After Q4: The January Plan for Marketplace Sellers

The fourth quarter ends on 31 December and the work it makes does not. The returns from December arrive in January. The peak surcharge on Amazon runs to 14 January. The stock that did not sell starts paying storage in the first week of the year, and on Amazon the long term storage fee assessment falls in the middle of every month. And the decisions that shape the next fourth quarter, what to order, what to drop, what to fix, are made from figures that are only readable in January.

This is the plan for the eight weeks after the holiday, for a seller on any of the marketplaces, in the order the work arrives. It is the half of the Q4 plan that most sellers never write, and it is where the quarter's profit is either kept or given back.

Holiday returns arrive in the first fortnight of January in the volume of a small sales month, and every marketplace extends its returns window across the season, so the customer who bought in November is inside it. The desk has three jobs. Inspect, so a unit that came back sealed is relisted and one that did not is graded. Refund inside the platform's window, because a late refund is a case, and a case is a metric. And count, by product and by reason, because the return reason is the cheapest product research a seller gets all year.

On Amazon the returns also generate the reimbursements the season owes: units returned to the wrong condition, refunds issued without the return arriving, inventory lost or damaged in the peak receiving queue. The claim windows are finite and the peak volume is where the errors happen, so the January reconciliation is the year's most valuable one. FBA reimbursements: what Amazon owes you is the method; on Walmart the equivalent is in the Walmart reimbursements article.

Every unit still in a fulfilment centre on 1 January is a unit the season did not want at the price it was offered. The question per product is not whether to clear it but at what price and by when, because the alternatives all have dates: Amazon's long term storage fee falls on the monthly assessment day, the capacity limit for the next quarter is set from the Inventory Performance Index that this stock is lowering, and the January buyer is spending gift money and is the cheapest buyer to reach.

The decision is a table: units, months of cover at the January rate of sale, storage cost per month, the price that clears it in six weeks, and the price it would carry if held to next season. For seasonal stock the second number is usually the honest one and the storage bill is the argument. For everything else, the January price is the one to take. The mechanics of that price on Amazon are in the inventory management article, and the Walmart and eBay equivalents apply the same table with different fee lines.

The season leaves reviews behind it, and the January ones are written by the customers who had a problem, because the ones who did not have gone back to their lives. Read every one. A review that names a defect is a listing to fix; a review that names a mismatch between the page and the product is a page to fix; a review that names a delivery problem is a carrier to change. What you can do about a bad Amazon review covers which of them can be addressed and how.

The account health metrics of December are read in January, and a late shipment rate or a cancellation rate that rose in the last fortnight of the year is a warning that arrives before the action does. On Amazon the routine in the account health article applies; the point is to read the December figures before Amazon's systems do.

The fourth quarter's figures are only readable once the returns are in and the surcharge has ended, which is the second half of January. Read them by product and by marketplace, and read five things: units by week against the forecast, margin after every fee including the surcharge and the deal fees, advertising cost per unit in the event weeks against the build weeks, the return rate, and the stock left over. The product that sold to forecast, held margin, returned little and left nothing is the one to order more of; the product that did none of those is the one that does not go back into the next plan.

The comparison across marketplaces is the one most sellers skip. A product that sold on Walmart in November at a better margin than on Amazon is telling the seller where its next unit of stock should go, and the ROAS by platform, read the way the ROAS standards article describes, is what says which advertising to do again.

The purchase orders for next October are placed in the summer, and the summer's decisions are made from January's table. So the plan for the next fourth quarter is written now, while the reasons are fresh: the products that go back in and the quantities, the deals that earned their fee and the ones that did not, the marketplace that surprised, the inbound date that was missed and why, and the one thing that would have made the most difference if it had been done in September. Written in February, that document is the difference between a fourth quarter planned and one repeated.

For the brands we run, this is the January work in marketplace management, and it is the work we would put ahead of anything else in the calendar: the returns cleared, the reimbursements claimed, the stock decided, the reviews read, the figures by product and marketplace, and next year's plan started before this year's is forgotten.