New feature: Purchase labels up to 7 days in advance
When an order comes in, you can now choose which day you’d like to ship it, up to 7 days in advance.
With this feature you can:
- Change the shipping date for each shipment individually or in bulk
- Filter by ship date on the orders table and create different views based on the date
- Automatically set the ship date with cut off days and times for each warehouse in Locations settings
- Choose if a channel gets notified of a shipment/notification emails get sent or rules trigger either when the label gets created or at a specific time on the ship date in Marketplace and Ecommerce Integrations settings
- Benefit from Claims Protected and OTDR Protected shipments, as long as the future date you select still meets the promised delivery date
For more detailed information please see the help guide.
Remind me, Veeqo is owned by Amazon, right?
Yes, I haven’t tried this yet, but it could help with the AHT issue
There is a setting for Amazon to sync the order shipment information on the day it is set to ship at a specific time.
So you can “ship” an item early then just put it in another bag for pick up at another date.
Ohhh, your right, this MIGHT help with the AHT issue!
How?
If Handle Time is calculated at the time (day) of label purchase (which is when Amazon inputs tracking into system), then wouldn’t pre-label purchase reduce your handle time? Unless Amazon changes Handle Time to first scan, then you would be giving up Handle Time days if you needed them. In addtion, the estimated delivery window will be shortened.
Be careful … the policies for AHT, SSA and OTDR may not be in sync with the offered processes when it come to labels purchased many days in advance of actual shipment.
Purchase the label on Veeqo and tell Veeqo not to tell Amazon about said label until 2 days later = 2 day handling time no matter when said package is handed off to the shipper
ETA, In THEORY it should work, unless Amazon looks at when the tracking number first shows scanned, then it won’t.
Theoretically You can purchase the label today on Veeqo for a shipping date of Friday. You also set Veeqo to sync with amazon at 2pm the shipping date of the label.
Amazon sees it as the label printed Friday. You put it out for pick-up on Friday.
So you got the order ready for today but don’t ship it till Friday.
I have not yet been able to confirm the AHT is adjusting based on the purchase of the label. I hope others are testing also.
I am shipping all non-custom orders same or next day, yet AHT is adding 1 to 2 days handling time on some non-custom SKU’s.
It removed a day of handling time from a custom SKU, despite being shipped as scheduled. I have not yet contacted Seller Support to fix this SKU.
I cannot risk shipping customized orders early, but do ship all other orders same day if possible or the next day as scheduled. I cannot figure out why our non-custom SKU’s are increasing handling time.
I had always run my setup with 3 days handling time.
I was always closed one day during the week and just in case of an emergency we had buffer. 98% of all orders were shipped same day, but customers were DELIGHTED (Amazon word, not mine) by getting their package way earlier then scheduled.
Well, now the emphasis is on the word “WERE” delighted. I have almost achieved Nirvana (the Buddhist state, not the band) without working too hard at it. I ship on the last day of the ‘ship by’ and manually (business is slow so it doesn’t take long!) copy and paste the labels from my Stamps/Endicia/Dazzle postage log.
Is this not a prime factor in all Amazon label protections?
We have had the same thing happen. We have one order right now for that ASIN and intend to ship it as 2 day handle time as set at item level. If we get hit with a late order, we will address it with seller support and/or on NSFE.
We got an answer about how it is handled from Jameson_Amazon on NSFE.
Here a link to his full response
Here is the part that addresses how handle time is calculated.
Hi @Lost_My_Marbles,
Thank you for your patience! I wanted to send along the OTDR partner team’s answers to your questions:
"1. Handling Time starts to be counted at the moment an order is received until you ship confirm (not by carrier first scan) an order on the Manage Your Orders page within Seller Central. When you buy a label with Amazon’s Buy Shipping, the order is automatically ship confirmed. Handling Time is not calculated by hours, but by full days. One order received at 10am and shipped at 4pm of the same day will have 0 days of handling time. If this same order is shipped at 4pm at the next day, it will have 1 day of handling time. The fractional handling time displayed (“1.4 days of handling time”) are an average of the handling time for those units. On the example above, if one unit was shipped with 0 day handling time and another with 1 day handling time, you would observe a “0.5 handling time” for those units.
That would work … but does purchasing labels on Veeqo still have OTDR protection or are you giving that up by using Veeqo?