Modify handling time

Amazon provides the estimated delivery time to buyers on the offer listing and checkout pages. We base this estimate on the time between when the buyer places an order until the order is delivered to the buyer’s address.

Total delivery time = Handling time + Transit time (+ any holidays)

Handling time: Handling time, also known as production time or lead time to ship, is the time between when the buyer places the order and when you hand over the order to the delivery service. Handling time is part of the delivery time calculation displayed on the offer listing and checkout page. You can change your default handling time and also customize your handling time at SKU or ASIN level.

Transit time: The time between when you hand over the order to your carrier until its delivery to the buyer’s address. You can modify the transit times for your SKUs or ASINs by editing your shipping templates.

Default handling time

Default handling time refers to the handling time set at an account level and will apply to all your products by default unless you specifically change the handling time for your SKUs or ASINs. You can view the default handling time in shipping settings under General Shipping Settings. You have the option to set the default handling time to one or two business days.

Change default handling time:

To change your default handling time:

1. From the Settings drop-down menu on the top right of Seller Central, click Shipping Settings.
2. Under General Shipping Settings, identify the Handling Time section and click Edit.
3. Choose your default handling time as 1 day or 2 days and click Save.

Offer-level handling time

Offer-level handling time refers to the handling time that you can set for specific SKUs or ASINs. You can set customized handling time for a specific product separately as well as in bulk by overriding your default handling time for selected products.

Change offer-level handling time:

In order to change handling time for each SKU or ASIN separately, follow the steps below:

1. In Seller Central, click Inventory, and then Manage Inventory.
2. Identify the SKU or ASIN for which you want to change the handling time, and click Edit on the right.
3. Navigate to the Handling Time on the product information page and update the handling time for that ASIN.
4. Click Save and Finish for your changes to be updated.

You can modify the handling time in bulk at offer level in three ways: by using an Inventory Loader, Listing Loader, or Price and Quantity file:

1. On the Inventory file templates page, navigate to the General Templates section and download your Inventory Loader, Listing Loader, or Price and Quantity file.
2. Read through the instructions in the Data Definitions tab.
3. In the Listings tab, fill all the required fields and the handling-time field (one SKU or ASIN per row).
4. Save the file in text-tab-delimited format.
5. Upload the file through Inventory > Add products via upload > Upload your inventory file.

Amazon generates handling time recommendations for a product based on your overall delivery performance, your actual delivery performance for that product, and delivery performance of similar products on Amazon. The recommendations are refreshed monthly and are based on the prior month's handling time historical performance to reflect the most recent fulfillment capabilities.

We encourage you to regularly monitor and update your handling times recommendations. Setting more accurate handling times will enable providing customers with more accurate estimated delivery dates.

To view and configure your recommended handling times, follow the steps below:

1. Under Inventory in Seller Central, click Manage seller fulfilled products.
2. Under the Recommendations tab, you can view all the products that have recommended handling times.
   Note: If there are no recommendations on this page it could be because you don’t have any seller-fulfilled SKUs with standard shipping option on the Manage Inventory page or your configured product-specific handling times were aligned with your average actual handling times.
3. Click Update to accept the recommended handling time. Your handling time will be updated for that product. You can select multiple products to update handling time in bulk. If you don’t want to follow the recommendation, click Ignore
4. Check back on the first day of the next month to view updated handling time recommendations.

For more information on modifying handling time, go to Frequently asked questions.