The tips that you will find here are very basic and common knowledge, others are techniques and tricks that I have been using. Consider that not all the situations are the same, and some of these may not work with your listings.

Note: this case also applies to stranded inventory with “Listing error” as the Stranded Reason and “Merchant” in the column Fulfilled by.

What Is Merchant Fulfilled (DG Info Required)?

In my experience, this is one of the most common reasons to have stranded inventory when working with bulk uploads or variations. It happens to your products available in FBA when they are missing dangerous goods or hazmat information.

Main causes

Bulk Uploads — When you create your listings with a flat file and miss the Fulfillment and Compliance information, it is very common to get stranded inventory once your items become available in FBA. That section of the file asks questions about the product’s fulfillment method, batteries, and regulations.

To prevent this stranded reason, make sure to fill all the required columns in the file’s Fulfillment and Compliance section. Fields like “fulfillment_center_id,” “batteries_required,” and “supplier_declared_dg_hz_regulation1” are required for the FBA dangerous goods review process.

Here is an example of how the fulfillment and compliance fields look in a flat file.

Variations — When you create variations in Seller Central, most of the time, the system won’t go to the FBA dangerous goods review process where you need to put the information about batteries and product regulations. In that case, as in the previous, when your items become available in FBA they will go to the stranded inventory.

To prevent this cause, after you created the variation, go to your Manage Inventory, look and select all the child ASINs in the variation and click change to FBA in the top dropdown menu. If you do this process before having the units available in FBA they won’t go to stranded inventory for this reason.

Select the child ASINs and click “Change to Fulfilled by Amazon” to fill in the dangerous goods information.

Changes in the inventory — It can happen when your listings available on FBA are changed as fulfilled by merchant. Or when you delete and relist an ASIN without filling the hazmat information form.

Ways to fix it

Manually — You can fix it manually in the Fix Stranded Inventory dashboard by selecting all the units and clicking “Change to FBA.” Then you will go through the process of putting the information about batteries and product regulations in the form that follows. The steps go as follow:

1. Select all the ASINs you want to fix, then in the dropdown menu, click “Change to FBA” this will get you to the Convert to “Fulfilled by Amazon” form.

2. Since you already have your products in FBA, you will click “Convert Only.”

3. Click “Add dangerous goods information.”

4. Fill the form with the proper information about your product, click “Submit.” Repeat this process for all the listings on the list.

5. Once you are done with all the listings on the list, click “Save & Continue.

By Bulk — Using the Flat File Inventory Loader (click to download the file) will help you fix all the ASINs at once. This works well when you have several ASINs stranded for this reason, and doing it manually will take you forever.

The Inventory Loader file requires additional information about your listings such as SKU, product ID, product ID type, condition, fulfillment center ID. And of course, the hazmat necessary information that goes from column R to column AJ.

To fill in the basic information of your listings FAST, you can download the “Fix Stranded Inventory by Bulk” file. Follow these steps:

1. Go to your Fix Stranded Inventory dashboard and click “Fix Stranded Inventory by Bulk” to download the file with the information of all your stranded listings

Fix Stranded Inventory dashboard.

2. In this file, you will find your listings’ basic information, like ASIN, SKU, condition, and price. Copy this information.

Stranded inventory file.

3. Go to the Inventory Loader file and paste the information into their respective cells. Note: the product-id-type and the condition are codes that you can find in the same file’s Data Definition tab. In this example, my product ID is an ASIN=1, and the condition is New=11.

Here you can see the required and desired information that the Inventory Loader file needs.

4. To solve the stranded problem you will need to fill in column N “fulfillment-center-id,” column R “batteries_required,” column S “are_batteries_included,” and the columns between AF to AJ “supplier_declared_dg_hz_regulation1 to 5.” Note: In the Data Definitions tab you can see the instructions to fill the dangerous goods information. In this example, my product is a T-Shirt with no batteries or regulations.

Here you can see the required columns with the hazmat information for my products (t-shirts).

5. Upload the file in the Add Products via Upload, make sure that the File type is Inventory Loader File. Then, wait for the changes to be made on Amazon. Note: this file only can be uploaded as a .txt

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