A stock-out costs you more than the sales you miss while it lasts. Best Seller Rank decays with no sales, organic position follows, and when the stock lands you restart from a worse place than you left.

The damage is recoverable. It is just slow, and it is entirely avoidable with about ten minutes a week.

**Time: 10 minutes weekly, plus whatever the reorder takes.**

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-stockout-explainer-8c2869c6.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Eighty-three seconds on the alert that arrives in time, and slowing yourself down.*

## **Step 1 — Let the alerts find it**

**Insights & Alerts.**

![Alert priorities and the category split](/kb-assets/shot-b27-alerts-top-e7cd92.png)

Three inventory rules fire before you run out, and they are the only alerts in the product that measure against an absolute rather than against last week:

| Alert | Fires when | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| **Stockout Forecast** | projected to stock out within **14 days** at current velocity | the early warning |
| **Low Stock Alert** | weeks of cover below **3 weeks** | act now |
| **Critical Stock Alert** | weeks of cover below **1 week** | too late to reorder normally |

**Stockout Forecast is the one that saves you**, because it is the only one that arrives while a reorder can still land. By the time Critical Stock fires you are managing a stock-out, not preventing one.

Open **Alert History** and check whether the same ASIN has fired before. An ASIN that goes low every few weeks is describing a reorder point that is set too tight, not a run of bad luck. See [**Alert History and Priority**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/alert-history-and-priority).

## **Step 2 — Check the cover yourself**

**Inventory.**

![Days of cover, inbound and velocity per product](/kb-assets/shot-inv-table-2e21b7.png)

Alerts use fixed thresholds. Your lead times are not fixed, so do the arithmetic that actually matters:

> **days of cover** must exceed **supplier lead time + inbound transit + Amazon receiving**

Amazon receiving is the part people forget. Stock that has arrived at the warehouse but is not yet checked in cannot be sold, and on a busy week that can be several days on its own.

**Sort by days of cover, ascending.** Anything below your true replenishment time is already late, whatever the alert says.

**Check inbound quantity beside it.** Low cover with a large inbound is fine. Low cover with nothing inbound is the actual problem.

## **Step 3 — Protect the rank while you are short**

This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is where the lasting damage is either done or avoided.

If you are going to be tight for a week or two, **slow your own sales down deliberately** rather than selling out and going to zero:

**Reduce bids rather than pausing campaigns.** A paused campaign stops accumulating history; a reduced bid keeps you present at lower volume. When stock lands you resume from a slowed campaign, not a cold one.

**Raise the price slightly.** Unpopular, and effective. Fewer units at a higher margin stretches the same stock across the gap and keeps *some* velocity, which is what BSR is measuring.

**Never let it hit zero if you can help it.** A listing that goes out of stock loses its position outright, and the Buy Box with it. Trickling out at a slower rate is materially better than a hard stop.

## **Step 4 — Watch what it costs you**

**Rank Tracker → the product → BSR Tracker.**

![Best Seller Rank over time, with the axis inverted](/kb-assets/shot-b25-bsr-view-7ba90b.png)

BSR reacts to sales velocity within days, so it is the fastest read on how much damage a shortage is doing. Remember the chart's axis is inverted — **a line going up is good** — and the arrows track the outcome, so green means the rank improved.

Watch the **7-day** and **30-day** columns on the tracked products table. A cliff with no marketing change behind it is very often availability, and this is where you see it first.

Then check the **Rank Heatmap** for the same product. Organic position follows BSR with a lag, so a rank slide that starts a week after a shortage is the shortage arriving.

## **Step 5 — Come back properly**

Recovery is not automatic. When stock lands:

**Restore bids gradually**, not in one jump. A sudden return to full spend on a listing with degraded rank buys expensive clicks at a worse conversion rate.

**Expect BSR to lag.** It is computed over a rolling window, so it improves after sales do, not with them.

**Watch Amazon's Choice.** The badge is sensitive to availability and does not always come straight back. If the count fell, that is the last thing to recover. See [**Tracking the Amazon's Choice Badge**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/tracking-the-amazons-choice-badge).

## **What good looks like**

**Stockout Forecast fires and you have already ordered.** That is the whole goal. The alert should be a confirmation, not news.

Over a quarter, the number of Critical Stock alerts should fall while Low Stock alerts stay roughly constant — that pattern means you are catching things earlier, not eliminating variability.

## **What not to do**

**Do not use the 3-week threshold as your reorder point.** It is a general default. Yours depends on your lead times.

**Do not pause advertising outright** unless you are genuinely at zero. See step 3.

**Do not let a rule pause it for you.** Rules do not know your stock position, and a pause rule that fires during a shortage will do exactly the wrong thing. See [**Guardrails to Set Before You Automate Anything**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/guardrails-before-you-automate).

**Do not judge recovery on sales alone.** Sales come back before rank does; rank is what determines whether they stay.

## **Related**

- [**Alert Categories, Priorities and What Actually Triggers Them**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/alert-categories-explained) — the three inventory rules.
- [**Inventory: On Hand, Inbound, Days of Cover and Velocity**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/how-to-monitor-your-stock-levels) — step 2.
- [**Best Seller Rank Tracking**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/best-seller-rank-tracking) — step 4.
- [**Protect the products that bring you new customers**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/protect-your-gateway-products) — which ASINs matter most here.
- [**What a Relaunch Is, and When to Run One**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/what-a-relaunch-is) — why 98% in stock is a precondition for launching.
- [**Monitoring Inventory Against Sales**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/monitoring-inventory-against-sales) — the weekly routine behind the alert.
- [**When You Are Going Out of Stock**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/going-out-of-stock) — what to do when it is already unavoidable.