45 days
Auto-close window for domestic FBA shipments
75 days
Auto-close window for international FBA shipments
60 days
Claim window for lost or damaged items at fulfillment center
Key takeaways
- Amazon auto-closes domestic shipments after 45 days and international after 75 days.
- Reimbursement claims for lost units can be filed up to 60 days after loss is reported.
- Proof of delivery alone is insufficient; combine it with shipping plans and inventory reports.
- Shipments marked 'Closed' may still have active claim windows lasting up to 30 days.
- File missing unit claims only after day 15 from shipment creation to avoid rejection.
An Amazon FBA shipment closed with missing units is not a settled shipment. Closed only means Amazon stopped working on it. Amazon closes a shipment when it has confirmed every unit or when the shipment has simply been open for more than 45 days for a domestic shipment and 75 days for an international one, as Amazon describes in its own shipment tracking guidance. Those are two very different endings with the same label on the screen.
The units that never arrived stay missing. The window that lets you claim them keeps running whether you look at it or not.
What an FBA shipment closed with missing units looks like
The sequence is always the same. The carrier delivers. In Seller Central the shipment sits at Delivered and does not move to Checked In or Receiving. Days pass. The listing goes out of stock while the stock is physically inside a fulfillment center. Then one morning the shipment says Closed, the received quantity is lower than the shipped quantity, and nothing else happens.
Amazon's own status definitions explain the gap: Delivered means the shipment is at Amazon's location but not yet checked in, and Receiving only starts when the first shipment label is scanned. Between those two states your units exist for you and do not exist for Amazon.
Why the received count comes up short
Amazon's guidance for a shipment showing zero received, published in the April FBA Series thread on Seller Central, points at the usual causes: high fulfillment center volume, labeling problems, barcodes that will not scan, and product mismatches against the shipping plan. Amazon states there that standard check-in runs about 72 hours and can extend to seven days during peak periods, and that an inbound investigation takes four to five working days.
Sellers in that same thread report something else: 22 to 35 day waits, and support cases closed with no discrepancy found. Treat those reports as what other sellers experience, not as the documented process. The documented process is what you can hold Amazon to.
The two clocks, and why they do not line up
The first clock is the auto-close: 45 days domestic, 75 days international, counted from when the shipment opens.
The second clock is the reimbursement eligibility window. In its update on reimbursement automation and eligibility windows, effective 23 October 2024 with proactive reimbursements from 1 November 2024, Amazon set a window per claim type:
| Claim type | Window |
|---|---|
| Lost or damaged at a fulfillment center | No later than 60 days after the item was reported lost or damaged |
| FBA customer returns | Between 60 and 120 days after the customer refund or replacement date, never before day 60 |
| Lost in transit to a fulfillment center | Between 15 and 75 days from the shipment creation date, never before day 15 |
| All other removals | Within 60 days of the shipment being delivered back to you |
Put a real date on it. A shipment created on 16 September 2026 cannot be claimed as lost in transit until 1 October 2026. It auto-closes as a domestic shipment on 31 October 2026. The claim window shuts on 30 November 2026 — the Monday after Black Friday weekend, which is the single least likely morning of the year for anyone to open a reconciliation report.
That is the whole problem. Closed arrives in the middle of the window, reads like a conclusion, and there are still 30 days of claim time left that nobody uses.
The fix, step by step
- Open Manage FBA Shipments and filter for shipments sitting at Delivered with no Checked In date. Note the shipment creation date for each one — that date, not the delivery date, starts the in-transit window.
- Open the Reconcile tab on the shipment. It shows expected versus received per SKU. A blank or zero received line is what you are looking for.
- Collect the evidence before you open a case. Proof of delivery stamped by Amazon, the FBA shipment ID, the carrier tracking number, the signed bill of lading, and the expected quantities from the shipping plan.
- Pull the supporting reports. In Seller Central, hover Reports, then Fulfillment: Received Inventory, Inventory Adjustments, and Reserved Inventory. Between them they show whether the units were received and moved, received and adjusted, or never received at all.
- Open the case inside the window, not after the shipment closes. For units lost in transit that means day 15 onward. Filing on day 8 gets rejected on timing alone.
- Answer reconciliation requests within five business days. Amazon states that response time explicitly, and a case that auto-closes on silence has to be rebuilt from scratch.
One caution worth knowing before you file. Amazon's stated position, quoted by sellers in a thread on repeatedly denied missing-unit reimbursements, is that proof of delivery confirms the carrier made a delivery, not that Amazon received the exact items and quantities in the shipping plan. Proof of delivery on its own is thin. Proof of delivery plus a bill of lading plus the shipping plan quantities plus the report showing no receipt is not.
How to stop it happening again
Stop treating Closed as the trigger to look. By the time it appears you have burned most of the window.
Log three dates for every shipment the day you create it: creation date, creation plus 15, creation plus 75. The middle one is the first day you can file. The last one is the day the money stops being yours. Shipments created in September and October 2026 all expire between late November and mid January, which is exactly when a seller is running Q4 and not reading reports.
The related deadlines are worth pinning at the same time: the rules on which prep and labeling failures cost you reimbursement eligibility, the time limit on SAFE-T claims, and the peak fulfillment fee dates that decide when your inbound has to land.
None of this recovers a unit Amazon never scanned. It decides whether you get paid for it.
Sources
- Amazon — How to track FBA shipments (estados y cierre a 45/75 dias) sell.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central — Update on Reimbursement Automation and Eligibility Window to file reimbursement claims sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central — [April FBA Series] Shipment Shows '0 Received'? Here's Your 3-Step Resolution Process sellercentral.amazon.com
- Seller Central Forums — Amazon FBA - Missing Units, Reimbursement Repeatedly Denied (47 visitas, 6 respuestas) sellercentral.amazon.com
- Seller Central Forums — How to Resolve FBA Shipment Discrepancies (810 visitas, 14 respuestas) sellercentral.amazon.com
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