AHT - How does Amazon calculate actual handling time?

Selling on Amazon
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Does anyone have any knowledge of how Amazon calculates your actual handling time per ASIN - when it does the monthly AHT update?

I’ve been working on getting earlier acceptance scans on orders to try and get AHT to give me more automated 0-day handling times on as many ASINs as possible. Yes, I am aware I can over-ride AHT in 2 ways. The first way is the same-day handling check-box in the shipping template, where you do not lose OTDR and claims protection if using Buy Shipping. The second is to use the ASIN/SKU handling time override where you do lose OTDR protection even if using Buy Shipping. My goal is to achieve 0-day automatic handling time issued by AHT organically.

What I’m curious about - are these 3 scenarios. I am closed Saturday and Sunday and have those days set as “Prime Only” - so no regular orders are due to ship out on Saturday and Sunday. I do not actually do any SFP. So SSA and AHT show I am closed on the weekend.

  1. An order comes in Friday evening, after my order cut-off time, so the ship-by date is Monday April 13th. I ship the order on Saturday and get a USPS acceptance scan on Saturday at 10:00am Pacific Time. What will Amazon show my actual handling time as -38 hours, or 0 hours?

  2. An order comes in on Sunday and the ship-by date is Monday April 13th. I ship the order and get a carrier acceptance scan on Monday at 7:30am pacific time. Does Amazon calculate the actual handling time as 7.5 hours, or 0 hours?

  3. An order comes in on Monday at 10:30am PT and leaves pending status and becomes shippable at 11:00am PT, and is due to ship the same day because it came in before my order cut-off time. I get a carrier scan the same day at 1:00pm PT. Does Amazon calculate the handling time as 2.5 hours, 2.0 hours, or 0 hours?

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Isn’t it easier to override it simply in shipping settings and setting AHT as not active? That’s how I have it

AHT works with a rolling average of 30 days discounting the last 10 days (so uses day -40 to -30) and allegedly improves daily. If it sees that there’s not enough data (whatever that means) then it pulls the number from a hat, or uses the account default.

Regarding the scenarios, I believe (and I’m not using any of Amazon’s automations) that the units are 0 days, 1 day, 2 days, etc, not hours
So for instance

The algorithm gets confused and you are penalized :joy:
that’s 0 days

That’s 0 days

No, with all that said, the Fulfillment Dashboard does show fractions of days. In my case it shows this:

image
image1679×719 71.1 KB

And that’s what leads me to believe that the fractions (hours if you may) are not really important, because Amazon will work to the 0 day, 1 day, 2day handling. 15 mins of handling.

In the old forum Racecarox would have given a lot more detailed (and accurate) answer

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Yes you can loose OTDR doing this.

This is not true.

Amazon will calculate it based on the amount of hours from order placed to order shipped.

Same as above … Amazon will calculate it based on the amount of hours from order placed to order shipped.

Same as above … Amazon will calculate it based on the amount of hours from order placed to order shipped.

When there is no data, it will pull it first from the individual handle time if set and then the default handle time.

It depends on your settings with cut off times, shipping data, store hours, vacation days, holidays … as all of those will effect the calculation of the last ship by date on the order.

We do have SSA and AHT enabled with a 2 day handle time set at the individual level for each item.

If an item comes in on Monday whether it is at 12:01am Pacific Time or 11:59pm Pacific Time, that order needs to be shipped / scanned by the shipper on Wednesday before 11:59pm Pacific Time. If I get a scan at 5:00am Pacific Time on Wednesday, it is the same as the 11:59pm scan on Wednesday … as far as the handle time goes.

If you want zero handle time, then you technically have to ship and get scanned the same day the order comes in. However … if your cut off time is 5:00pm and the order comes in at 6:00pm, then your 0 handle time is the next day. If you have your store closed on Saturday and Sunday with your cut off time at 5:00pm, then any order that comes in from 5:01pm Friday to 11:59pm Sunday will have a 0 day handle time on Monday. You have told Amazon that you are not working from 5:01pm Friday to 11:59pm Sunday so you have to get all of those orders out on Monday plus any orders that comes in Monday before your cut off time of 5:00pm.

The way those numbers work on the Fulfillment Dashboard is an average of days (not hours) per order.

Example
Order #1 = 5 days before expected
Order #2 = 3 days before expected
Order #3 = 2 days before expected
Average = 10 / 3 = 3.3 days before expected

It’s a rolling time just like the way the Fulfillment Dashboard works. Generally, we saw it update roughly 7 to 14 days (depends a little on the ASIN activity and your ability to ship consistently).

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Thanks for the feedback. I have the same day checkbox selected on all shipping templates and currently have the OTDR Protected and Claims Protected badges on all orders.

When I had the “SKU level handling time” active, we lost the OTDR Protected badge on orders.

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