Amazon's New 90% Business Hour Delivery Requirement for FBM Sellers

TL;DR

• Since September 30, 2026, Amazon requires a Business Hour Delivery Rate (BHDR) of 90% or higher on seller-fulfilled shipments to Amazon Business customers in the US store. The UK store announced the same requirement and dates.
• Below 90% on September 30 meant a notification and recommendations, not an immediate penalty. If your rate hasn't improved by October 30, your seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers only. FBA and retail offers are not affected.
• The metric counts shipments by promised delivery date, between 21 and 7 days back. As of October 26, the October 30 reading is already decided by packages promised up to October 23. What you change this week starts showing up in early November.
• Sellers with fewer than 10 Amazon Business shipments per 14 days cannot absorb a single miss.
• The fix starts with the BHDR report in Account Health: sort every miss by why it failed, because each failure type has a different fix. If your offers do get deactivated, there's a reinstatement path, and a second strike locks you into Amazon's shipping tools for 180 days.

The Real Question: Will You Lose Your Amazon Business Customers on October 30?

Most coverage of this change stops at "check your BHDR." That's the easy part. The questions FBM sellers actually need answered are harder:

1. Which of my deliveries are counting against me, and why?
2. How much time do I really have to change the number?
3. If I can't reliably hit 90%, is Amazon Business revenue worth fighting for on every SKU?

This post answers those in order. First, a quick recap of what Amazon announced.

What Amazon Announced

In a Seller Central announcement, Amazon said it is adding a Business Hour Delivery Rate requirement to seller-fulfilled shipments in its US store. The key points:

• Threshold: 90% or higher, starting September 30, 2026.
• Measurement: the existing BHDR metric, which tracks the share of your seller-fulfilled shipments delivered to Amazon Business customers within their operating hours, over a rolling 14-day period.
• September 30: if you're below 90%, Amazon will notify you and send recommendations.
• October 30: if your rate hasn't improved, your seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers.
• Not affected: FBA and retail offer eligibility.
• Amazon's recommended fixes: reliable carriers, accurate handling and transit times, and three tools. Amazon says shipments fulfilled using Automated Handling Time, Shipping Settings Automation, and Amazon Buy Shipping together are guaranteed to meet the requirement.

This isn't a brand new metric. Amazon launched BHDR in 2023 for seller-fulfilled orders to Amazon Business and Business Prime customers with commercial addresses, defined as shipments delivered on the first attempt within business hours. It was informational. Early in 2026, Amazon moved it into the Program Eligibilities section of Account Health and began telling sellers to aim for at least 90%. The September 30 change turns that target into an enforced requirement.

Whose hours count. Business days and hours come from the delivery preferences the business customer set on their account. If they set none, Amazon uses Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., local time.

It's not only the US. Amazon's UK Seller Central announced the same 90% requirement for FBM shipments to Amazon Business customers on Amazon.co.uk, with the same September 30 start and October 30 deactivation date. Trade press reporting on Amazon's German Seller Central says Amazon.de sellers face the same requirement. Note one wording difference: the UK notice says non-compliant listings may be deactivated for business customers, while the US notice refers to your seller-fulfilled offers.

Why the Timing Is Tighter Than It Looks

Amazon's help page spells out exactly which shipments count: BHDR is calculated over a 14-day period based on shipments with a promised delivery date between 7 and 21 days ago, refreshed daily. Amazon's own example: on November 21, your rate covers shipments promised for November 1 to November 14.

That one-week lag changes how you should read the dates.

The October 30 reading is already written. As of this post, every shipment it counts has passed its promised date. Nothing you change today moves that number.

What you change this week shows up in November. A shipment promised for October 27 first counts on November 3. The first reading made up entirely of shipments promised after today lands around November 16. If you get a deactivation notice, those are the readings your fixes will show up in, and the ones a reinstatement request can point to.

The Small-Seller Problem: 90% of a Small Number

The 90% threshold sounds forgiving until you apply it to a 14-day window. Many FBM sellers only receive a handful of Amazon Business orders in two weeks, and every one of those shipments carries enormous weight.

Two things stand out:

• Below 10 shipments, one miss fails you. A single package that arrives at 5:15 pm on a Tuesday is enough.
• Your rate can swing hard between readings. As old deliveries roll out of the window and new ones roll in, a low-volume seller can bounce between 100% and 80% from one week to the next without changing anything.

Amazon hasn't published a minimum number of shipments before the requirement applies. If no Amazon Business shipments fall in the window, the metric shows N/A. Otherwise, assume every Amazon Business shipment counts until Amazon says otherwise.

The Failure Reason Audit: Diagnose Before You Fix

Amazon's advice is to download the BHDR report from Program Eligibilities in Account Health and find carriers performing above 90%. That's a good start, but "switch carriers" is only the right fix for one kind of miss. The report lists, for every shipment, the promised delivery date, the first delivery attempt date and time, the customer's business hours on that date, the carrier and ship method, whether you used Buy Shipping, and a failure reason. Use them to put every miss into one of four buckets.

Bucket 1: Delivered Early, on a Day the Business Was Closed

The package arrived ahead of the promise date, but on a Saturday, a Sunday, or a holiday. You were early, and it still counts as a failure ("First attempt on a Closed Day" in the report).

Fix: use shipping services that don't deliver on weekends for Amazon Business orders. Amazon's help page says Buy Shipping automatically filters out shipping methods that don't match the customer's operating days, and recommends avoiding home or residential ship methods for commercial addresses. Don't solve this by holding shipments back. A later handoff risks your Late Shipment Rate and other delivery metrics.

Bucket 2: Delivered on an Open Day, but Outside Business Hours

The day was right, the time wasn't. The driver reached a business that closes at 3 pm at 4:30 pm.

Fix: this is a carrier and route problem. Compare carriers and services in your report by business-hour performance, specifically for the zip codes and customers that miss. In the US, Amazon has recommended UPS Ground, UPS Ground Saver, and FedEx Ground for reliable BHDR performance. Where it's available, Amazon also points to Easy Ship and Ship+, which run on Amazon's own delivery network.

Bucket 3: The Record Looks Wrong

Sellers have reported misses on deliveries to hotels open around the clock, a business marked closed on a day it was open, and holiday deliveries to locations that were operating.

Fix: you can't change these after the fact, but you can document them. Save the tracking events, the service you purchased, Amazon's promise date, and the business hours shown in the report for each disputed order, and raise them with Seller Support. We could not find a published dispute or appeal process for individual BHDR records (Amazon only says it will mitigate the impact of major fulfillment network disruptions), so order-level evidence is your best leverage.

Bucket 4: Misses Cluster on a Few SKUs or Customers

If most of your misses come from the same handful of products or buyers, a blanket fix is overkill.

Fix: decide at the SKU level (see the next section).

What About the Three-Tool Guarantee?

Amazon's FAQ is specific about how this works: shipments labeled through Buy Shipping while Automated Handling Time and Shipping Settings Automation are both enabled are protected from the requirement, even if the carrier delivers outside business hours, provided you shipped on time (the first carrier scan on or before the expected ship date). In Amazon's example, a seller with 15 out-of-hours deliveries out of 100, 5 of them protected, scores 90% instead of 85%. Two cautions:

• It's all three or nothing, and on time. Buying labels through Buy Shipping alone isn't the combination Amazon describes, and a late handoff loses the protection.
• Check how it shows up for you. In the replies to Amazon's announcement, one seller reported an 83% BHDR while using all three tools and shipping UPS, and another reported 86% while using Shipping Settings Automation and Automated Handling Time. Confirm the effect in your own report (the "Is Buy Shipping" column shows which shipments went through it) before relying on it.

The trade-off is control. Automated Handling Time and Shipping Settings Automation let Amazon set your handling and transit promises based on your history, which can be a problem for products with variable prep times.

If Your Offers Get Deactivated: The Reinstatement Path

Amazon's FAQ lays out what happens after October 30 if your rate is still under 90%:

1. Download the BHDR report from the Account Health dashboard's Eligibilities page and review every shipment delivered outside business hours.
2. Click "Resolve Issues" on the Account Health dashboard and follow the instructions.
3. Submit two things: the specific steps you're putting in place to improve, and a demonstration that you understand the BHDR requirement. Amazon says it reviews the request within 72 hours.

The part most coverage skips: a second strike changes the deal. On a subsequent violation, Amazon says you'll have to use the three-tool protection combination (Buy Shipping with Automated Handling Time and Shipping Settings Automation) for at least 180 days to get your offers reactivated.

So write the first reinstatement request as if it's your only one. Use your audit: name the bucket each miss fell into, the fix for each bucket, and the date each fix went live. Since readings lag a week, point to the readings where the fixes will show (see the timing table above).

Decide Where Amazon Business Is Worth Protecting

Deactivation applies to seller-fulfilled offers for Amazon Business customers. Your consumer offers and your FBA offers stay live. That makes this a revenue question, not an account-survival question.

1. Size the exposure. Pull your order reports for the last 60 to 90 days and isolate Amazon Business orders by SKU. Some catalogs get almost none; others sell mostly to offices, schools, and clinics.
2. Match the fix to the SKU:
   • High B2B revenue, fixable misses: apply the bucket fixes above, or adopt the three-tool setup.
   • High B2B revenue, misses you can't control: consider moving those SKUs to FBA, which isn't covered by this requirement. Model the FBA fees against the Amazon Business margin you'd otherwise risk; our FBA calculator and FBA vs FBM breakdown help with that.
   • Low B2B revenue: it may be reasonable to accept the risk of losing business-customer visibility on those offers rather than change your whole fulfillment setup for a small slice of sales.
3. Don't move your whole catalog over a metric that affects one customer segment.

This is the second FBM rule this year where enforcement lands on individual offers, not the whole account. Our breakdown of Amazon's FBM offer deactivation covers the other one. If you'd rather hand the audit to a team, that's part of our Amazon channel management.

FAQ

What is Amazon's Business Hour Delivery Rate?

It's the percentage of your seller-fulfilled shipments to Amazon Business customers with commercial addresses that are delivered on the first attempt within the customer's operating hours, measured over a 14-day period of promised delivery dates.

When does the 90% requirement start?

September 30, 2026, in the US store. The UK store announced the same date.

What happens if my BHDR is below 90%?

Amazon says it will notify you and provide recommendations for improvement. If your rate hasn't improved by October 30, your seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers.

Which shipments count toward my BHDR?

Shipments with a promised delivery date between 21 and 7 days ago. On November 21, for example, the rate covers shipments promised for November 1 to November 14. The metric refreshes daily.

Will my whole account be suspended?

Amazon's announcement doesn't say that. The stated consequence is deactivation of seller-fulfilled offers for Amazon Business customers. FBA and retail offer eligibility are not affected.

Does this apply to FBA?

No. Amazon says FBA offer eligibility will not be impacted.

Where do I check my BHDR?

In Account Health, under Program Eligibilities, where you can also download a report showing every shipment, its carrier and ship method, and why it failed.

Is there a way to guarantee I meet the requirement?

Amazon says shipments labeled through Buy Shipping while Automated Handling Time and Shipping Settings Automation are enabled are protected from the requirement, as long as you ship on time. Some sellers report sub-90% rates while using these tools, so verify the result in your own report.

How do I get deactivated offers back?

Click "Resolve Issues" in Account Health and submit the specific steps you're taking to improve and a demonstration that you understand the requirement. Amazon reviews requests within 72 hours. After a repeat violation, you have to use the three-tool protection combination for at least 180 days to be reactivated.

Which carriers does Amazon recommend?

For the US, Amazon has recommended UPS Ground, UPS Ground Saver, and FedEx Ground for reliable business-hour delivery performance.

The Bottom Line

The September 30 date got the attention, but it was mostly a warning. The date that decides whether you keep your Amazon Business customers is October 30, and because the metric looks back at shipments promised one to three weeks earlier, that reading is already locked in.

Download your BHDR report this week. Sort every miss by why it failed. Fix early weekend deliveries with service selection, fix after-hours deliveries with carrier choice, document the records that look wrong, and make a SKU-level call on where Amazon Business revenue justifies the effort. If your offers get deactivated, use that same audit for your reinstatement request, because a second strike means 180 days on Amazon's shipping tools. And if you ship fewer than 10 Amazon Business orders every two weeks, treat every one of them as the one that decides your rate.

Sources

• Amazon Seller Central (US), New business hour delivery requirement for seller-fulfilled shipments (announcement and seller replies)
• Amazon Seller Central (US), Business Hour Delivery Rate (BHDR) (help page: calculation, report fields)
• Amazon Seller Central (US), Frequently asked questions on BHDR (protection, reinstatement, exceptions)
• Amazon Seller Central (US), Optimize B2B deliveries with business hour delivery rate (2023 launch)
• Amazon Seller Central (US), Monitor your business hour delivery rate (2026, Account Health and carrier recommendations)
• Amazon Seller Central (Europe), Update to FBM requirements for Amazon.co.uk
• Ecommerce News Europe, Amazon tightens Fulfilled by Merchant requirements (Germany, July 2, 2026)