drifting towards day 181.
Is it better to remove aged stock or sell it at a discount?
It depends on the margin left after the discount. If you still cover landed cost and fees, selling is usually better than paying removal costs. If the discounted price falls below what you would lose by removing or disposing of the unit, removal or liquidation may cost you less overall.
Can advertising help clear aged inventory?
Yes, but only with a cap based on the reduced margin. Run Sponsored Products on slow SKUs, review results weekly, and give campaigns 7 to 14 days to show attribution before changing them. Pause ads if stock runs out.
