Inventory ManagementStorage Breakdown

Storage Breakdown

Project your Oct-Dec peak storage bill, see which cubic feet are running it up, and get view-only recommendations to cut it before rates flip.

On Amazon's US marketplace, monthly FBA storage rates roughly triple from October through December, right when most sellers hold the most stock (other marketplaces set their own rates, and Profit Hawk projects those from Amazon's own estimates for your account). The Storage Breakdown page projects what the upcoming peak quarter will cost under your current stock plan, shows exactly which SKUs (and which cubic feet) drive that bill, and recommends what to do about the worst offenders before peak rates start.

Opening the page

Go to Storage Breakdown in the left navigation. Like the Aged Inventory Analyzer, it shows one sales channel at a time (see Choosing a sales channel), and every money figure is in that channel's local currency. A chip in the top corner counts down the days until peak rates begin on October 1.

The projected peak bill

The dark panel at the top answers the headline question: what will October through December storage cost if you change nothing?

  • Projected Oct-Dec storage bill: Your projected base storage fees plus aged-inventory surcharges for the peak quarter, at your current stock levels, inbound, and sales pace.
  • Compared to your normal quarter: If Profit Hawk has enough billed storage fees from your account history, the panel shows how many times larger the peak bill is than your typical off-peak quarter.
  • Driver chips: Small chips call out what is pushing the number up, such as the October 1 rate change (US channels), the cube arriving from inbound shipments and purchase orders, and any aged-inventory surcharges included in the total.
  • With the recommended actions: The right side shows what the same quarter costs if you take every recommended action, with the recoverable difference. Click See the actions to open the list.

The projection assumes you do nothing: current sell-through, current inbound, no removals. It is the cost of waiting, not a forecast of what you will pay after acting on the recommendations.

Monthly storage cost chart

The chart puts the projection in context: up to six months of actual billed storage fees from your Amazon transactions, then six projected months, with a divider at today and a marker where peak rates begin. Peak months are highlighted.

Hover any projected bar to see its breakdown:

  • Base storage: The monthly storage fee on your projected cube.
  • Aged surcharge: The aged-inventory surcharge for stock that has been in fulfillment centers 181 days or more.
  • Arriving: Units (and cubic feet) landing at FBA that month from inbound shipments and placed purchase orders.

Actual months come from the storage-related fee transactions Amazon posts to your account, attributed to the month the storage happened (Amazon bills a month in arrears).

The treemap: where that money sits

The treemap draws your stored cube to scale, one tile per SKU, so the biggest tiles are the SKUs occupying the most space. Each tile is colored by how well that space pays for itself:

  • Pays more rent than it earns (red): Projected peak storage runs at least twice the SKU's projected peak profit, or the SKU pays rent with no sales at all, or it sells at a loss.
  • Borderline, draw down (amber): Peak storage runs between one and two times peak profit. Worth trimming before rates flip.
  • Cheaper in AWD (blue): The SKU earns its rent, but it holds far more cover than FBA needs, and the excess would be cheaper in Amazon Warehousing & Distribution. US standard-size SKUs only.
  • Earns its rent (green): Storage is a small share of what the SKU makes. Fast movers that sell out before October show their weeks of cover instead of a peak fee.

Hover any tile to see the product card: stored cube, projected Oct-Dec storage, projected Oct-Dec gross profit, rent ratio, and weeks of cover. Click a tile to open the full product slide-out.

SKUs too small to draw individually are grouped into one "other SKUs" tile. Below the treemap, a composition bar totals your cube by category, and a footer strip totals what the flagged (red plus amber) cube costs per month at peak rates.

If Amazon has not reported a unit volume for some SKUs, a footnote below the treemap counts them. Their storage cannot be projected, so treat the totals as a floor rather than the complete bill.

Worst rent ratios

The Worst rent ratios list ranks your most expensive offenders. The rent ratio is:

Projected Oct-Dec storage (including aged surcharge) divided by projected Oct-Dec gross profit at current sell-through.

A ratio of 3x means the SKU pays three dollars in peak storage for every dollar of gross profit it earns during the same window. SKUs with no sales, or that sell at a loss, are flagged with a label instead of a ratio because their rent has no earnings against it at all. Hover a row to see the product name, and click it to open the product slide-out.

Inbound & POs

The Inbound & POs card lists everything on its way to FBA for the selected channel, soonest first:

  • Shipments: Open FBA inbound shipments, using Amazon's delivery-window ETA where Amazon has reported one.
  • POs and Transfers: Your active purchase orders and warehouse-to-FBA transfer orders, with an estimated arrival computed from the ship date plus your configured lead time. Estimated dates are marked with a tilde.

Each row shows the units, the estimated cubic feet, and where the stock is heading. Quantities already on a linked inbound shipment are not double counted against the order they came from.

A purchase order headed to AWD or a 3PL warehouse is listed with its destination so you can see it coming, but it is not billed as FBA storage in the projection. Only stock arriving at FBA affects the projected bill.

Everything FBA-bound in this card is already included in the projected months, so the chart and the peak bill reflect the stock you have coming, not just the stock you have today.

Click See the actions in the top panel to open the recommendations. Profit Hawk computes at most one action per SKU, grouped by type and ordered by deadline:

  • Removals: Stock that costs more to store through peak than it earns, where a removal order saves money even after Amazon's removal fees. SKUs already paying the aged-inventory surcharge get a deadline a few days before Amazon's monthly age snapshot on the 15th, so the removal order is in before the next charge.
  • Drawdowns: Borderline SKUs where a 15 to 20 percent coupon over the pre-peak weeks trims enough cube to pay for itself before rates flip.
  • AWD holding: Healthy but heavily overstocked US standard-size SKUs where the excess cover is cheaper to hold in AWD and auto-replenish to FBA weekly.

Each action shows its estimated savings over the peak window and a do-by date. The list is view-only: nothing is applied automatically, and you execute any action you choose in Seller Central.

On US channels, removal savings are net of Amazon's removal fees, and each removal row shows the fees that were netted out. On other marketplaces Profit Hawk does not estimate local removal fees, so savings are shown before removal fees and the row says so.

Peak storage rates (US channels)

US channels also get a reference card with Amazon's current monthly storage rates:

Rate per cubic footJan-SepOct-Dec
Standard size$0.78$2.40
Oversize$0.56$1.40
AWD$0.48$0.48

AWD stays flat year round, which is why moving excess cover there ahead of peak is often the cheapest option for slow, healthy stock.

How the fees are estimated

Profit Hawk is deliberately conservative about inventing numbers:

  • US channels are projected on Amazon's published rate card, calibrated against Amazon's own estimated storage cost for next month from your inventory reports. That calibration folds in things like the storage utilization surcharge without modeling them separately.
  • Other marketplaces are projected from the storage rate implied by Amazon's own estimate for your stock, held flat across the year. Profit Hawk never invents local rate cards, so non-US projections do not include an October rate jump unless Amazon's own figures show one.
  • Profit and rent ratios require the full margin picture: price, referral fee, fulfillment fee, and your unit cost. If any component is missing, the SKU shows no ratio rather than a misleading one. Add missing costs under Product Costs.

Choosing a sales channel

The selector at the top picks the channel you are analyzing, one at a time, in that channel's currency. If you run Pan-EU, your euro-billing European marketplaces appear as a single pooled option. Marketplaces that bill in other currencies (such as Sweden or Poland) stay as their own options so the totals never mix currencies.