How to Liquidate Amazon FBA Inventory, Step by Step

Step by step

1. Confirm the units are eligibleHazmat, recalled inventory, face masks, jewellery and anything expired, defective or warehouse damaged are excluded. Check this before you build the order, because an ineligible line comes back rejected after the rest has already gone.
2. Price the alternative firstEstimate net recovery as roughly 7% of average selling price, minus the 15% liquidations referral fee, minus the per unit processing fee, and set it against two more quarters of storage plus the aged inventory surcharge.
3. Open the Create Removal Order formSelect the ASINs on your inventory page and choose Create removal order from the Action on selected drop down menu. Starting from the Recommended Removal report, the equivalent button is Begin removal process.Inventory › Manage FBA Inventory
4. Choose Liquidations as the removal methodThe form offers return to an address, disposal and Liquidations. Only Liquidations credits money back to the account.
5. Enter the quantity to liquidateYou can send fulfillable or unfulfillable quantities. Read the row twice: fulfillable units are eligible, so a wrong row liquidates stock that was still selling.
6. Review and confirmClick Review, then Confirm. Once confirmed, the liquidation order cannot be cancelled, reduced or reversed.
7. Set what happens to future returnsOn the Automated unfulfillable settings page you can pick Liquidate, Refurbishment or both for unsellable units. Units that qualify for neither follow your Return or Dispose choice.Settings › Fulfillment by Amazon › Automated unfulfillable settings
8. Verify the creditTrack the order in the Removal Order Detail report, check the units drop out of next month's storage charges, and expect the net recovery credit within roughly 90 days.

If you are working out how to liquidate Amazon FBA inventory, you are really comparing two numbers: what a wholesale liquidator will pay for the units, and what it costs you to keep them one more quarter. FBA Liquidations is the removal option that sells eligible excess or customer returned units in bulk to a third party and credits part of the proceeds to your account, instead of shipping the units back to you or destroying them.

The mechanics are simple. The arithmetic is where sellers get surprised.

What liquidating FBA inventory pays, and what Amazon keeps

Amazon describes the gross recovery value as roughly 5% to 10% of the product's average selling price, set by its contracted rates with liquidators plus your sales history and current demand. Amazon is explicit that no recovery rate is guaranteed.

Two charges come off that gross figure, both documented on the FBA Liquidations help page:

• A liquidations referral fee of 15%, calculated on gross recovery value.
• A per unit processing fee based on size and weight. For the US program Amazon's figures run from $0.25 for the smallest standard size units up to $1.90 plus $0.20 per pound above 10 lb for the largest. In Canada, where liquidations launched on November 5, 2025, the same fee runs from CAD 0.25 to CAD 1.90 for units up to 5 kg, plus CAD 0.20 for each additional kg.

What reaches your account is the net recovery value, and Amazon says it appears within roughly 90 days of the order.

A full example on a 20 dollar unit

Take one standard size unit, 0.4 lb, with an average selling price of $20.

• Gross recovery at 7.5%: $1.50
• Liquidations referral fee, 15% of $1.50: $0.23
• Processing fee, smallest standard size tier: $0.25
• Net recovery value: $1.02

One dollar on a twenty dollar item. That is the honest headline, and it is why liquidation is never a revenue decision. It is a cost decision: the question is not what you recover, it is what you stop paying.

Run it against the other side. The same unit sitting in a US fulfilment centre through Q4 pays monthly FBA storage rates at peak pricing, and after 181 days it starts paying the aged inventory surcharge on top. Set the dollar you recover next to the rent you avoid for the next two quarters, not against the $20 you once hoped to sell it for.

Why liquidation is often the cheapest exit

Storage fees and the aged inventory surcharge stop accruing on the units the moment the order is submitted, not when the liquidator pays. Removing excess units also reduces the excess part of your IPI calculation, and Amazon states that liquidating an ASIN puts no restriction on sending that ASIN back into FBA later.

Compare it with the two alternatives. A return to your own address means paying what Amazon charges per unit to remove inventory and then paying again to store, inspect and resell the units yourself. Disposal costs a similar per unit fee and returns nothing at all. Liquidation is the only one of the three that sends money in the other direction, even if it is a small amount.

What cannot be liquidated

Amazon excludes dangerous goods (hazmat), recalled inventory, face masks, jewellery, and units that are expired, defective or warehouse damaged, plus anything blocked by legal, safety or regulatory rules. Eligibility is also decided per marketplace: the programme covers inventory stored in the US, the UK and the EU, with separate fee schedules.

Two practical consequences. First, the units that feel most urgent to clear, the damaged and expired ones, are often the ones the programme will not take. Second, a mixed removal order can come back partly rejected, so check the quantities Amazon accepted rather than the quantities you entered.

Which units are paying rent right now?

See my inventory

If the Liquidations option does not appear

The usual reasons, in the order worth checking:

1. The ASIN is in an excluded category. Hazmat flags are the most common blocker, and a unit can be flagged hazmat even when the retail product is not what you would call dangerous.
2. The marketplace does not offer it. Liquidations is a per store programme, so an account that sees it in the US may not see it elsewhere.
3. The user role lacks inventory permissions. Removal orders sit behind the same permission as inventory changes, so a user with reporting access alone will not see the action.
4. There is nothing Amazon recommends removing. If you start from the Recommended Removal report and the Begin removal process button is absent, that report is empty, which is not the same as the option being unavailable. Start from the inventory page instead.

If none of that applies, the fallback is a return or disposal order, and the automated route described below.

The mistakes that cost real money

Confirming before comparing. A liquidation order cannot be cancelled once confirmed. Not reduced, not reversed. Do the net recovery arithmetic before you click, because afterwards the units are gone.

Liquidating units that still sell. Fulfillable inventory is eligible, which means you can liquidate a healthy ASIN by selecting a quantity in the wrong row. The programme has no opinion about whether the units were selling.

Not knowing your automated settings are already doing it. Since September 9, 2021 liquidation and refurbishment have been options inside the automated removal settings, and plenty of accounts have them switched on without a decision ever being made. If customer returns have been leaving your account as wholesale lots, that is where to look, and we covered exactly that case in why unsellable returns get liquidated without a prompt.

Treating the 90 days as a payment date. It is an outer bound on when the net recovery credit appears, not a term you can plan cash against.

How to check it worked

Three checks, in order. The removal order status should move from pending to completed in the Removal Order Detail report. The units should leave your inventory and stop appearing in storage charges for the following month. The net recovery value should show up as a credit in your account within about 90 days, with the referral and processing fees already deducted.

If the first two happened and the third did not after 90 days, that is a case to open with the order ID, not a number to chase through the fee reports.

What to do with this

Set a threshold instead of deciding unit by unit. For each ASIN with more than two quarters of cover, estimate net recovery (around 7% of average selling price, minus 15%, minus the per unit processing fee) and compare it with two more quarters of storage plus the aged inventory surcharge. Everything where holding costs more than recovering goes on a monthly list, and the list gets reviewed before the peak storage window, not during it.

That calculation needs inventory age and real fee data per SKU, which is the part most accounts do not have in one place. It is also why the five clocks running on your FBA inventory matter more than any single fee: liquidation is the last of them, and it is the only one that ends with money coming back.

“you'll likely receive 5-10% of the average selling price as gross recovery value”

— Seller on Amazon Seller Forums ↗

#FBA#inventory#fees#removals

👋Hey! I'm Amara

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I cover Amazon fee and policy changes: what changed, when it applies and where Amazon published it.

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