Manage your delivery time

Amazon provides the estimated delivery time to buyers on the offer listing and checkout pages. This is the estimated time between when the buyer places the order until the order delivery date.

Enable the following configuration using your shipping settings:

Total Delivery Time = Handling Time + Transit Time (+ any holidays)

• Handling Time: The estimated time between when the buyer places the order until you hand the order over to a delivery service.
• Transit Time (also known as Shipping Time): The time elapsed between when you hand the order over to the carrier until the delivery of the order.

Configuring an accurate delivery time for your products help ensure a good customer experience and might improve sales.

• Customers are more likely to buy items that have faster delivery.
• Items with a faster delivery date are more likely to win the Buy Box on Amazon.

Modify your delivery time

1. Modify Handling Time: The default handling time is set to either 1 day or 2 days. If you are not able to meet this requirement, you can modify your handling time at an offer level to reflect the amount of time you need to prepare the order for shipment.
2. Modify Transit Time: For your self-ship orders, you can edit your shipping templates within Shipping Settings to customize your transit times.

Transit Time Requirements

• To view the default transit times within Saudi Arabia, see Default transit times for domestic sellers
• If you ship from outside Saudi Arabia, see Default transit times for international sellers

What is handling time?

Handling time is the number of days taken by a seller to procure, pack, and ship a product after the order is received. ‘Ship by date’ for an order is defined based on handling time.

What is default handling time?

Default handling time refers to the handling time set by default for offers where you leave the Handling Time field blank in Manage Inventory page. The default handling time can be either 1 day or 2 days.

Why is setting the correct default handling time important?

You can check the default handling time applicable on all your offers under the Settings tab of Shipping settings page. The Estimated Ship date/Ship By date for your orders is calculated based on order date + handling time. For example, if the default handling time is 1 day, then estimated ship date for an order placed till 12 midnight will be the next business day. If you don’t ship orders by the estimated ship date, your late shipment rate will increase and may result in order cancellation.

Is handling time for my existing products/offers changing?

• Offers where you have not specified any handling time (that is left blank) will have to be shipped based on the set default handling time. The default handling time can be set at 1 day or 2 days under Settings > Shipping Settings. If you registered your Amazon Seller Central account before April 28, 2021, your default handling time is set as 2 days. If you registered after April 28, 2021, your default handling time is set as 1 day. You can edit the default handling time to either 1 day or 2 days on the shipping settings page on Seller Central.
• If you choose your default handling time as 1 day, all products with a blank handling time value will now have to be shipped the next day. If the default handling time is set at 2 days, you will have 2 days to ship the order.
• Products where you have set the handling time (either individually or using listing loader as any value) will have to be shipped according to those settings. Offers where you have entered any value for handling time days will continue to have the handling time you manually set that is default handling time would not apply to products for which you have set handling time manually.

What happens to the new products/offers I start selling?

Once the default handling time for your offers has been changed to 1 day or 2 days, any new offers added to Amazon will automatically have a 1 day or 2 days handling time as default unless you manually set handling time for the offer.

Can I set different handling time for different ASINs/offers?

Yes, you can set different handling time for different ASINs.

How can I set longer handling time for specific products/offers that take longer to ship?

You can always change the handling time for your product via the inventory page. Go to the Manage Inventory page and click Edit for any ASIN you want to change the handling time.

To change handling time for your offers in bulk follow the steps below:

• Use the listing loader feed file for new listings.
• Use the price and quantity feed file for existing listings.

To change the default handling time, go to Settings > Shipping Settings page. On the Settings tab, navigate to Handling Time and click Edit. Select the desired default handling time and click Save.

How else can I improve my handling time?

Review all products that have a handling time of more than 2 days and consider reducing this to 1 day. Lowering the handling time to 1 day can help grow sales for those products and improve customer experience.

How does this change impact Late Shipment Rate and Cancellation Rate metrics?

Amazon requires that you keep your Late Shipment Rate under 4% and Cancellation Rate under 2.5%. To avoid impacting these metrics, ensure that you ship out your products by ‘Ship by date’.

Does handling time apply to Fridays (default holiday for Saudi Arabia)? Also, can I set any other day as holiday?

No. Handling time is in business days which excludes seller holiday (Friday). For example, for an order you receive on Thursday with a 1 day handling time, the ‘ship by date’ will be Saturday after excluding the holiday (Friday). Currently we do not have the capability to set any other day as default holiday and will launch this feature by Q4 2021. Once launched, the handling time will exclude any seller set default holiday for calculation of ‘ship by date'.

Is there any impact on Easy Ship Guaranteed Delivery and Seller Fulfilled Prime offers?

Easy Ship Guaranteed Delivery orders and Seller Fulfilled Prime orders will not have any impact with this change. These changes will only affect the standard Easy Ship and Self Ship orders.