How does Amazon calculate FBA reimbursements in 2026?

Since March 2025, Amazon reimburses lost or damaged FBA inventory based on your manufacturing or sourcing cost, not the selling price. If you have entered an accurate per-unit cost in Seller Central, Amazon uses that figure. If the cost field is missing or zero, Amazon substitutes its own internal estimate, which is typically lower than what you actually paid your supplier. Sellers who never updated their cost data have seen recoveries drop 50 to 75 percent on average compared to the old sale-price model.

How long do I have to file an FBA reimbursement claim in 2026?

Most claim types now carry a window of roughly 60 days from when the discrepancy becomes visible, down from the 18-month lookback sellers relied on for years. Once the window closes, the money is generally unrecoverable — Amazon rarely makes exceptions for late filings. This is why quarterly or annual reimbursement audits no longer work: by the time an annual audit finds a January discrepancy, the claim expired months ago. A monthly audit rhythm is the minimum; weekly triage is safer for high-volume accounts.

What happens if I don't enter manufacturing cost in Seller Central?

Amazon falls back to its own internal cost estimate, and in our audit work that estimate almost always lands below the seller's true landed cost. A missing or zero cost field is effectively a voluntary pay cut on every future lost or damaged unit. Enter an accurate, documented per-unit sourcing cost for every active SKU, keep supplier invoices that support the number, and re-verify the fields whenever your supplier pricing changes.

Amazon reimburses automatically now — do I still need a manual audit?

Auto-reimbursement handles the simple cases: a unit scanned as lost in the warehouse, a straightforward damage event. It does not reliably catch multi-step discrepancies — inbound shipments received short, returns that never made it back to sellable stock, units destroyed without notice, fee overcharges from wrong dimensions, or removal orders that lost units in transit. In our reconciliation work, manual audits still surface recoverable money on the majority of accounts that believe automation has them covered.

What is Amazon's DD+7 payout policy?

DD+7 (delivery date plus seven days) went live in March 2026. Amazon holds the funds from a sale until seven days after the order is delivered before making them available for disbursement. It is a cash-flow policy rather than a reimbursement policy, but it compounds the pressure: with slower payouts and cost-based reimbursements, every dollar Amazon owes you from a lost unit or fee error matters more, and the 60-day clock to claim it keeps ticking regardless.

Amazon FBA Reimbursement Policy 2026: What Changed and How to Recover More

If you searched Amazon FBA reimbursement policy 2026, here is the short version: Amazon now pays you your sourcing cost — not your selling price — when it loses or damages your inventory, you have roughly 60 days to claim most discrepancies, and the auto-reimbursement system that supposedly handles everything quietly skips the complex cases where most of the money hides. Sellers who adapted their process recovered meaningfully more in the past year. Sellers who didn't have watched recoveries shrink 50 to 75 percent without noticing why.

This guide covers exactly what changed, what it costs you if you ignore it, and the monthly audit routine we run at Leviathan Sellers' reconciliation desk to keep client recoveries intact under the new rules.

The cost-based reimbursement model, in plain numbers

Since March 2025, Amazon values reimbursements for lost and damaged FBA inventory at your manufacturing or sourcing cost instead of the estimated sale price. The stated logic is fair on paper — a reimbursement should make you whole for what the unit cost you, not hand you unearned retail margin.

The practical effect has been brutal. Consider a unit you source for $6 and sell for $24:

Basis	Reimbursement per lost unit
Old model (sale-price based)	~$20+ after fee adjustments
New model (your documented cost)	$6
New model (no cost on file — Amazon's estimate)	Often $3–5

That third row is the trap. Across the accounts we audit, the shift explains why average seller recoveries dropped 50 to 75 percent even when the number of lost units stayed flat. The units are still disappearing at the same rate — Amazon is just paying far less for each one, and least of all to sellers who never told Amazon what their inventory actually costs.

60-day claim windows: the new deadline math

The second structural change is speed. Most reimbursement claim types now close roughly 60 days after the discrepancy surfaces. The legacy 18-month lookback — the buffer that made annual reimbursement audits viable — is gone.

Do the math on what that kills:

An annual audit finds discrepancies that are, on average, six months old. Under a 60-day window, nearly all of them are already expired. The audit becomes archaeology.
A quarterly audit still forfeits every claim from the first month of the quarter.
A monthly audit catches almost everything with time to spare — and leaves room to gather documentation before filing.

Missed windows are not a partial haircut; they are a total loss on that claim. If your reimbursement process still runs on a quarterly calendar, you are donating the difference to Amazon. Our FBA account management clients get this triage baked into a weekly operating rhythm precisely because deadline risk is now the single biggest leak.

Your cost data in Seller Central is now a revenue input

Under the cost-based model, the per-unit manufacturing cost you enter in Seller Central is no longer administrative trivia — it is the number Amazon multiplies by every lost unit.

Three rules follow:

Every active SKU needs an accurate per-unit sourcing cost on file. A missing or zero field hands the valuation to Amazon's internal estimator, which in our experience lands below true landed cost nearly every time.
The number must be defensible. Keep supplier invoices, payment records, and purchase orders that support the figure. If Amazon questions a cost, an invoice trail settles it; a spreadsheet of intentions does not.
Re-verify when pricing changes. Supplier raises prices, you renegotiate, freight shifts your landed cost — the Seller Central field should follow. Stale low figures underpay you on every future claim.

This is a two-hour task for most catalogs, and it is the highest-ROI two hours available to an FBA seller in 2026. While you're in cost-data mode, run your real numbers through our FBA calculator — with reimbursements pegged to cost and fees rising, several sellers discover that marginal SKUs no longer clear a sensible profit floor.

What auto-reimbursement catches — and what it quietly misses

Amazon now auto-reimburses many lost and damaged inventory cases without a claim. This is genuinely useful, and it is also the most dangerous development in the policy — because it convinces sellers the problem is solved.

Automation handles the clean, single-event cases: a unit scanned lost in a fulfillment center, an obvious warehouse damage event. What it does not reliably catch:

Inbound receiving shortfalls — you shipped 500 units, Amazon checked in 480, and no one flagged the 20.
Returns that never return — a refund was issued, but the unit never re-entered sellable inventory and was never marked lost.
Disposed or destroyed inventory without proper notice or credit.
Fee overcharges from wrong dimensions or weights — not "lost inventory" at all, so automation never looks.
Removal order losses — units that vanish between the FC and your door.
Multi-leg discrepancies where a unit moves between fulfillment centers and the paper trail breaks.

These complex cases are exactly where the meaningful money sits, and they only surface when someone reconciles inbound records, settlement reports, returns data, and inventory ledgers against each other. That is manual work — automation-assisted, but human-judged.

The monthly audit routine that protects your recoveries

Here is the routine we run, adapted for a seller doing it in-house. Block two to three hours at the start of each month.

Step 1: Pull the core reports

From Seller Central, export the Inventory Ledger, the FBA customer returns report, the reimbursements report, and your settlement reports for the trailing 60 days. The 60-day scope matters — anything older is likely already unclaimable, so spend your attention where the window is still open.

Step 2: Reconcile inbound shipments

Compare units shipped against units received for every shipment closed in the period. Investigate every shortfall — carton-level packing lists and proof of delivery are your evidence. This is the single most common source of missed claims we find.

Step 3: Match refunds to returned inventory

For every refund issued 45–60 days ago, confirm the unit either re-entered sellable stock, was marked unsellable, or was reimbursed. Refunds with none of the three are open claims.

Step 4: Sweep the inventory ledger for unexplained adjustments

Filter for lost, damaged, and disposed events, then cross-check each against the reimbursements report. Auto-reimbursement should have covered the simple ones — your job is the residue it skipped.

Step 5: Spot-check fees

Verify the dimensions and weight Amazon has on file for your top SKUs against reality. A single wrong measurement compounds across every unit shipped, and fee corrections follow their own claim path automation ignores.

Step 6: File fast, document fully

For every confirmed discrepancy, file with the shipment IDs, invoices, and photos attached up front. Under the tightened 2026 review standards, a complete first submission resolves faster and denies less often than a thin one you plan to reinforce on appeal.

If that reads like a part-time job, that is because at real catalog scale it is one — which is the honest case for handing it to a dedicated reconciliation service that runs the loop weekly instead of monthly.

The 2026 changes stacking on top

Reimbursement policy is not moving in isolation this year. Three broader shifts raise the stakes:

FBA prep and labeling services end in the US in 2026. Prep responsibility moves to sellers and their suppliers — and prep errors are a classic source of inbound discrepancies, so expect more receiving disputes, not fewer.
Fulfillment fees rose again, averaging around $0.08 more per unit. Small per-unit, real at volume.
DD+7 payouts went live in March 2026. Amazon now holds sale proceeds until seven days after delivery. Slower cash in, thinner reimbursements out — working capital is squeezed from both ends.

We track all of these month by month in our Amazon FBA policy updates tracker if you want the running list.

Where a reconciliation partner fits

You can run everything above yourself, and for a small catalog you probably should. The case for outside help is scale and deadlines: 60-day windows do not care that you were busy with a product launch, and cost-documentation disputes reward people who assemble evidence packets for a living.

Our reconciliation team audits the full trailing window on every account weekly, files claims with documentation attached, works denials through appeal, and reports recovered dollars — not "opportunities identified." If you want to know what your account is actually leaking under the 2026 rules, request a free audit and we will show you the number before you commit to anything.

The bottom line

The 2026 reimbursement regime pays less per incident, gives you a fraction of the time to claim, and automates just enough to create false confidence. The sellers recovering well right now all do the same three things: accurate cost data on every SKU, a monthly (or faster) reconciliation rhythm, and complete documentation on the first filing. Start with the cost fields this week — it is the cheapest fix with the fastest payback.