September 30 is coming for your FBM calendar, and it brought a stopwatch. Amazon is introducing a 90% Business Hour Delivery Rate requirement for seller-fulfilled orders headed to Amazon Business customers at commercial addresses. If your packages keep arriving after the office has locked the doors, your business offers could lose their turn on the shelf.
Business Hour Delivery Rate tracks the percentage of FBM shipments delivered within the customer’s stated business hours. When a business buyer hasn’t entered delivery preferences, Amazon uses Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time as the default.
The requirement starts September 30, 2026. Amazon says sellers below 90% may receive a notification and improvement guidance first. If the rate stays below the threshold, seller-fulfilled offers may be deactivated for Amazon Business customers. FBA offers and standard retail offer eligibility aren’t affected, so this rule has a specific target: your commercial-address FBM orders.
Open Seller Central and head to Account Health, then Program Eligibilities. Your Business Hour Delivery Rate appears there, and you can download a report with shipment-level details. The metric refreshes daily and uses a rolling 14-day measurement period, with a reporting delay built into the promised delivery dates.
That delay matters. A strong week today might take a little time to appear, while a bad week can still be waiting in the wings. Give the report a proper review instead of refreshing the dashboard every five minutes like it owes you money.
Start with the shipments that landed outside business hours. Sort them by carrier, service level, destination, promised date, and SKU. You’re looking for a repeatable pattern, such as one carrier missing late-afternoon appointments or one product leaving the warehouse a day too late.
Amazon’s FAQ describes automatic protection for shipments that use Automated Handling Time, Shipping Settings Automation, and Amazon Buy Shipping, provided the order ships on time. Amazon determines “shipped on time” by checking whether the first carrier scan happened on or before the expected ship date.
That combination won’t rescue a package that leaves your facility late, so test the workflow on a small set of commercial-address SKUs first. Confirm that your handling settings, shipping templates, and carrier scans line up. A setting that looks tidy in Seller Central can still create chaos if the warehouse follows a different clock.
Weather, carrier bottlenecks, and fulfillment network problems can bend even a careful plan. If a disruption threatens your delivery rate, consider pausing affected listings, switching to vacation mode, or moving inventory to a location outside the problem area. Protecting the next shipment can be cheaper than trying to explain a string of missed receiving windows later.
Make September 30 a checkpoint, not a surprise. Pull your report, identify the commercial-address shipments that miss business hours, and choose one carrier or process change to test this week. Then track the result until your rate clears 90% with room to spare.
CentralDesk can help you keep inventory, order, and operational checks in one place while your team prepares for the fall rush. Start your free CentralDesk signup today. There’s no credit card needed, and your future self will appreciate having fewer dashboards to chase when the next Amazon deadline arrives.