Amazon's 60-Day Reimbursement Window: Every FBA Claim Deadline in 2026 (and How Not to Miss One)

Until late 2024, an FBA reimbursement claim could wait. Amazon gave sellers 18 months to notice a lost inbound carton or a warehouse-damaged unit and ask for their money. That era is over. Since October 23, 2024, almost every claim type closes at 60 days — and inbound shipment claims, the most common kind, changed even earlier, on September 5, 2024. Miss the window and the money is not pending, not appealable — it's gone.

This guide is the deadline table we wish Amazon published in one place: every claim type, its exact window, when the clock actually starts, and how to keep ten open shipments from silently expiring while you run your business.

Every FBA claim deadline at a glance

Two patterns worth internalizing. First, several windows have a minimum wait as well as a maximum — filing an inbound claim on day 3 gets it rejected just as surely as filing on day 61. Second, the clocks start from different events: delivery for inbound, the loss report for warehouse claims, the refund date for returns. A spreadsheet with one "deadline" column per shipment quietly gets this wrong.

When did the windows change — and from what?

The current regime arrived in three steps:

• September 5, 2024— inbound "shipment to Amazon" claims moved to the 15–60 day window measured from delivery.
• October 23, 2024 — everything else dropped from 18 months to 60 days: fulfillment center operations claims, customer-return claims (60–120 days), and removal claims (15–75 days).
• March 31, 2025 — separate from the windows but just as important: reimbursement value switched from your sale price to your manufacturing / sourcing cost, cutting payouts by up to ~60% on high-margin SKUs. (Full timeline in our policy-changes guide.)

The direction of travel is one-way: shorter windows, smaller payouts, more of the burden on the seller to notice, document, and file fast.

When does the clock actually start?

For inbound claims — the ones most sellers file — the window runs from delivery, not from when you notice the shortage. Amazon's check-in can drag for weeks after delivery, with sellers reporting receiving times of 3–4 weeks at busy fulfillment centers. That lag eats your window: if check-in takes 25 days and you look at reconciliation monthly, you can be at day 50 of 60 before you even see the discrepancy.

This is also why the Closed status matters. Amazon expects you to wait until a shipment shows "Closed" before claiming — units keep turning up during receiving, and a claim filed against a still-receiving shipment gets answered with "research in progress." The practical rhythm: shipment closes → reconcile it that week → file anything missing immediately. You get one claim per shipment, so file it complete.

What happens if you miss the window?

Nothing happens — and that's the problem. There is no appeal path for an expired claim, no goodwill exception, no "we found it later" recovery. Sellers routinely leave 1–3% of annual revenue unclaimed, and roughly 40% of reimbursementstrace back to inbound shipment errors — the claim type with the tightest practical window. On a million-dollar-a-year account, that's real money expiring quietly.

How to track deadlines across 10+ open shipments

With one or two shipments a month, a calendar reminder works. Past that, the spreadsheet breaks down, because each shipment carries its own close date, its own 60-day countdown, and its own set of short-received SKUs — and the consequence of a missed row is irreversible.

What a working system needs:

• Detection at close — reconcile expected vs. received per SKU the week a shipment closes, not at month-end.
• A live countdown per claim — sorted so the next deadline is always on top.
• Escalating alerts — a nudge at T-14, T-7, and T-3 days, in your inbox, not inside a tool you have to remember to open.
• Case text ready to go — shipment ID, SKUs, FNSKUs, unit counts formatted for Seller Support, so filing takes minutes, not an evening.

That's exactly what the shipments.fyi claim-deadline tracker does: every discrepancy the scanner finds gets a 60-day countdown and T-14/7/3 email alerts ($9.98/mofor unlimited shipments; detection itself is free). If you'd rather run your own spreadsheet, take the table above and add one column per claim for the clock-start event— it's the field everyone forgets.

Deadline FAQ

Does the 60-day window apply to old losses?

The changes weren't retroactive at cutover, but any loss occurring today is firmly under the current windows. If you're sitting on unreconciled shipments from the last two months, they are the ones worth scanning first — older than that, inbound claims have already expired.

Can I file before the minimum wait?

No — inbound claims filed before day 15 (or before Closed status) get rejected or parked as "research in progress." The minimums exist because units keep being found during receiving.

Do proactive reimbursements cover me?

Only partially. Since November 1, 2024, Amazon auto-reimburses some warehouse-lost items — at its estimate of your cost. Inbound shortages, damaged units, and return failures still require manual claims, inside the windows above. Auto-payments are also worth auditing against your actual cost.

Related guides: How to file an inbound shipment claim (with template) · The full 2024–2026 policy-change timeline