Key takeaways
- On March 12, 2026 Amazon made delivery date plus seven days the standard reserve setting for FBA and seller fulfilled orders.
- Amazon says some sellers still see those amounts as one Account Level Reserve while transaction level visibility rolls out.
- Payments, then Statement View shows the reserve total. Deferred transactions shows the release date of each order.
- Download the Deferred transaction report from the Payments reports repository and reconcile it against the reserve figure.
- Whatever the deferred report does not explain is the number your support case should be about.
Your Payments page shows a balance you cannot touch. Not deferred, not pending: Account Level Reserve, and it is most of what you sold. Nothing changed in your account health, nothing was suspended, and Seller Support keeps pasting the same policy paragraph. If you are asking why is all my money in Account Level Reserve, the short answer is that the reserve is doing what it was rebuilt to do in March 2026, and it is showing you one pot instead of a list.
What actually happened
On March 12, 2026, Amazon moved reserve settings to the standard delivery date plus seven days policy, known as DD+7. Funds from an order become available seven days after the delivery date for shipments with tracking, and seven days after the latest estimated delivery date for shipments without it. It applies to seller fulfilled and FBA orders alike. Sellers were notified on September 29, 2025 and again on February 6, 2026.
The part that causes the panic is not the seven days. It is where those seven days are displayed. Amazon's own explanation on Seller Central is blunt about it: "Account Level Reserve (ALR) traditionally holds funds for refunds, claims, and chargebacks, but may temporarily include DD+7 transactions as we transition our system." And: "Some sellers may see their transactions displayed at an account-level reserve, rather than as individual deferred transactions, while we complete rollout of transaction-level visibility to deferrals."
So a long standing account with clean metrics can wake up with close to the whole balance sitting under a label that, for a decade, meant trouble. In that thread and others like it, sellers who transitioned around March 24, 2026 reported the same shape: a 0.00 USD available balance, everything in reserve, and support quoting the risk policy instead of the transition.
Two different things can be true at the same time, and telling them apart is the whole job:
- DD+7 money. Yours, dated, releasing seven days after each delivery. Nothing to appeal.
- Risk based reserve. Held because of performance, claims or account review. Amazon states that "your reserve period may be extended following an assessment of your overall risk and historical performance." This one has a cause you can work on.
The fix, step by step
1. Read the pot before you read the total. Go to Payments, then Statement View. Account level reserve appears as its own section. Amazon defines it as "the amount of money that is reserved to ensure that you have enough funds to fulfill any financial obligations not covered by delivery date-based reserve policies."
2. Get the order level list. Open the Deferred transactions page in Seller Central. It lists the individual orders currently deferred, their amounts and the date each one becomes available for disbursement. That date column is the answer to the question you are actually asking, which is not "where is my money" but "which day does it land".
3. Download it. Go to the Payments reports repository, under Report type select Deferred transaction, then request the report. Amazon published those exact steps when it launched the report. Reconcile it against the reserve figure in Statement View.
4. Find the gap. Anything in Account Level Reserve that the deferred report does not explain is either transition overlap or a genuine risk reserve. That gap, with a number attached, is what a support case should be about. A case that says "release my funds" gets the policy paragraph. A case that says "reserve is X, deferred transactions account for Y, please explain the difference of Z" gets a human reading it.
5. Check the other door. A reserve extension driven by performance shows up next to your account health rating, not in Payments. If the gap in step 4 is real and persistent, that is where the cause lives.
What other sellers report, and Amazon has not published as a procedure: the overlap resolves over a few settlement cycles as pre transition orders clear, and disburse on demand does not pull money out of reserve early. Treat both as reports from the forums, not as a promise.
How to stop it from breaking your cash plan
The reserve is not a bug you can close. It is a delay you have to budget for, and Q4 is the worst quarter to discover it.
- Plan purchase orders against release dates, not against gross sales. A unit sold on October 20 and delivered on October 26 is cash on November 2.
- Slower shipping is now slower money. The clock starts at delivery, so a five day transit pushes payout by five days for every order in it.
- Untracked shipments are worse: the clock starts from the latest estimated delivery date.
- Reconcile the deferred report weekly during peak. Claims and chargebacks also sit in that pot, and they move.
The money is not missing. It has a date attached to it. The work is getting that date out of Amazon's reports and into your cash plan before you spend against a number that is not available yet.
“Account Level Reserve (ALR) traditionally holds funds for refunds, claims, and chargebacks, but may temporarily include DD+7 transactions as we transition our system.”
Amazon Seller Central
Sources
- Amazon Seller Central - Understanding Account Level Reserves (Micah_Amazon) sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central - DD+7 / Account Level Reserve (respuesta de KJ_Amazon) sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central - View your reserved payments in the new Deferred Transactions report (News_Amazon) sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central - DD+7 March 12, 2026 (hilo de vendedores) sellercentral.amazon.com
- Amazon Seller Central - Question About New DD+7 Reserve Settings Starting March 12, 2026 sellercentral.amazon.com
Hey! We're the SellerKey Team
Data & product at SellerKey.co
📊 We build SellerKey.
The team behind SellerKey. We write about fees, margin, inventory and ads for Amazon sellers.
