Amazon IPI Score: A Guide for India Sellers
Your Inventory Performance Index quietly decides how much FBA storage you get. Here is how to read the four levers behind the number and keep it healthy.
- IPI is a rolling score from 0 to 1000 driven by four inventory health signals
- A score below the current threshold triggers FBA storage limits for the quarter
- Excess inventory and stranded listings are the two fastest drags to fix
- Sell-through and in-stock rate reward steady replenishment, not bulk dumping
Most India sellers meet the Inventory Performance Index only when a warning appears in Seller Central telling them their FBA storage is about to shrink. By then the score has already been sliding for weeks. IPI is not a vanity metric. It is the number Amazon uses to decide how many units you are allowed to store, and a poor score in a peak quarter can cap you exactly when you need capacity most.
The score runs from 0 to 1000 and reflects how efficiently you turn stored inventory into sales. Amazon reviews it against a threshold it publishes each quarter. Clear the threshold and your storage stays open ended within reason. Fall below it and you receive storage limits that hold until the next review. For a growing brand, that is the difference between shipping a full replenishment and rationing your best sellers.
The four levers that move your score
IPI is not a black box. It is built from four inventory health signals, and every fix you make maps to one of them.
- Excess inventory: stock that will take too long to sell at its current rate. This is usually the single biggest drag. Amazon flags units where you are holding far more than demand justifies.
- Sell-through rate: units sold and shipped over the past 90 days divided by average available inventory. Steady, predictable movement scores well. Bulk dumping followed by long silence does not.
- Stranded inventory: units sitting in a fulfilment centre against a listing that is inactive, suppressed, or missing a price. These are earning storage fees while being unsellable.
- In-stock rate: the share of time your active, replenishable listings actually have stock. Running dry on a proven SKU hurts here, which is why IPI quietly rewards good replenishment planning.
Why the score matters more in India
Indian sellers often run tighter working capital than the global average, and the temptation is to send large consignments to Amazon fulfilment centres to save on inbound freight per unit. That behaviour is precisely what the excess and sell-through levers penalise. You save a few rupees on freight and then pay it back in storage fees while your IPI erodes.
There is a second India specific wrinkle. GST registration and state level fulfilment mean sellers frequently split inventory across multiple fulfilment centres. When a listing goes stranded, it can go stranded in more than one location at once, multiplying the drag. Reviewing the stranded inventory report is not a quarterly chore here. It should be weekly.
How to lift a low score, in order
When a score is already below threshold, work the levers by speed of impact, not by size of problem. The fastest wins come first.
- Clear stranded inventory this week. Open the stranded inventory report, and for each entry either relist, fix the price, or create a removal order. A suppressed image or a missing GST field can strand a unit, so check the listing quality alert first. This is the quickest lever because it removes dead weight instantly.
- Attack excess with targeted price cuts, not blanket sales. Identify the specific SKUs Amazon has flagged as excess and move them with coupons or a modest markdown. You do not need a storewide sale. You need those particular units to start moving so the sell-through maths improves.
- Create removal or disposal orders for true dead stock. If a product has not sold in months and will not, paying to store it forever is worse than removing it. Recover the units, sell them through another channel, or dispose. The score rewards you for the honesty.
- Fix in-stock gaps on proven sellers. Set replenishment alerts on your reliable SKUs so they never hit zero. A consistent in-stock rate lifts the score gradually and, more importantly, protects the sales you already have.
Building a routine that keeps IPI high
Sellers who never see a storage limit are not lucky. They run a rhythm. The pattern that works for most India brands is simple and takes under an hour a week.
Start each week with the stranded inventory report and resolve every line. Once a month, pull the inventory age report and flag anything crossing 90 days, then decide to promote it or remove it before it ages into the punitive fee bands. Before every peak, whether that is a Great Indian Festival window or a Republic Day sale, forecast conservatively and send inventory in waves rather than one large drop, so your sell-through stays smooth and your capacity does not get consumed by stock that will not move until the event.
The brands that treat IPI as an operating discipline rather than an alarm end up with more storage, lower fees, and cleaner cash flow. The score is really just a mirror. Hold lean, sell steady, and never let a listing sit stranded, and the number takes care of itself. Let excess pile up and Amazon will make the decision for you, usually at the worst possible time.