Overview

Amazon’s vacation mode lets merchant‑fulfilled sellers temporarily hide their listings from shoppers, preventing new orders while they are unable to ship. Activating the feature before a planned absence shields critical performance metrics and keeps the account in good standing.

Key Points

• Listing suspension — Merchant‑fulfilled offers disappear from search results and product pages, so customers cannot place orders during the vacation period.
• FBA continuity — Inventory stored in Amazon’s fulfillment network remains active and continues to generate sales because Amazon handles shipping.
• Reversible status — Switching the store back to “active” instantly restores all paused listings, making the transition seamless for sellers.
• Metric protection — By stopping new orders, sellers avoid late‑shipment, valid‑tracking, and order‑defect rates from rising above Amazon’s thresholds (e.g., late‑shipment must stay under 4%).
• Timing recommendation – Amazon advises enabling vacation mode at least 24 hours before the first day off, giving the system time to fully remove listings and reducing the chance of a stray order slipping through.

How Vacation Mode Works

1. Access settings — In Seller Central, navigate to Settings → Account Info → Listing status; the vacation toggle appears on the “Manage your listings” page, allowing you to view current merchant‑fulfilled SKUs.
2. Activate vacation — Click the “On vacation” switch; Amazon immediately begins flagging each merchant‑fulfilled SKU as inactive, which removes the offers from both search results and detail pages.
3. Confirm removal — The dashboard displays a confirmation banner listing the number of SKUs paused; for example, a seller with 120 merchant‑fulfilled items sees “120 listings paused.”
4. Maintain existing orders — Any orders placed before activation remain in the order queue; sellers must ship these on time or cancel them manually, because vacation mode does not auto‑cancel pending orders.