Reports and catalog health: listing status, stranded inventory, and the catalog sweep

All Listings Report (the Inventory Reports page — under the Inventory menu in most accounts) — what do I have, and in what state? One row per SKU with ASIN, price, quantity, fulfillment channel and a status column: Active, Inactive or Incomplete. It is the offer-side snapshot — fast, whole-catalog, and silent about content and about why a row is Inactive.

Category Listing Report — what is in every attribute? The report Catalog fundamentals and Listing maintenance already lean on, requested per category from the same page. Two things matter for the sweep: in most accounts Seller Support enables it for a limited time, so re-request it before each audit; and each download is a dated backup whose columns match the flat-file template, so a bulk PartialUpdate starts from it.

FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) inventory reports (the FBA Inventory page and the Fulfillment reports) — where are the units? Fulfillable, reserved, unsellable and inbound quantities per SKU, and an Inventory Age view.

Business Reports → Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item — is anyone seeing it, and is the sale mine? Sessions, page views and units per child ASIN, plus the Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage.

Request the first three on the same day, so they describe the same moment. A report is a snapshot: a status pulled on Monday is not evidence on Thursday.

• Active — the offer is buyable. This is not the same as visible: the status column says nothing about search suppression.
• Inactive — not buyable, always for a reason, and the reason sits in the Inactive view of Manage All Inventory, not in the report. Out of stock is replenishment. Pricing error means the price is outside the minimum and maximum you set for the SKU or a threshold Amazon applies. Closed means someone closed the offer. Blocked is a policy, compliance or approval action: read the notice on the listing first, then Performance Notifications and Account Health.
• Incomplete — not for sale because required information is missing, usually offer details (price, condition) or a required attribute. Most never went live; a live SKU can also drop to Incomplete when its offer data is removed or invalid. The Incomplete filter names the missing field.
• Search suppressed — hidden from search and browse because a required attribute is missing or non-compliant. The status column does not show it: use the Suppressed filter in Manage All Inventory and the Listing Quality Dashboard, which names the attribute per SKU, or the Listing Quality and Suppressed Listing Report for a file you can fix in bulk.

A status without its reason is not a task. Inactive (out of stock) is replenishment, Inactive (pricing error) is an offer fix, and neither touches the page.

Stranded units are FBA inventory in a fulfillment center with no active offer attached: they cannot sell and keep accruing storage fees. The Fix Stranded Inventory page — a link at the top of Manage All Inventory and the FBA Inventory page — lists each stranded SKU with a reason — Listing closed, Listing error (an attribute problem), Missing price or Pricing error, Blocked listing, Merchant fulfilled, Item discontinued. The labels change, and the page explains each one.

The action follows the reason:

• Listing closed — relist, after confirming nobody closed it on purpose.
• Listing error or incomplete listing — fix the missing or invalid attribute; the units become sellable when the listing does.
• Pricing error or missing price — correct the price or the SKU's limits; nothing on the page needs to change.
• Cannot or should not be relisted (a blocked ASIN you cannot appeal, a product you have decided to stop selling) — create a removal order so the units stop costing storage.

The same page holds Amazon's automatic relist and removal settings for stranded units, including whether removed units are returned or disposed of. Read the current values for your account rather than assuming them.

The Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage in the business report is the share of page views where your offer sat in the "Add to Cart" box. Where you are the only seller, anything under 100% is a flag, and the usual causes are on the offer side: inactive days, a pricing error, a price above Amazon's threshold for the ASIN, a stock-out, or — in some categories and accounts — an offer not eligible to be featured at all. Where other sellers share the ASIN, the number says how often their offer won instead.

For the sweep the metric is diagnostic: a low percentage with correct content means the problem is the offer, not the page, so the fix is price, stock or status — not another content edit.

A catalog sweep is the same loop every time, in this order:

1. Snapshot — request the All Listings Report, the FBA inventory report and the business report on the same day.
2. Exceptions — list every Inactive row with the reason from the Inactive view, every Incomplete listing, every search-suppressed SKU, every stranded SKU, and every sole-seller ASIN under 100% Featured Offer.
3. Cause — take each exception down to the attribute, price, or Account Health cause: the Category Listing Report or the Listing Quality Dashboard for content, price and quantity for offers.
4. Fix through the right channel — the edit page or a PartialUpdate flat file for attributes, price or quantity for offers, a support case when the winning contribution is not yours or a family is broken.
5. Verify and record — open the live page, re-check the filters after processing, and write the counts down: exceptions per hundred SKUs, by bucket.

The counts are the point: a catalog is healthy when exceptions are few and trending down, and "fixed a few" cannot show either. Weekly suits a few hundred SKUs; larger catalogs sweep by category on a rotation.