The January Reset: Cleaning Up Your Amazon Business

Q4 is a sprint. You move fast, cut corners, and let things pile up because there's no time to deal with them.

Now it's January. The orders have slowed. The chaos has settled. And your Amazon account? Probably a mess.

Stranded inventory you never fixed. Shipments stuck in limbo. Aging stock quietly racking up fees. Listings with errors you've been ignoring. Books that don't quite match reality.

None of this is urgent—until it is. Stranded inventory doesn't sell. Aged inventory triggers long-term storage fees. Unreconciled shipments are money you're owed but never claimed. Small messes become expensive problems.

January is the window to clean house. Q4 is behind you, Q1 hasn't ramped up yet, and you finally have the breathing room to deal with everything you've been putting off.

Here's a tactical reset checklist to get your account clean, your numbers accurate, and your business ready to move.

Clean Up Your Inventory

Your inventory health directly affects your cash flow and storage costs. Start here.

Find and fix stranded inventory. Stranded inventory is stock sitting in FBA that isn't linked to an active listing—which means it can't sell. It just sits there, accumulating storage fees.

Go to Inventory → Fix Stranded Inventory in Seller Central. You'll see units that lost their listing connection due to ASIN issues, pricing errors, or listing removals. For each one, decide: relist it, create a removal order, or liquidate. Don't let it sit. Every day stranded is a day paying for storage on something generating zero revenue.

Deal with unfulfillable inventory. These are units Amazon has marked as damaged, defective, or customer-returned and placed in a separate bucket. They won't sell until you do something.

Check Inventory → Manage FBA Inventory, then filter by "Unfulfillable." Your options: create a removal order to inspect it yourself (or send to a prep center), liquidate, or dispose. If you went through a heavy Q4, this pile is probably bigger than you think.

Don't auto-dispose without reviewing. Some "customer damaged" units are just opened boxes—perfectly sellable once repackaged.

Check your aged inventory. Amazon's long-term storage fees hit inventory that's been sitting for 181+ days, with steeper penalties at 271+ and 365+ days. After Q4, some of your stock may be creeping toward those thresholds.

Pull the FBA Inventory Age report under Reports → Fulfillment. Sort by age and identify what's approaching fee territory. Your options: lower the price to move it faster, run a removal order, or liquidate before the fee hits. Paying to store something that won't sell is a slow bleed.

Review excess inventory. Amazon flags inventory where your supply significantly exceeds your projected demand. You'll find this in the FBA Inventory Age report or the Manage Excess Inventory page.

Excess inventory ties up capital and costs you storage fees. For each flagged SKU, ask: is demand coming back, or did I overbuy? If it's not going to move in the next 60 days, free up that cash and storage space now.

During Q4, shipments get rushed, things get missed, and problems get kicked down the road. Now's the time to close the loops.

Cancel or complete abandoned shipments. Check your Shipping Queue under Inventory → Shipments. Look for shipments stuck in "Working" or "Ready to Ship" status that never actually went out.

Maybe you changed your mind. Maybe the inventory sold elsewhere. Maybe you just forgot. Either way, these ghost shipments clutter your queue and can cause confusion when you're reconciling inventory. Delete what's never going and finish what still makes sense to send.

Follow up on shipments stuck in receiving. Some shipments show "Checked In" or "Receiving" for weeks—Amazon has your inventory but hasn't fully processed it. That's stock you paid for that isn't available to sell.

In your Shipping Queue, filter by "In Transit" and "Receiving" and look for anything older than 14 days. If units are missing or stuck, you can open a support case requesting a status update or reconciliation. Sometimes a nudge gets things moving. Sometimes it uncovers units Amazon lost.

Reconcile shipment discrepancies. This is where real money hides. When Amazon receives your shipment, the received quantity doesn't always match what you sent. Maybe they shorted you 5 units. Maybe a whole case went missing.

Go to Shipments → Reconcile tab to see discrepancies. For shortages, you can file a reimbursement claim—but there's a window. Amazon typically requires you to wait 15-30 days after delivery before filing, and claims expire after 9 months.

If you haven't reconciled your Q4 shipments yet, do it now. Every unreconciled shortage is money you're owed but never asked for.

Fix Listing and Catalog Issues

A cluttered catalog with broken listings costs you visibility and creates confusion. Clean it up.

Reactivate or close suppressed listings. Suppressed listings don't appear in search results—so even if you have inventory, customers can't find it. Common causes: pricing errors, missing product information, or policy violations on the ASIN.

Go to Inventory → Manage All Inventory, then filter by "Suppressed." For each one, check the issue. Sometimes it's an easy fix like adjusting your price. Sometimes the ASIN itself has a problem you can't control. If you can fix it, do it. If you can't—and you have inventory stranded on that ASIN—decide whether to wait it out or remove your stock.

Address pricing alerts and quality issues. Amazon flags listings with potential pricing errors (price too high or too low relative to recent history) or product quality complaints. These alerts can limit your visibility or even get your offer removed.

Check the Pricing Health dashboard under Pricing → Pricing Health. Review any flagged SKUs. If your price is intentional, you can confirm it. If Amazon's system is being overly cautious, you may need to adjust temporarily to clear the alert.

Also check Voice of the Customer under Performance → Voice of the Customer for any quality complaints tied to ASINs you sell. High complaint rates can lead to restrictions.

Delete dead SKUs you're never selling again. Over time, your catalog fills with SKUs you tested once, clearance items you'll never restock, or products you've moved on from. They clutter your inventory view and make managing your actual business harder.

Go through your catalog and delete listings for products you're done with. If there's no inventory and no plan to reorder, there's no reason to keep it. A lean catalog is easier to manage and easier to grow.

Get Your Books in Order

Q4 revenue looks great until you subtract returns, fees, and write-offs. January is when you find out what you actually made—and prep for tax season.

Reconcile your real Q4 profit. Your Seller Central dashboard shows revenue, but that number doesn't account for everything. Returns are still trickling in. Fees hit at different times than sales. Inventory you wrote off or liquidated may not be reflected in your mental math.

Pull your Payments → Transaction View and download your December and Q4 data. Compare what you thought you made versus what actually landed in your bank account. If there's a gap—and there usually is—figure out where it went. Returns? FBA fees? Reimbursements you never received?

This isn't about beating yourself up. It's about knowing your real margins so you source smarter in 2026.

Review your fee breakdown. Amazon's fee structure is complex, and costs creep up without you noticing. Storage fees. Return processing fees. Removal fees. Referral fees that vary by category.

Go to Reports → Payments → Fee Preview or download a Monthly Storage Fees report. Look for anything that spiked in Q4. Were you paying more in storage than you realized? Did return processing fees eat more margin than expected on certain ASINs?

This is sourcing intel. Products that looked profitable on paper might not be once you see the full fee load.

Prep for tax season now. Don't wait until April. The data you need is easier to pull while Q4 is still fresh.

Download your Date Range Reports from Reports → Payments for the full year. If you use accounting software like QuickBooks or a service like Finaloop, reconcile your Amazon data with your books now.

Start categorizing expenses: prep center fees, software subscriptions, shipping supplies, mileage. Flag deductions you might forget—home office, internet, storage units. If your business has grown and your tax situation is getting complicated, January is the time to find a CPA who understands ecommerce, not April 14th.

Review Account Health

A healthy account is easy to ignore—until something goes wrong. January is a good time to check for problems before they escalate.

Check your Policy Compliance dashboard. Amazon tracks policy violations and warns you before taking action. Most sellers don't look at this until they get a suspension notice. Don't be most sellers.

Go to Performance → Account Health and review the Policy Compliance section. Look for any warnings, flags, or "at risk" notices you might have missed during the Q4 rush. Intellectual property complaints, listing policy violations, product authenticity issues—these can snowball if ignored.

If you see an unresolved issue, deal with it now. Respond to Amazon's requests, provide documentation, or remove the problematic ASIN. A warning addressed in January won't become a suspension in March.

Review Voice of the Customer. This dashboard shows customer complaints and feedback tied to specific ASINs you've sold. High complaint rates—especially for "not as described" or "defective"—can lead to listing restrictions or ASIN-level flags on your account.

Go to Performance → Voice of the Customer. Look for any products with poor customer experience ratings. If an ASIN is generating consistent complaints, consider whether it's worth continuing to sell. One bad product can create account-level headaches.

Address return rate warnings. Amazon now tracks return rates at the ASIN level. If a product you're selling exceeds the category threshold, you'll see warnings—and Amazon may eventually charge a penalty fee or restrict your ability to sell that ASIN.

Check for return rate flags in your FBA Returns reports and Account Health dashboard. If an ASIN is flagged, you have a decision: stop selling it, or accept the higher cost and tighter margins. Either way, don't ignore it.

The Bottom Line

None of this is glamorous. Cleaning up stranded inventory and reconciling shipments isn't why you got into selling.

But this work pays off all year:

• Fewer fees from aged and stranded inventory sitting in FBA
• More cash recovered from discrepancies and reimbursements you'd otherwise miss
• Cleaner books that make tax season less painful and help you actually understand your margins
• Lower risk of account health issues blindsiding you mid-year

January is the one month where you have breathing room. Q4 is done. Q1 hasn't ramped up yet. Use this window.

Block off a few hours this week. Work through the checklist section by section. You'll head into 2026 with a tighter operation, clearer numbers, and fewer hidden problems waiting to surface.

A clean account isn't just satisfying—it's profitable.