Oct 22, 2026
How to Find Where Amazon Stored Your FBA Inventory for Tax Season
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Amazon
Step by Step Sellers
How to Find Where Amazon Stored Your FBA Inventory for Tax Season
If you sell through Amazon FBA, there’s a good chance your inventory was stored in more states than you realize.
You may ship your products to one Amazon fulfillment center, or even operate your business entirely from one state, but Amazon can redistribute your FBA inventory across its fulfillment network throughout the year.
Then tax season arrives and your CPA asks:
“Which states was your Amazon inventory stored in last year?”
Now you have a problem.
Amazon gives you the data, but it doesn’t exactly hand you a clean list of states where your inventory was stored.
That’s why the team at Step by Step Sellers created a free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template that helps turn Amazon’s Inventory Ledger into a much easier state-by-state breakdown.
Download Our Free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template
Instead of manually sorting through thousands of rows of Amazon Inventory Ledger data and researching fulfillment center codes individually, we’ve built an Excel template to do much of the organizational work for you.
Download Your Free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template
The template includes:
A state-by-state FBA inventory summary
Amazon fulfillment center location mapping
A warehouse reference database
Fulfillment center-level reporting
Starting and ending inventory balances
Inventory activity tracking
Flags for fulfillment centers that need additional verification
Instructions for using the template with your own Amazon Inventory Ledger
There is no need to manually build your own spreadsheet from scratch.
Below, we’ll show you exactly how to get the Amazon data you need and use the template.
Why Does It Matter Where Amazon Stores Your FBA Inventory?
When you use Fulfillment by Amazon, Amazon controls much of the physical movement of your inventory after it enters its fulfillment network.
For example, you might send your entire shipment to an Amazon receiving facility in California.
That does not necessarily mean your inventory stayed in California.
Amazon may redistribute those units among fulfillment centers across the country based on demand, capacity, delivery speeds, and other operational considerations.
Your inventory could potentially move from California to facilities in Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, or other states without you initiating those transfers yourself.
This creates an important question during tax season:
Where was your inventory actually stored?
Your accountant or tax professional may request this information when evaluating your business’s state-level tax obligations.
And simply providing the address where you originally shipped your FBA inventory may not answer that question.
How Do I Find Where Amazon Stored My FBA Inventory?
The best place to start is Amazon’s Inventory Ledger Report.
The Inventory Ledger provides detailed records of your inventory as it moves through Amazon’s fulfillment network.
Depending on the report and period selected, the data can include:
Date
SKU
FNSKU
ASIN
Product name
Starting warehouse balance
Receipts
Customer shipments
Customer returns
Warehouse transfers
Adjustments
Ending warehouse balance
Amazon fulfillment center location
For this particular exercise, one of the most important fields is:
Location
The problem is that Amazon generally identifies its fulfillment centers using codes rather than giving you a convenient state-by-state summary.
You might see locations such as:
ONT8
DFW7
BNA2
JAX3
Those codes aren’t especially helpful when your accountant simply wants to know which states held your inventory.
That’s the problem our template is designed to solve.
Step 1: Download Your Amazon Inventory Ledger
Start by downloading your Inventory Ledger from Amazon Seller Central.
If you’re preparing information for your annual tax review, select the entire calendar year you’re reviewing.
For example:
January 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025
We recommend using the entire year rather than pulling only your year-end inventory.
Why?
Because your December 31 inventory position doesn’t necessarily tell you where Amazon held inventory earlier in the year.
Inventory may have moved among multiple Amazon fulfillment centers throughout the previous 12 months.
If you’re trying to understand where Amazon recorded your FBA inventory during the year, you want visibility into the entire period.
Step 2: Open the Free Step by Step Sellers Template
Once you’ve downloaded your Amazon Inventory Ledger, open our free spreadsheet.
Download Your Free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template
You’ll see several tabs designed to make the raw Amazon data easier to work with:
Inventory Ledger
This is where you’ll place the data downloaded from Amazon.
Warehouse Reference
This contains Amazon fulfillment center codes and corresponding location information.
Location Summary
This provides a fulfillment center-level breakdown of the locations appearing in your Inventory Ledger.
State Summary
This consolidates the fulfillment center data into a much cleaner state-level view.
Instructions
This provides additional guidance for using the workbook and reviewing your results.
Step 3: Paste Your Amazon Inventory Ledger Into the Template
Navigate to the Inventory Ledger tab.
You’ll see sample data showing how Amazon’s report should be structured.
Remove the sample rows and paste your own Inventory Ledger data into the worksheet beginning in Row 2.
Keep Amazon’s original headers in Row 1.
The template includes additional columns that help map Amazon’s fulfillment center codes to physical locations and identify relevant inventory activity.
Once your data has been added, extend the provided formulas through all populated rows of your Inventory Ledger.
Step 4: Translate Amazon Fulfillment Center Codes Into States
This is where the spreadsheet saves a significant amount of manual work.
Amazon uses fulfillment center codes such as:
DFW7
ONT8
BNA2
instead of simply telling you “Texas,” “California,” or “Tennessee.”
Our template includes a Warehouse Reference designed to map those Amazon location codes back to their corresponding states and facility information.
Instead of manually Googling every fulfillment center code in your report, you can use the template to organize those locations automatically.
Step 5: Review Your Amazon Fulfillment Center Locations
Next, open the Location Summary.
This provides a more detailed look at the individual Amazon facilities represented in your Inventory Ledger.
You’ll be able to review information including:
Fulfillment center code
State
Warehouse address
Number of Inventory Ledger records
Starting inventory balance
Ending inventory balance
Inventory activity
Review status
This is particularly helpful if your accountant needs supporting detail behind the state-level summary.
Instead of saying, “Amazon had some inventory in Texas,” you can identify the specific Amazon facility codes associated with that state.
Step 6: Get Your State-by-State Amazon FBA Inventory Breakdown
For most sellers, this is the payoff.
Open the State Summary tab.
Rather than looking through thousands or tens of thousands of Inventory Ledger rows, you’ll have a much cleaner view of the states represented by your Amazon FBA activity.
Your summary might look something like this:
State | Amazon FBA Activity |
|---|---|
California | Yes |
Arizona | Yes |
Texas | Yes |
Pennsylvania | Yes |
Michigan | No |
This gives you a much more manageable report to review with your accountant or tax professional.
And if they need more detail about a particular state, you can return to the Location Summary or original Inventory Ledger to see the underlying fulfillment centers and activity.
Step 7: Don’t Ignore Unmapped Amazon Fulfillment Centers
There’s one final step that’s extremely important: Check for unmapped fulfillment center codes.
Amazon’s fulfillment network is constantly changing. New facilities open, facilities are repurposed, and additional location codes can appear over time.
If the spreadsheet identifies a location as UNMAPPED, don’t simply ignore it.
That code should be researched and verified before you make a final determination about the states represented in your Amazon inventory data.
We specifically built this check into the template because an unidentified fulfillment center could materially change your state-level results.
Does Having Amazon FBA Inventory in a State Create Sales Tax Nexus?
This is where it’s important to separate Amazon operational data from tax advice.
Our template helps answer:
“Where did Amazon record my FBA inventory?”
It does not answer:
“Where does my business have a legal obligation to register or file taxes?”
Those are different questions.
Marketplace facilitator laws have significantly changed how sales tax is collected on marketplace transactions, but sellers can still have state-level considerations involving physical presence, economic nexus, income or franchise taxes, historical activity, and other requirements.
The laws and your individual circumstances matter.
That’s why we recommend using this report as supporting documentation for your CPA, accountant, or qualified state and local tax professional.
They can determine what the inventory-location information means for your specific business.
Step by Step Sellers is an Amazon marketplace management agency, not a tax or legal advisory firm. This template and article are provided for informational and operational reporting purposes and should not be considered tax or legal advice.
Why We Built This Free Amazon FBA Inventory Template
At Step by Step Sellers, we manage Amazon accounts every day.
One of the recurring challenges we see is that Amazon technically provides sellers with enormous amounts of data, but getting a straightforward answer from that data can be surprisingly difficult.
Inventory location is a perfect example.
The information exists.
The problem is turning thousands of Amazon Inventory Ledger transactions and fulfillment center codes into something your business can actually use.
We originally built this process to make that analysis easier.
Now we’re making the template available to Amazon sellers for free.
Get the Free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template
If you’re preparing for tax season and need to determine where Amazon stored your FBA inventory, you don’t need to build the analysis from scratch.
Download our free template, add your Amazon Inventory Ledger, and use the resulting state and fulfillment center summaries as a starting point for your tax-season review.
Download Your Free Amazon FBA Inventory Location Template
No more manually sorting through thousands of Inventory Ledger rows.
No more building fulfillment center lookups from scratch.
No more trying to explain a massive Amazon CSV file to your accountant.
Get the data organized, identify the states that need attention, and give your tax professional a much cleaner starting point.
Need More Help With Your Amazon Account?
If pulling reports and deciphering Seller Central data feels like it takes more time than actually growing your Amazon business, that’s exactly the type of problem we solve.
Step by Step Sellers helps brands manage and grow their Amazon businesses, including advertising, listing optimization, catalog management, reporting, inventory strategy, account health, creative, customer service, and the day-to-day complexities that come with operating on Amazon.
The free FBA Inventory Location Template can help you tackle this particular problem.
If you need a team helping with the rest of your Amazon business, we’d be happy to talk.
