FBA Reimbursement Calculator: What Does Amazon Owe You?
When Amazon loses or damages your inventory, the policy is public: your sourcing cost for items lost before sale, the refund minus fees for return claims, $5,000 per-unit cap — and a 60-day window to dispute an amount you disagree with. Estimate your open balance below. No signup, no account linking — the math runs in your browser.
What Amazon owes you, in one table
The amount depends on when the item was lost or damaged — before a customer ordered it, or on a customer’s order:
| Scenario | Reimbursement basis |
|---|---|
| Lost or damaged before fulfillment — inbound shipments, fulfillment center operations, removals | Your sourcing cost: what the unit cost you to manufacture or purchase, plus packaging and shipping it to the fulfillment center. No sourcing cost on file? Amazon estimates it from comparable products. |
| Item was already unsellable when lost or damaged | A reduced estimated cost of the unit — Amazon may ask for documentation to determine the adjusted value. |
| Customer return claim — item refunded or replaced on an FBA order | The refund or replacement price on the original order, minus applicable fees. |
| Any single unit | Hard cap: $5,000. Amazon recommends third-party insurance above that. |
Source: Amazon Seller Central help, FBA inventory reimbursement policy.
The calculator
Two inputs, one honest estimate. Your sourcing cost is the number Amazon would use if it were on file — if you never entered one, run this with your real unit cost, then compare against what Amazon’s own estimate would pay instead.
Enter units and cost — the estimate appears instantly. Nothing is uploaded; no account is linked.
Sourcing cost: the number that decides everything
Amazon defines sourcing cost as the cost to manufacture or purchase your product plus packaging and shipping it to the fulfillment center. Two boundaries matter:
- It excludes Amazon fees — referral and fulfillment fees are not part of your reimbursement basis.
- It excludes some seller-side costs — advertising, storage, and fulfillment-center labor are out; sales and VAT taxes are your choice to include or not.
You set it on the Manage Your Sourcing Cost page in the Inventory Defect & Reimbursement portal. Skip it, and Amazon fills the gap with its own estimate from comparable products — displayed on the same page so you can challenge it. Keeping a documented sourcing cost on file is the cheapest lever you have: Amazon pays your documented number first and estimates only when you don’t have one.
Find what you’re owed, then file it
- Pull the evidence. Two reports matter: the Inventory Ledger (what entered and left the network) and the Reimbursements report (what Amazon already paid). Diffing them is how open balances surface.
- Match lost units to payouts. Every lost/damaged unit should map to a reimbursement entry. Missing rows are your claim list — run the amounts through the calculator above to size them.
- File in the right lane, inside the window. Claims go through the Inventory Defect & Reimbursement portal, and the window depends on the claim type — fulfillment center operations claims, for example, must be filed within 60 days of the item being reported lost or damaged. Full windows and the filing flow: see our lost inventory claim guide.
- Dispute within 60 days. Disagree with a valuation? File on Contact Us in Seller Central within 60 days of the reimbursement being issued — documented sourcing costs make these disputes concrete.
Keeping the evidence current without manual downloads is what our free returns report exporter guide covers — scheduled exports of your returns data.
Frequently asked questions
How does Amazon calculate FBA reimbursements?
For items lost or damaged before a customer ordered them (inbound shipments, fulfillment center operations, removals), Amazon reimburses your sourcing cost — manufacturing, purchasing, packaging, and shipping the unit to the fulfillment center. If you haven’t provided a sourcing cost in the Inventory Defect & Reimbursement portal, Amazon uses its own estimate of what comparable products cost. For customer return claims, the reimbursement is based on the refund or replacement price on the original order minus applicable fees. Either way, the maximum for a single unit is $5,000.
What is the maximum FBA reimbursement per unit?
Five thousand dollars. Amazon’s reimbursement policy caps a single-unit reimbursement at $5,000 and explicitly recommends third-party insurance for items worth more than that.
What if I don’t agree with Amazon’s reimbursement amount?
You can dispute a reimbursement valuation through Contact Us in Seller Central within 60 days after the reimbursement was issued. This is one more reason to keep a sourcing cost on file: without it, Amazon reimburses from its own estimate, and disputing an estimate is harder than disputing against documented costs.
Does this calculator file claims for me?
No — and be suspicious of any tool that promises that. This page is an estimator: it applies Amazon’s published calculation rules to the numbers you enter so you know whether a payout is worth pursuing. Filing happens in Seller Central through the appropriate claim flow, and decisions are always Amazon’s. The upside: everything here runs in your browser, and you never hand over your account credentials.