By Bernardo Campelo: Forbes Business Council E-Commerce Leader, Amazon SPN Certified provider, Amazon SP-API authorized partner, and Founder of PrepVia.
The email arrives about three weeks after you file the case. We have reviewed your claim. The units in question have been located. No action is required. Case closed. Except you counted the units before they shipped, the shipment screen shows fewer received than you sent, and as far as you can tell nobody located anything.
I run PrepVia, an Amazon prep center in Miami, Florida, and denied reimbursement claims are one of the most common problems sellers bring to us after the fact. Across thousands of shipments we process, the pattern behind denials is remarkably consistent. It is almost never Amazon refusing to pay for units it lost. It is a claim that lost an argument with Amazon's own database, usually because it was filed too early or built from the wrong number. Once you understand how the review actually works, the fix is mechanical.
This post is the second half of our guide to FBA reimbursement for lost inbound shipments. That one covers how to file. This one covers why claims come back denied, what units located, no action required actually means, and the filing sequence that gets paid.
The 60-second version
The mechanic: Amazon does not investigate your claim the way you picture it. An investigator compares your claimed quantity against Amazon's own inventory ledger. If the ledger can account for the units at the moment of review, the claim is denied, usually with the phrase units located, no action required.
The five real denial reasons: filing before receiving has finished converging, calculating the claim from an inventory snapshot instead of the ledger, claiming units your own account already shows as received, failing the policy eligibility test because the shipment contents did not match the declaration, and tripping the claim-monitoring filter with repeated or inflated cases.
The flow that works: reconcile shipment by shipment at box level, wait until receiving totals stop moving, pull expected versus received from the Inventory Ledger report, attach Amazon's own numbers to the case, and claim the net difference only.
The stakes: the reimbursement policy lets Amazon investigate accounts that file excessive or inaccurate claims, and the window to file is finite. A denied claim is not a free retry. File clean or do not file.
How Amazon Actually Evaluates a Reimbursement Claim
Most sellers picture a person walking a fulfillment center floor with a clipboard, looking for their boxes. What actually happens is a database comparison that takes minutes.
Every unit that moves through FBA generates events in Amazon's inventory ledger: receipts as boxes are scanned in, transfers as units move between buildings, adjustments when inventory is found, damaged, or corrected. That event log is the source of truth for the investigator who picks up your case. When you file a claim for missing inbound units, the review pulls three numbers. What you declared on the shipment plan. What the ledger shows as received to date. And where every received unit sits right now: available, reserved, in fulfillment center transfer, or still moving through receiving.
If those states sum to something that accounts for the quantity you claimed, the claim is denied. If there is a genuine, documented gap between declared and received, the claim pays. That is the whole review.
The practical conclusion follows directly: you cannot win a claim the ledger disagrees with, and you will rarely lose one the ledger supports. The entire game is filing a claim that Amazon's own data confirms. If you have never worked with the ledger report directly, read our anatomy of the Amazon inventory ledger first, because everything below depends on it.
The Five Real Reasons Claims Get Denied
1. You filed while Amazon was still receiving
Receiving is not an event. It is a process that routinely runs for days and sometimes weeks after your carrier delivers. Boxes from one shipment check in at different times. Units sit in receiving queues before they are scanned. And if you used Amazon-optimized shipment splits, part of your inventory is deliberately in motion between buildings after check-in, because Amazon redistributes units across its network.
File a claim during that window and the investigator finds your units exactly where Amazon expects them: in process, or in transfer. From Amazon's seat, the units are located and the case is correctly closed. You were not wrong about the count. You were wrong about the clock.
Premature filing is, by a wide margin, the top denial cause we see. The rule is simple: do not file until the shipment shows closed and the received totals have stopped moving for a sustained stretch. Amazon's claim window is built around the same reality: as of 2026, missing-unit claims on shipments to Amazon cannot be filed until 15 days after the delivery date, and they close at 60 days, so the waiting has a floor and a deadline.
2. You calculated the claim from a snapshot instead of the ledger
Say you declared 1,200 units. Three weeks later the inventory page shows 1,050 available. The tempting math is 1,200 minus 1,050 equals 150 missing units. That math is wrong, and it is wrong in a way the investigator can see instantly.
The available number is a snapshot of one inventory state. It excludes units that are reserved for customer orders, units in fulfillment center transfer, and units still working through receiving. The ledger might show 1,180 units received, of which 100 are in transfer, 30 are reserved, and 1,050 are available. The real gap is 20 units, not 150. A claim for 150 is provably wrong against Amazon's data, so the whole claim reads as unreliable and comes back denied. Worse, an inflated number is now a data point on your account.
3. You claimed units your own account shows as received
Open the shipment in Seller Central and look at the contents tab. It shows, per SKU, what you declared and what Amazon has received. If that screen already shows 1,200 of 1,200 received, a lost-inbound claim for any of those units will be denied every time, because the investigator reads the same screen you do.
Units that were received and then went missing inside the warehouse are a real thing, but they are a different claim path, driven by ledger adjustment events rather than the inbound shipment record. Filing them as lost inbound puts a valid loss into the wrong queue and earns a denial. We walk through how to tell the two situations apart in FBA missing units: declared versus received.
4. The eligibility test: you must have shipped exactly what you declared
The FBA inventory reimbursement policy conditions payment on the shipment having contained exactly the items and quantities you declared. That sentence does a lot of quiet work. If a box carried 60 units where the plan said 50, or a wrong SKU slipped into a carton, the discrepancy stops being a reimbursable loss. It becomes a research case. Research cases resolve slowly, and rarely in your favor.
This is why the reimbursement conversation is actually a prep conversation. Box-level content accuracy at pack time is what makes your declaration trustworthy months later when you need to lean on it. It is the reason we run scan-verified box contents on every shipment at our prep center. Amazon does not require a 3PL to work that way. We do it because a clean declaration is the asset you cash in when a claim is on the line.
5. The claim-monitoring filter
The reimbursement policy gives Amazon the right to investigate accounts that file excessive or inaccurate claims and to act on what it finds. This is not fine print to skim past. Every claim you file is scored against your history. Repeated premature filings, systematically inflated quantities, and reopening denied cases with no new data all read as a pattern, and the policy reserves Amazon's right to respond to that pattern.
Denial Reason to Correction
| What the denial looked like | What Amazon actually saw | The correction |
|---|---|---|
| Units located, no action required, days after filing | Receiving still converging; units in process or in transfer between buildings | Wait for closed status plus static totals, then refile with ledger receipts if the gap persists |
| Denied over the quantity | Claimed number came from the available snapshot, not from receipts | Rebuild the claim from the Inventory Ledger: declared minus receipts, claim the net gap only |
| Denied as not eligible | Shipment contents did not match the declaration, so the policy test failed | Fix box-level accuracy upstream; for the current case, provide proof of what physically shipped |
| Denied, units shown as received | The shipment contents screen already shows full receipt | Wrong claim type: investigate through ledger adjustment events as a warehouse loss, not lost inbound |
| Denied with warning language about claim activity | A pattern of premature or inflated claims on the account | Stop filing until fully reconciled; from now on claim only net, documented gaps |
The Filing Sequence That Gets Paid
Here is the sequence we run internally before any claim goes out the door. None of it is clever. All of it is the difference between paid and denied.
- Reconcile by shipment, at box level. Expected versus received per box and per SKU, not per account. The goal is to name the specific box and SKU that came up short. A claim that says box 14 contained 50 units of one SKU and the ledger shows 30 received is a different animal from a claim that says some units are missing somewhere.
- Confirm the shipment is closed and the totals are static. Check the received count over several days. Our operating rule: closed status, plus no movement in received totals for two consecutive weeks, before anything gets filed. Receiving that is still creeping upward is Amazon telling you the answer is not final yet.
- Pull the Inventory Ledger report. In Seller Central: Reports, then Fulfillment, then Inventory Ledger. Filter to the FNSKU and a date range starting at delivery. Sum the receipt events. This number, not the inventory page, is what the investigator will look at.
- Compute the net gap. Declared, minus ledger receipts, minus any found or adjustment events that already credited units back. If you declared 1,200 and the ledger shows 1,180 received with no adjustments, your claim is 20 units. Not 150, not roughly a case worth, exactly 20.
- Attach Amazon's own numbers to the case. Declared quantity, receipt events by date, and the resulting gap, stated plainly. You are handing the investigator a review that is already done, built from data they trust because it is theirs.
- Have proof of delivery ready. Carrier confirmation, bill of lading, proof of delivery, and weights, in case the case escalates to whether the shipment arrived at all. We cover that evidence chain in how to prove Amazon received your FBA shipment.
- Claim the net difference and nothing else. The strongest claim is a boring one: a small, exact number that Amazon's ledger confirms. Those get paid quickly and quietly.
If your operation runs enough volume that doing this per shipment sounds unmanageable, that is an argument for tooling, not for skipping the reconciliation. The PrepVia dashboard tracks expected versus received per shipment as a standing report, because the sellers who win claims are the ones who notice the gap in week one, not quarter three.
What Units Located, No Action Required Really Means
The phrase is literal. At the moment of review, the ledger accounted for the units you claimed. There are three ways that happens, and they call for different responses.
Case one: you filed early and the units checked in after. This is the most common outcome and it is genuinely good news wearing an annoying email. Verify it: pull the ledger and check whether receipts increased after your filing date. If declared now matches received, accept the outcome and move on.
Case two: units in transfer or reserved counted as located. The units exist but have not settled into available stock. Give the transfer time to complete, then re-run the reconciliation. If available inventory never converges to the received total, the discrepancy is now a warehouse-side question driven by adjustment events, not an inbound one.
Case three: your count was off. Usually snapshot math, occasionally a pack-out error on your side. The ledger will show it. Accept it and fix the upstream process.
One more piece of context: since early 2025, reimbursements for units lost before a customer order are based on your sourcing cost rather than the sale price, and Amazon estimates that cost from comparable products unless you document your own. Smaller checks per unit changed the economics of sloppy claiming. For what moved in 2026 specifically, see our complete list of 2026 FBA fee changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Amazon deny my FBA reimbursement claim?
Almost all denials come from one of five causes: the claim was filed while Amazon was still receiving the shipment, the claimed quantity was calculated from an inventory snapshot instead of the inventory ledger, the account itself already shows the units as received, the shipment contents did not match the declared items and quantities, or the account has a pattern of premature or inflated claims. In our experience the first two account for the large majority. The fix is to reconcile at box level, wait until received totals stop moving, and claim only the net gap the ledger confirms.
What does units located no action required mean?
It means that at the moment an investigator reviewed your case, Amazon's inventory ledger could account for the units you claimed, whether as received, reserved, or in transfer between fulfillment centers. Most often it means the units checked in after you filed, which you can verify by pulling the ledger and looking at receipt dates. If receipts now match your declared quantity, the case is genuinely resolved. If the gap persists after receiving has settled, reopen the case with the ledger extract attached.
How long should I wait before filing an FBA reimbursement claim?
Wait until the shipment status shows closed and the received totals have stopped changing, then confirm the gap against the Inventory Ledger report rather than the inventory page. Our internal rule is closed status plus two consecutive weeks with no movement in receipts before anything gets filed. Filing earlier is the single most common reason claims come back as units located, because receiving and internal transfers are often still in progress. Mind the deadline while you wait: as of 2026, claims for units missing from shipments to Amazon can be filed no sooner than 15 days and no later than 60 days from the delivery date.
Can filing too many FBA claims hurt my account?
Yes. The FBA reimbursement policy allows Amazon to investigate accounts that file excessive or inaccurate claims and to act on what it finds. Repeated premature filings, inflated quantities, and reopening denied cases without new evidence all build a pattern on your account. The safe posture is to file fewer, cleaner claims: reconcile first, claim exact net differences supported by the ledger, and reopen only when you have new data.
Final Take
A denied reimbursement claim feels like a verdict about honesty. It is not. It is the output of a database comparison you entered with the wrong number at the wrong time. Amazon's ledger does not care how certain you are, because for inbound counting disputes it is the record both sides end up using.
So use it first. Reconcile by shipment, wait out the receiving window, build the claim from receipts instead of snapshots, and claim the exact net gap. Sellers who work this way get paid with almost no drama, and their claims history reads the way you want it to read on an account Amazon is allowed to profile.
And if the reconciliation keeps surfacing declaration mismatches rather than Amazon-side losses, the problem is upstream of the claim, and it is fixable before the units ever leave the dock.
Talk to PrepVia about your inbound accuracy →
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Related Reading
- Amazon FBA Reimbursement for Lost Inbound Shipments: the filing guide this post extends
- The Amazon Inventory Ledger, Explained: the report every claim is judged against
- FBA Missing Units: Declared vs Received: how to tell an inbound loss from a warehouse loss
- How to Prove Amazon Received Your FBA Shipment: the evidence chain for escalated cases
