New COGS Feature
Today i was rightly told me off for forgetting to mention a new COGS feature whereby you can now perform inline edits to the to-from dates in a list of COGS time periods
Storage Fees (Again) – Very Long And Boring Post
A few days ago I told you we’d started on the development of storage fees. I also reported that as usual, Amazon won’t make it easy to get to the metrics YOU want (profitability by SKU), as they are only interested in the metrics THEY want (how much to charge you).
Here’s how I explained the challenge back then:
– The storage fee reports come with an ASIN and an FNSKU alongside the storage charges for one month. So, we can certainly provide a breakdown per ASIN, but when it comes to assigning the cost to a product for product profitability calculations, we need to assign it to an SKU rather than an ASIN.
– We can certainly convert the FNSKU to an SKU, that is not a problem. However, in the cases where there is no FNSKU on the report, we are stuck.
– Cases with no FNSKU include comingled inventory and inventory where the UPC or EAN numbers are used instead.
After much head-scratching, here is how we have specified our way out of this mess:
If the Storage Fees report shows a row with an FNSKU present and the FNSKU maps to an SKU, assign the storage fee in the report to its deduced SKU (stemming from FNSKU).
If the Storage Fees report shows a row with FNSKU not present, or FNSKU does not map to an SKU:
– Accumulate estimated-monthly-storage-fee for that report row to an ‘unallocated cost’ bucket
– When all FC/ASINs/FNSKU in the report have been apportioned to their respective SKU, if there is any amount left in the unallocated cost bucket, apportion that amount to the remaining SKUs of the ASIN which have not yet had a fee charged, based on their current inventory on hand
Example
ASIN B0101 has 6 SKUs
– SKU0101
– SKU0102
– SKU0103
– SKU0104
– SKU0105
– SKU0106
Storage Fees Report shows 4 rows for ASIN B0101, two rows which can be directly attributed to an SKU and two rows which cannot
– ASIN B0101 -> FNSKU X0101 ->SKU S0101 cost 5.00 Avg Untis 30
– ASIN B0101 -> FNSKU X0102 ->SKU S0102 cost 3.00 Avg Units 70
– ASIN B0101 -> FNSKU X0101 ->SKU NULL cost 2.00 Avg Units 50
– ASIN B0101 -> FNSKU NULL cost 3.00 Avg Units 80
Processing of the Storage Fees reports rows results in:
a) Calculated total storage fees for ASIN B0101
— $5.00 + $3.00 + $2.00 + $3.00 = $13.00
b) Fees directly attributable to SKUs from the report:
– – SKU 0101 Cost $5.00 (From report)
– – SKU 0102 Cost $3.00 (From report)
c) Fees which are not directly attributable to SKUs from the report (Unused cost bucket) :
— Total $13.00 – ($5.00 + $3.00) = $5.00
d) Unallocated SKUs for ASIN B0101 which have received no cost yet
— SKU0103 current inventory 150
— SKU0104 current inventory 0
— SKU0105 current inventory 60
— SKU0106 current inventory 90
e) Apportionment of Unallocated Bucket Cost to Unallocated SKUs as follows:
— Total units in stock for unallocated SKUs = 150 + 30 + 60 + 90 = 300
— SKU0103 cost = 150 / 300 * $5.00 = $2.50
— SKU0104 cost = 0 / 300 * $5.00 = $0
— SKU0105 cost = 60 / 300 * $5.00 = $1.00
— SKU0106 cost = 90 / 300 * $500 = $1.5
I am sure you cannot wait to spend what is left of your Christmas day to tackle this issue, so I’ll come back and read your comments in an hour or so.
Just kidding. (but we’d be very happy to hear what you think, though)
Amazon API Delays
Over the past 24 hours, we have received 4 support tickets telling us that SellerLegend is trailing behind the SellerCentral dashboard.
We have investigated the 4 instances by comparing the SellerCentral All Orders Report against our dashboard numbers and confirmed they are both in sync. We also have checked our orders pull jobs logs and made sure the reported accounts had been correctly polled for orders every 30 minutes.
It seems that it is an issue with the Amazon API rather than anything being wrong with SellerLegend. If you are experiencing the same issue an need reassurance it is not an SL bug, please send us a copy of your All Orders Report from SellerCentral as well as an Orders download from SellerLegend for the same period an we will be happy to run the numbers for you.
Amazon’s Developer Code of Conduct
Amazon has recently published a brand new ‘Developer’s Code Of Conduct’ which has significant implications both for us as developers but also for you as sellers.
You can read the full code of conduct here:
http://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/…/DG_CodeOfConduct…
It is quite short but telling. Let me extract the 3 clauses which I think are noteworthy:
- Customers and sellers trust that you will protect information about them. Don’t publicly disclose or share information obtained through MWS (for instance, a seller’s sales revenue or an item’s product description) with any third parties. Do not do this even if you omit or obfuscate the seller’s identity or if you share aggregated seller data without identifying individual sellers.
- Don’t help or allow sellers to violate Amazon’s terms. If you discover that a seller is using your service to violate Amazon terms that apply to the seller, you must immediately notify Amazon and cut off the seller’s MWS access through your service.
- Don’t use robots to programmatically read from (also known as ‘scraping’), or write information to (e.g. creating support contacts), Seller Central or Amazon’s marketplaces
The first clause is important because that puts an end to screenprints and demos using obfuscation. You will notice that ours are literally hand-crafted. No info is obfuscated, but each piece is meticulously replaced by fake data using the browser’s ‘Developers’s Tool’ invoked through the Inspect Element context menu in the browser.
It is further important as it now makes it illegal to provide services like keyword tools, PPC trend analysis, or even product category trends tools or lists (at least, that is how we read it)
The second clause is more significant. If you help a seller to break TOS, you are in Amazon’s cross-hairs. If the developer is in their cross-hairs, where do you think the seller will be?
The third clause is an old chestnut that is easily discounted by both sellers and many of our competitors.
Discuss.
Our First Non-Video Video – You Decide: Will It Be The Last?
We at SellerLegend have a big dilemma.
To video or to not video.
Sounds like a simple decision, right? Of course, the answer is to video, surely.
Well, we have several challenges with videoing, which we explain in our knowledgebase like so:
https://docs.sellerlegend.com/…/why-is-there-no-video-trai…/
This is all well and good, but life would be soo much better with videos, wouldn’t it?
Well, here’s a test of a potential mid-way solution which provides us with the agility we need to maintain visual training material, and we would welcome your input.
The tool we use essentially strings together screen prints and commentary and provides a step up from written documentation. But regrettably is not as good as motion video.
So, we’d like your input on the matter. Here’s our first non-video for you to judge.
The tool I mentioned is still in its infancy and does not yet support 16:9 aspect ratio, which is a pain. You’d really want to see the screen prints in … well … full screen. However, we’re assured that that is coming in 1Q18. So we’ll patiently wait.
We have produced a version narrated in English, German, French, and Spanish.
Please let us know whether it is worth us investing in what will essentially result in A LOT of time producing stuff like this.