Understanding Automated Handling Time on Amazon

If you’re a seller on Amazon, you can leverage the automated handling time feature to streamline your order processing and provide customers with more accurate delivery estimates. Here’s everything you need to know about this helpful tool.

What is Automated Handling Time?

Automated handling time is a feature that dynamically sets your handling time and order handling capacity based on your historical performance for each SKU (stock keeping unit). This automated setting ensures that customers see a more precise delivery date, typically resulting in shorter delivery promises and increased sales.

Benefits of Automated Handling Time

Here’s why automated handling time can be beneficial for your Amazon business:

• Accurate Delivery Estimates: Customers receive more accurate and shorter delivery promises, which can lead to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
• Optimized Order Processing: Avoid manually updating handling times for individual SKUs by letting automated handling time configure the most optimal settings based on your performance history.
• Increased Sales: Shorter delivery promises are more appealing to customers, potentially boosting your product visibility and sales.
• Efficient Order Fulfillment: Automated handling time helps prevent late shipments by adjusting handling times based on your past performance.

How Automated Handling Time Works

Automated handling time uses your historical data to determine:

• The most accurate handling time for each SKU, optimizing delivery promises.
• Order handling capacity based on the maximum number of orders you’ve fulfilled in the last 90 days.

Once your order handling capacity limit is reached, customers browsing your products will see a delivery promise that’s one day longer, and you’ll have an additional day to fulfill these orders.

Enabling Automated Handling Time

Follow these steps to enable automated handling time on your Amazon seller account:

1. In Seller Central, go to Settings and select Shipping settings.
2. Under the General shipping settings tab, locate Handling time and click Edit.
3. Toggle to turn on Automated handling time and click Save.

By enabling this feature, Amazon will use your performance data to automatically optimize handling times and order capacity for improved efficiency and customer experience.

Automated Handling Time with Prime Orders

For Prime orders with one-day or two-day delivery options, the same-day handling time will continue to apply. Standard Prime orders default to a one-day handling time, unless you have a same-day default handling time configured for your account.

Note: Handling time calculations only consider business days and exclude weekends, unless you’ve enabled weekend operations through Order fulfillment settings.

With automated handling time, you can enhance your Amazon selling experience by providing customers with reliable and efficient order processing, ultimately driving more sales and positive feedback.

For more detailed information, refer to Amazon’s guide on shipping temperature-sensitive goods.