Amazon’s Free FBA Calculator: Pros and Cons

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FBA Calculator

Amazon has been a convenient way to buy goods without leaving the house, ordering the items you want that are not available in any market near you, and selling your products without your physical store. If you are an active seller on this famous online mall, you might have familiarized yourself with its tools, especially the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service calculator.

But what is the Amazon FBA fee calculator again anyway?

Amazon’s FBA Calculator

FBA calculator is very useful for every seller who wants to check the cost of everything that is FBA related. This tool helps sellers to see the estimates of pick and packing, Shipping, packaging supplies, inbound and outbound Shipping, preparation services, weight handling, and monthly warehouse storage fee. Then you can start to compare the cost with other fulfillment services and decide if you are still going to use the FBA service.

But this free FBA calculator is only good for pre-selling estimation. If you want to calculate how much Amazon will charge for the monthly FBA storage or its referral fee, then this tool will help you to generate those numbers. But that’s just the extent of its utility. There are plenty of costs that it doesn’t take into account and proportional fees, such as referral fees that can sometimes change if you decrease your retail price for sales promotion or a split test.

If you are a beginner, yes, the Amazon FBA program offers a lot of conveniences, including the Amazon Prime eligibility and Buy Box edge. You will also have to provide some fees to be able to use these benefits. But I suggest that you should have some knowledge about the Amazon seller fees calculator.

What is FBA?

Photo by ?? Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

FBA means Fulfillment by Amazon service. It is commonly used by online sellers due to its hassle-free service. This service covers picking and packing, shipping, packaging, Shipping, and provides customer service for these items. FBA also helps you manage your listings and gain more potential customers.

This service handles the storing, logistics, and other services that involve FBA. Therefore, sellers understand that there are fees that need to be paid when using this service.

The following are the services that Amazon will charge you under the FBA program.

  • Preparation Service– It is the process where sellers send their items to the Amazon storehouse for product inspecting, packaging, and item designation.
  • Picking and Packing Service- pickers locate which area the said items are kept in the warehouse. And packing is the process where they put the items in its proper complete with bubble wrap and proof of purchase before the item gets labeled and stamped.
  • 30 day Storage- Amazon charges sellers with inventory storage fees by the cubic foot or based on its volume. The estimation is based on how bulky the items are when items are wrapped up in line with Amazon FBA policies and specifications and ready to be shipped. 
  • Order Handling- is the amount charged to a customer on top of the order subtotal and shipping fee. This covers the costs of expenses, such as monthly warehouse storage cost, packing cost, and shipment cost. The handling fee will be charged once per order and not per item.
  • Weight Handling- it is the process where they take the weight and dimensions of the products before packing them and putting labels on it.
  • Inbound shipping– it means in-transit or checked in. Which also means that the product Fulfillable or available.
  • Outbound shipping- is what the customer was charged on order for the shipment.

Limits of Free FBA Calculator

  • Inserting the numbers to the free FBA calculator can be tiresome and can be such a hassle if you have plenty of items to check

Every time you want to search Amazon fees for an item, you have to insert the item name, Amazon Standard Identify shipping).

One of the disadvantages of using a free FBA calculator is that you won’t be able to save Amazon’s margin impact estimates in your browser for future use. You will have to type the selling retail price and some important numbers again when you need it.

  • You can’t save data to compare it with your list in Excel or even to copy it into your files.

The free FBA calculator does not let you export or save the calculation as a .csv, or other file types. So for you to keep track of the costs (when comparing which products would have a higher profit margin), you will have to write down each fee separately in a spreadsheet. It also doesn’t let you quickly re-estimate the impact of promotions on your net margin. Getting Amazon FBA software like Seller Snap is recommended if you are a seller who wants to keep your online business for a very long time. The software will help you keep your product research and cost estimates in your files for future reference.

  • You won’t be able to compare net margins concurrently with Amazon’s free FBA calculator.

Amazon’s FBA tool only calculates FBA fees one by one. And as I have mentioned above, you cannot export or save the data to easily compare fulfillment by Amazon product advantage in a spreadsheet. But by using an Amazon FBA software such as Seller Snap that will give you a complete overview of how your online business is going.

This tool has an Algorithmic Repricer capable of detecting a specific competitor’s behavior and making customized price adjustments to make sure that you still have an advantage. And for you to gain Buy Box share at the highest possible price.

This tool will generate refills by date and quantity suggestions to make sure you will never run out of stock. You just tell them your required days of coverage, and we will handle the rest.

  • Amazon FBA calculator doesn’t include other additional costs. 

The free Amazon FBA calculator only gives you calculations of referral fees, handling fees, and other costs associated with selling on Amazon FBA. The other additional costs that are not included are long-term storage fees, taxes (varies by state and country), advertisement, marketing cost, etc.

Seller Snap allows you to calculate all costs of individual products at the same time.

If you have experience in online selling on any platform, you must also know that its net margin does not set on high-profitable items. The number of positive reviews, sales rank, and the number of competitors can establish whether you’ll make money selling that item on the FBA program– and those statistics are not included in Amazon’s free FBA calculator tool.

Is it worth it to get an FBA software?

Yes. It will be worth every penny. An FBA software will allow you to keep track of your online business performance. It will also help you understand how to make your business strategy and keep your business successful.

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