How to calculate landed cost for Amazon FBA — properly
Landed cost for FBA has two layers most guides skip: getting goods to the UK, then getting them through Amazon. Miss either and your margin is fiction.
Works for your whole catalog: import your SKUs once and both layers compute on every future shipment.
Save it as a real shipment →The two layers, five steps
Worked on a $16.50 bamboo board sold via FBA
Product cost + your freight share (split by chargeable weight for air, volume for sea) + duty and the right VAT treatment. This is layer 1 — and where most sellers go wrong.
Amazon's ~15% of the sale price, category-dependent. Charged on the full price including your margin — it scales against you as you raise prices.
Set by size tier and weight, not value. A few millimetres over a tier boundary can cost more than your entire freight share per unit.
Monthly storage per unit-month plus a realistic returns rate. Small numbers that compound — especially if stock sits into Q4 when storage fees roughly triple.
Net profit per unit after both layers. Not the 40% your spreadsheet showed — but a real number you can price, discount and reorder against.
Common questions
Doesn't Amazon's revenue calculator already do this?expand_more
It handles layer 2 only — referral and fulfilment fees. It has no idea what your unit actually cost to land, so its 'profit' figure inherits whatever guess you type in.
Which freight split should FBA sellers use?expand_more
Air shipments: chargeable weight (the higher of actual vs volumetric). Sea: volume. Never equal — a mixed-size catalog distorts badly and mis-prices your biggest sellers.
Should I model Q4 storage separately?expand_more
Yes, if stock will sit in fulfilment centres during October–December — storage fees roughly triple and can flip a marginal SKU negative for the quarter.
Know your number before the Buy Box war starts.
A product that's profitable at landed cost can still lose money after Amazon's cut — find your price floor before the discounting begins.