Overview

Amazon Seller Central's order fulfillment settings give merchants direct control over how delivery promises are calculated and displayed to customers. These settings determine your operating days, delivery windows, and order cut-off times, all of which feed into the delivery date that shoppers see on product detail pages. Getting these settings right is essential because inaccurate delivery promises can lead to late shipments, policy violations, and degraded account health metrics.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Two setting sections - Order fulfillment settings are divided into two parts: general fulfillment settings (operating days, handling time, cut-off times) and shipping region automation settings, which handle transit time calculations by geography.
• Prime and non-Prime products - You must review and configure fulfillment settings separately for Prime-eligible and non-Prime listings, as each has distinct delivery speed requirements.
• Delivery promise impact - The values you set here directly influence the delivery date customers see at checkout. An overly aggressive promise you cannot meet will result in late shipments, while overly conservative settings can reduce your Buy Box competitiveness.
• Operating days matter - Your designated operating days tell Amazon which days you process and ship orders. If you do not operate on weekends, orders placed Friday evening will not count toward handling time until the next business day.
• Order cut-off time - This is the latest time of day you can receive an order and still ship it that same day. Orders arriving after the cut-off roll over to the next operating day for handling time calculations.

How Fulfillment Settings Work

The general fulfillment settings section is where you define the core parameters that drive your shipping commitments. Operating days specify which days of the week your warehouse or fulfillment operation is active and processing orders. Handling time, measured in business days, tells Amazon how long it takes you to pick, pack, and hand off a package to the carrier after an order is placed. The order cut-off time establishes a daily deadline: orders received before this time count toward the current operating day, while orders received after it shift to the next available operating day. Together, these three inputs allow Amazon to calculate when an order will actually leave your facility, which is then combined with transit time to produce the customer-facing delivery estimate.