FBA
Inventory Management
Amazon FBA Reimbursements 2026: Deadlines and Payouts
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10 min read
Two changes rewrote what Amazon pays you for inventory it loses or damages. Since October 23, 2024 most claim windows close 60 days after the defect instead of 18 months, and since March 31, 2025 Amazon pays your manufacturing cost rather than the selling price. Amazon also reimburses many warehouse losses automatically now, which is exactly why the claims it still misses go unnoticed. The rules below are Amazon.com policy; the European marketplaces follow the same structure on their own dates.
Amazon FBA reimbursements in 2026 pay you the manufacturing cost of inventory Amazon lost or damaged, not the price you sell it for. Most claims must be filed within sixty days of the defect, and customer return claims only between sixty and one hundred twenty days after the refund. Amazon reimburses many warehouse losses automatically.
What is an Amazon FBA reimbursement?
An FBA reimbursement is Amazon's payment for inventory it lost, damaged, disposed of or mishandled while the units were its responsibility. It covers units that vanish inside a fulfillment center, units crushed in handling, customer returns that were refunded but never came back, shipments lost on the way to a removal address, and fees charged on the wrong product dimensions.
The money matters because it is pure margin: every reimbursed unit is stock you already paid for. What changed is the effort-to-payout ratio. Amazon now finds many defects on its own, but it pays less per unit and gives you far less time to catch what it missed, so a quarterly reconciliation that worked in 2023 now leaves money expiring unclaimed.
What are the FBA reimbursement claim windows in 2026?
Each claim type has its own window, and every one of them is exactly 60 days wide. What changes is when the clock starts. Amazon set these limits on October 23, 2024 in its Seller Central announcement on reimbursement automation and eligibility; the window they replaced ran 18 months.
| Claim type | Window | Counted from |
|---|---|---|
| Fulfillment center operations: lost or damaged | No later than 60 days | The date the item was reported lost or damaged |
| FBA customer returns | Between 60 and 120 days, never earlier | The customer refund or replacement date |
| Removal shipment lost in transit | Between 15 and 75 days, never earlier | The shipment creation date |
| Other removal claims | Within 60 days | The date the shipment was delivered back to you |
The two lower bounds catch people out. A customer return claim filed on day 30 is rejected because the window has not opened yet, and by the time the seller notices the rejection the 120-day ceiling may be close. Removal claims behave the same way: nothing before day 15, and every removal claim still has to be filed by hand.
How much does Amazon reimburse per unit now?
Amazon pays your manufacturing cost for inventory lost before a customer bought it. Its announcement defines that as "your cost to source a product from a manufacturer, wholesaler, reseller, or produce the item if you are the manufacturer", and states plainly that it "excludes costs such as shipping, handling, customs duties, or other costs", as the FBA inventory reimbursement policy update sets out. Landed cost is not what gets paid; the invoice line is. Amazon first announced the change for March 10, 2025, then moved it to March 31 to give sellers time to enter their costs.
There is one important exception. When a unit is lost or damaged after a customer has ordered it, the reimbursement is still calculated from the sales price on that order, less the applicable fees, because the sale actually happened. That split is why two similar-looking defects on the same ASIN can reimburse at wildly different amounts.
What the change costs you
Seller Labs' worked example: a unit that sells for $27.99 and costs $5.40 to source now reimburses at under $6, where the same loss in 2024 reimbursed close to retail. Measured against that retail basis, it is a drop of more than 75% on one lost unit. The policy did not change what counts as a defect, it changed what a defect is worth, so the only lever you still control is whether the cost Amazon uses is your real one.
Why the cost field decides your payout
If you do not tell Amazon what a unit costs, Amazon decides for you. The announcement says it will "provide a manufacturing cost estimate" built from "a comprehensive evaluation of comparable products sold by Amazon, by other sellers, and through wholesale channels", and that sellers can supply their own figures instead. Amazon's policy text calls the figure your manufacturing cost, while the portal labels it your sourcing cost and puts it behind a Manage Sourcing Costs button.
An estimate built from comparable products is an average of other people's sourcing, which is rarely yours. A premium-materials version of a commodity product is the classic loser: it sits in a category full of cheap lookalikes, so the estimate lands far under the invoice. Filling in the real cost per SKU is a one-time job that changes every future payout, and it is the single highest-value hour in this entire article.
What does Amazon reimburse automatically?
Since November 1, 2024 Amazon proactively reimburses FBA items lost in its fulfillment centers, and most straightforward warehouse damage now resolves the same way. That is genuine relief from filing, and it is also the reason many sellers stopped looking. The gap, as Leviathan Sellers' 2026 breakdown sets it out, is what the automation does not see.
- Inbound receiving shortfalls. You sent 500 units, Amazon received 480. Nothing was lost inside the network, so nothing triggers an automatic case.
- Returns that never re-enter inventory. The customer was refunded, the unit was never scanned back, and the claim only opens on day 60.
- Removal orders. Both the lost-in-transit case and the delivered-back case still require a manual claim, per Amazon's own announcement.
- Fee overcharges from wrong dimensions or weights. A remeasured product billed at the wrong size tier pays the difference on every unit until you challenge it.
- Disposals and transfers. Units disposed of without instruction, or lost between fulfillment centers, surface only in the ledger.
Where do you find claims you are owed?
The Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal is the starting point, reachable from Inventory then Dashboard, or from Fulfillment Reports under Reconciling Inventory. ecomEngine's walkthrough of the portal describes its three tabs, Eligible for claim, In progress and Resolved, and notes that the Eligible for claim page combines the inventory ledger report, the customer returns report and Amazon's reimbursement policy into one list.
That page is the fastest win because it already carries what a claim needs: FNSKU, ASIN and SKU, event dates, transaction and order identifiers, and quantities. It sorts defects into named types such as warehouse lost, warehouse damaged, carrier damaged, customer damaged, defective, fulfiller damaged and in transit, plus not returnable, the last of these split into Amazon-fault and non-Amazon-fault variants. What it will not do is reconcile your inbound shipments against what arrived, so the ledger still deserves a look.
The monthly FBA reimbursement audit
- Fill in the manufacturing cost for every active SKU - Open Inventory, then Inventory Defect and Reimbursement, and click Manage Sourcing Costs in the top right. Enter the per-unit sourcing cost from your supplier invoice, without freight or duty. Do this once, then update it whenever a supplier price changes.
- Work the Eligible for claim tab first - Every row there is a defect Amazon has already accepted as claimable, with the identifiers filled in. Select the affected units and submit the claim from the row itself, before anything else, because no other claim will cost you less effort.
- Reconcile last month's inbound shipments - Pull the FBA Inventory Reconciliation report and compare units sent against units received for every shipment closed in the period. Investigate any shipment short by more than a rounding error. Inbound shortfalls never appear in the Eligible for claim tab, so these go through a support case: open Get support in Seller Central, choose the FBA shipment problem route and quote the shipment ID while the receiving date is inside the window.
- Chase refunds without a returned unit - Pull customer returns against refunds and list every refund older than 60 days with no unit back in stock. Those claims are open between day 60 and day 120 and close for good after that, and they are filed the same way, through a support case naming the order and the refund date.
- Attach the paperwork the first time - Supplier invoices, payment records, purchase orders, shipment identifiers and photos of damage belong in the first submission. Thin documentation is the usual reason a claim is denied, and an appeal costs days you no longer have.
Do not wait for the quarter to end
A 60-day window means a defect from the first week of a quarter has already expired by the time the quarter closes. Monthly is the minimum and weekly triage is safer at high volume; the calendar, not your workload, sets this one.
Quick win for today
Open the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal and sort the Eligible for claim tab by event date, oldest first. On warehouse lost-or-damaged rows, anything approaching day 55 is about to expire; customer-return rows are the opposite, because they only open at day 60. Either way the row is already documented by Amazon. Then open the SellerMagnet profit dashboard and check that your cost of goods matches the manufacturing cost you gave Amazon, because the two numbers should never disagree.
Reimbursements are one half of the FBA money leak; the fee side is the other. Our guides to the inbound placement service fee, FBA storage fees and the returns processing fee cover the charges that follow the same inventory, and the Grade and Resell guide explains how to recover value from returned units that come back unsellable. Our earlier guide to the 2025 reimbursement changes covers the shift that started all of this.
FBA reimbursement FAQ
How long do I have to file an Amazon FBA reimbursement claim?
No later than 60 days after an item is reported lost or damaged in a fulfillment center, between 60 and 120 days after a customer refund for returns claims, and 15 to 75 days from shipment creation for a removal lost in transit.
Does Amazon reimburse the selling price or the cost price?
The manufacturing cost, since March 31, 2025, for inventory lost before a customer bought it. Units lost or damaged after a customer order are still reimbursed from the sale price on that order, less applicable fees.
What counts as manufacturing cost?
Your cost to source the product from a manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller, or to produce it yourself. Amazon excludes shipping, handling, customs duties and other costs from the figure.
What happens if I never enter a manufacturing cost?
Amazon applies its own estimate, built from comparable products sold by Amazon, by other sellers and through wholesale channels. You can replace it at any time behind the Manage Sourcing Costs button in the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal.
Does the 60-day clock start when a unit is lost or when Amazon reports it?
When Amazon reports it. The window runs 60 days from the date the item was reported lost or damaged, not from the day it physically went missing, which is why the event date on the Eligible for claim tab is the one to sort by.
What documentation does a claim need?
Supplier invoices and proof of purchase, shipment identifiers and tracking records, and photographs where damage is involved. Send them with the first submission, because thin documentation is the common reason claims are denied.
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