Expiration control for Amazon FBA

Your expiration dates, underyour control

Shelfdoc gives FBA sellers one place to manage expiration risk before it becomes a customer complaint. Track MSKUs, prioritize older inventory with FEFO pricing, review Disposal Requests, monitor Subscribe & Save risk, and keep proof of every action.

Built by an FBA seller  ·  Official Amazon integration  ·  Monthly or annual

Not ready to sign up? Try the free Unsellable by Date calculator or 17-point self-audit — no account needed.

Questions before signing up? support@shelfdoc.com — we reply within one business day.

120 days

Expiration warning

Per MSKU

Date precision

Daily

Amazon sync

shelfdoc.com / dashboardOpen full preview →
Action required

File disposal for 1 overdue MSKU

ZINC-50-LOT1 — Unsellable by Date passed 22 days ago. Last submission failed; Amazon flagged the listing as suppressed. Retry from Disposal Requests.

Open Disposal Requests
Unsellable by Date passed

2

$1,278 at risk

Expiring ≤30 days

3

6 already in queue

Pending disposals

3

Awaiting confirm

Tracked MSKUs

15

of 50 cap

Portfolio risk

$3,420 projected unsold at deadline across at-risk MSKUs

3 critical

3

Critical

2

At risk

1

Stalled

9

On pace

Top contributors:PROBIO-30B-A·OMEGA3-2000·COQ10-200

A preview of the dashboard you'll see after connecting your account.

Why expiration dates are different

Expired-goods complaints stack up faster than any other FBA issue.

Listing suppressions. Repeat-offender flags. Disposal of perfectly good units alongside expired ones. Once you have more than one shipment in FBA under the same ASIN, expiration dates need their own purpose-built workflow — Shelfdoc is that workflow.

MSKU-level expiration risk is invisible

Every MSKU is its own batch with its own shelf life. Without MSKU-level visibility, the oldest units sit in FBA and age out — and the spreadsheet you keep on the side rarely matches what Amazon actually has on hand.

Commingling mixes good and expired units

In commingled inventory, Amazon pulls any matching unit when a buyer orders — including expired units from your older shipments or from another seller's stock. The buyer gets an expired unit, and the complaint lands on your listing.

Amazon decides what gets disposed

When Amazon can't tell which inbound shipment a unit came from, it applies its own expired-goods logic — which can dispose of perfectly good units along with expired ones.

A single complaint snowballs

One expired-goods complaint becomes a listing suppression. Repeated suppressions become repeat-offender flags. Spreadsheets won't catch the next one in time.

Operating requirements

Shelfdoc works when your inventory is set up to be tracked per batch.

These are not preferences — they are the prerequisites the workflow depends on. Read them once before you sign up so you know Shelfdoc fits how you run FBA.

One MSKU per ASIN and expiration-date batch

Before using Shelfdoc, make sure each expiration-date batch has its own MSKU in Amazon. You can do this with a Flat File for the ASIN or Add a Product under the ASIN. Then map that MSKU in Shelfdoc to the correct expiration date. FNSKU labels keep the FBA units tied to the right MSKU.

FNSKU barcodes on every unit

Every unit you ship into FBA must carry an FNSKU barcode tied to the correct MSKU. Amazon's commingled (manufacturer-barcode) inventory program is off the table — that is what lets Shelfdoc act on a specific batch.

Don't mix expiration dates under one MSKU

FEFO pricing, daily monitoring, stranding workflows, and disposal scheduling all depend on knowing which units carry which expiration date. If you can't separate batches by MSKU + FNSKU, Shelfdoc is not the right tool for that catalog.

Easy to set up in Amazon — and required. Each expiration-date batch needs its own MSKU in Amazon. Use a Flat File for the ASIN or Add a Product under the ASIN. Then map that MSKU in Shelfdoc to the correct expiration date. FNSKU labels keep the FBA units tied to the right MSKU. Required because if expiration dates are mixed under one MSKU, Shelfdoc cannot reliably control FEFO, monitoring, or disposal workflows.

See Scope — operating requirements and Help — before you begin for the full guide.

The decision

Three approaches. One that scales with your catalog.

How sellers handle expiration dates in FBA today — and what each costs in time, attention, and risk.

Do nothing

Wait, then react

$0/mo

Until a 5-figure incident hits — listing suppressions, refund storms, write-offs, lost revenue, surprise disposal fees

  • Listings suppressed without warning when complaints stack up
  • Buyer-complaint storms hit before you know dates expired
  • Amazon disposes good and bad units together — write-offs you didn't choose
  • Surprise FBA disposal fees and storage overage charges hit cash flow
  • Lost revenue every week a top listing is suppressed
  • No audit trail — reconstruct from email and screenshots after the fact

Manual spreadsheet

DIY workflow

$0/mo

Manual entry per MSKU; breaks down on vacation, sick days, overload, or a fat-fingered row

  • Per-MSKU dates — until someone fat-fingers the sheet
  • Vacation, illness, overload → missed dates → expired stock
  • Alerts only when you remember to check
  • Disposals still filed by hand, one ticket at a time
  • Manual price changes per MSKU; FEFO is aspirational
  • Audit trail is sheet history plus screenshots, hard to defend
Recommended

Shelfdoc

Set up once, runs daily

$29 – $149/mo

Purpose-built software running daily in the background — review alerts when something needs your attention

  • Email alerts at 120, 90, 60, 30, and 14 days
  • One-click Disposal Request submission
  • FEFO discounts the soonest-expiring MSKU
  • Override price keeps disposing units off-market
  • Daily audit vs Amazon’s inbound record
  • PDF and Excel audit-trail export — every action timestamped

Expired-goods complaints can suppress listings, trigger Account Health warnings, and in serious cases lead to suspensions during peak season. Shelfdoc is built to catch the problem before any of that happens.

Pricing

Three plans. One product.

Tiers differ only in active mapped-MSKU count. Every plan ships the full workflow. 20% off annually.

Starter

$29/month

10 active mapped MSKUs

For solo sellers bringing a focused expiration-dated catalog under control.

See full feature breakdown
Most popular

Operator

$49/month

50 active mapped MSKUs

For sellers running expiration-dated inventory across multiple product lines.

See full feature breakdown

Scale

$149/month

250 active mapped MSKUs

For high-volume sellers running large expiration-dated catalogs.

See full feature breakdown

Every tier ships the full workflow. See the full feature comparison →

Above ScaleMore than 250 active mapped MSKUs?

Email us with your active MSKU count and we'll quote a plan that fits.

Email us

The product

Built around how expiration-dated FBA actually works.

Per-MSKU expiration tracking, FEFO pricing, scheduled Disposal Request submission (seller-reviewed), and a clean audit trail — all in one place.

Per-MSKU expiration tracking

Map a real expiration and Unsellable by Date to every batch — not just the product.

Inventory Intelligence

Mark an ASIN once; every new MSKU under it auto-flows into Unmapped on the next sync.

Email alerts

30, 60, 90, and 120-day warnings — weeks before Amazon flags anything.

Scheduled Disposal Requests

Seller-reviewed, filed on the Unsellable by Date via Amazon’s official seller integration.

FEFO pricing automation

Discount the soonest-expiring MSKU under each ASIN so it sells first.

Subscribe & Save monitoring

Names the replacement MSKU and tracks the transfer to zero subscribers lost.

Bin Check opportunities

Amazon return signals surface as bin-check opportunities — Shelfdoc drafts, you file the case.

Operational Health

Shelfdoc’s monitor — connection, syncs, stranded, discrepancies. Not Amazon Account Health.

Daily date audit

Compares your mapped dates against Amazon’s inbound record every day.

Stranded Inventory Overrides

Three-hour override to file a fresh shipment plan. Auto-closes safely.

Override price

Per-MSKU sell pause — inflates the price so a MSKU can’t accidentally sell while you work it.

Audit Log

Every action timestamped. One-click PDF and Excel proof export for the dates that matter.

How it works

Up and running in under ten minutes.

  1. 01

    Day 1 · 2 min

    Connect Amazon

    One-time authorization through Amazon’s official integration. Read-only catalog access — Shelfdoc never sees buyer or order information.

  2. 02

    Day 1 · 5 min

    Pull your FBA catalog

    Every MSKU lands in the Unmapped queue. Nothing changes on Amazon until you say so.

  3. 03

    Day 1 · 5–20 min

    Map expiration dates

    Set Expiration and Unsellable by Date per MSKU — one at a time, or paste dozens via the bulk grid.

  4. 04

    Ongoing

    Shelfdoc watches your portfolio

    Daily syncs watch your sell-through speed, Subscribe & Save rotations, and date mismatches. Email alerts on your schedule. The dashboard names the single most urgent action.

  5. 05

    On Unsellable by Date

    Disposal fires — with audit trail

    Shelfdoc files the Disposal Request and records Amazon’s order ID. Failures show Amazon’s exact error with a Retry button. Every action timestamped.

Where the workflow comes from

Built by an FBA seller who lived this problem.

Built by an Amazon FBA seller with nearly a decade of FBA operating experience. The workflow was first developed in Excel to bring expired goods under control inside a $6M-revenue FBA vitamin distribution business.

Before the workflow

  • Listings suppressed without warning when expired units shipped.
  • Repeat-offender pressure and tens of thousands of dollars in Amazon-discretion disposals.
  • No per-MSKU visibility — bin checks were guesswork, FEFO was theory only.

After the workflow

  • Expired-goods incidents went away within ~6 months, including legacy commingled MSKUs.
  • Selling oldest-first (FEFO) became automatic; complaint-driven escalations dropped off.
  • Issues, when they came up, were resolved with bin-check evidence and per-MSKU proof.

Shelfdoc is that workflow, turned into software. Outcomes depend on adoption — nothing here guarantees Amazon outcomes.

Frequently asked

The questions sellers actually ask.

Date control, commingling risk, and the audit trail you'll want when Amazon questions you.

Your expiration calendar, finally yours.

What gets sold, what gets removed, what never reaches a customer — your call, not whatever Amazon's commingled bins ship out.

Connect Amazon after signup  ·  US marketplace