Amazon FBA reimbursements in 2026: claim windows, automatic payouts and your own reconciliation tool

Every FBA seller loses some stock inside Amazon's network. Units go missing in a fulfilment centre, get damaged on a shelf, are refunded to a customer who never sends them back, or disappear on the way back to you in a removal order. An Amazon FBA reimbursement is the money Amazon owes you for those units, and since late 2024 the rules for getting it have changed more than once: shorter deadlines, more automatic payouts and a new way of valuing what was lost.

This guide is for FBA sellers who suspect money is slipping through and are weighing a reimbursement service against checking the numbers themselves. It covers what Amazon now pays automatically, the claim windows, how to reconcile your account from the reports in the Selling Partner API (SP-API), and the one step that cannot be automated: filing the case.

Amazon's full policy sits behind the Seller Central login, so the dates and windows below come from Amazon's announcements on the Seller Forums. They differ by marketplace and do change: check your own Seller Central before relying on any number.

What changed in Amazon FBA reimbursement rules since 2024

Three changes reshaped this work.

Automatic payouts. In an October 2024 announcement, Amazon said that from 1 November 2024 it would proactively reimburse FBA items lost in its US fulfilment centres, once the centre reports them lost, and that these payouts appear in the Reimbursements report. Amazon's notices said most warehouse lost-and-damaged and customer-return cases would now be paid automatically, while removal claims would still be filed by hand. Some marketplaces received the change in early 2025.

Shorter claim windows. The same notice set new windows for manual claims, effective 23 October 2024 in the US:

Claim type	Window for a manual claim
Lost or damaged in a fulfilment centre	Within 60 days of the item being reported lost or damaged
Customer return	Opens weeks after the refund; Amazon's notices gave 60–120 days in one version, 45–105 in another
Removal lost in transit	15 to 75 days from creating the removal shipment
Other removal problems	Within 60 days of the shipment being delivered back to you

Paid at cost, not at price. For stock lost or damaged before a customer orders it, Amazon now reimburses the manufacturing cost: what it cost you to source the product from a manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller, or to make it, excluding shipping, handling and customs duties (Amazon's announcement). If you do not enter your costs, Amazon applies its own estimate based on comparable products. Units lost or damaged after a customer order are still paid at the sales price minus fees. In the US the change took effect on 31 March 2025, moved from 10 March to give sellers time to enter costs on the Manage Your Sourcing Cost page in the Inventory Defect and Reimbursement portal.

The lesson: if your costs are missing or out of date, Amazon's estimate decides what every lost unit is worth.

Where money still slips through

Automatic payouts reduce the work of an Amazon FBA reimbursement check, but they do not remove it. These are the places sellers look:

• Lost units never settled. A unit marked lost should later be found or reimbursed. Some end up as neither.
• Refunds without a return. The customer is refunded, the item never comes back, and no reimbursement follows.
• Returns that come back wrong. A different item, an empty box, or a unit marked unsellable without a reimbursement.
• Short removals and short inbound shipments. Fewer units arrive than the paperwork says were sent.
• Fee drift. An FBA fee jumps because a product was measured into a bigger size tier.
• Low valuations. A reimbursement arrives at an outdated sourcing cost.

None of these shows on a single Seller Central page. Finding them means joining several reports, which software does well.

How to reconcile FBA inventory with SP-API reports

The SP-API's FBA report types give you everything needed to rebuild what happened to each unit:

Report	What it tells you
Inventory Ledger, detailed view (GET_LEDGER_DETAIL_VIEW_DATA)	Every movement: receipts, customer shipments, returns, removals and adjustments such as lost, found and damaged, for up to 18 months
Inventory Ledger, summary view (GET_LEDGER_SUMMARY_VIEW_DATA)	Opening balance, movements and closing balance per period
FBA Reimbursements (GET_FBA_REIMBURSEMENTS_DATA)	Each reimbursement with its reason, updated daily
FBA Returns (GET_FBA_FULFILLMENT_CUSTOMER_RETURNS_DATA)	Returned units with reason and condition
Removal order and removal shipment detail	What you asked to remove, and what was shipped
FBA Fee Preview (GET_FBA_ESTIMATED_FBA_FEES_TXT_DATA)	Expected fees per SKU

Refunds and the fees actually charged come from the Finances API, with a breakdown of each amount and its order.

A reconciliation tool built on these runs a small set of checks:

1. Pull and store. Download the reports on a schedule and keep the raw files, so checks can be re-run when the logic changes.
2. Lost versus found versus paid. Per product, add up units adjusted as lost or damaged, subtract units found and reimbursed, and flag what is still open after a waiting period.
3. Refunds against returns. Join Finances API refunds to the returns report by order ID. A refund with no return and no reimbursement, once the claim window opens, is a candidate.
4. Removals against your own count. Compare what Amazon says it shipped with what your warehouse received. Amazon cannot see that second number, so record it.
5. Fees against expectations. Flag SKUs whose charged fee differs from the fee preview without a reason you know of.
6. A deadline on everything. Each candidate gets a "file by" date from the windows above, sorted nearest first.

The output is a short weekly list: order ID, product, dates, the ledger lines that prove the gap, and the deadline. That is all a person needs to file a case in minutes.

What can be automated, and what cannot

Data collection, matching, deadlines and case drafts can all be automated. An AI model can turn one case's evidence into a clear message, as long as a person reads it before it is sent.

Opening the case cannot. Amazon's Selling Partner Support API (version 2025-02-01) can list your cases, show one case in detail and show its contact history. Its published model has no operation for creating a case, and no other SP-API endpoint submits a reimbursement claim. A person files the case in Seller Central. The Support API is still useful afterwards: your tool can watch each case and record whether it was paid.

Resist the shortcut of a browser bot that clicks through the case forms. Since 4 March 2026, Amazon's Agent Policy has required automated tools to identify themselves and stop when Amazon asks, and a script imitating a person does neither. I go through the details in the Amazon Agent Policy guide.

Reimbursement services vs your own reconciliation tool

Amazon FBA reimbursement services connect to your account, find discrepancies and file cases for you, and most charge a share of what they recover. Now that Amazon pays most fulfilment-centre losses itself and values pre-order losses at cost, the pool of manual claims is smaller and each claim is often worth less.

Sellers have noticed. In EcomCrew's seller software survey, run from December 2025 to January 2026, 30% of sellers used no reimbursement software in 2025, up from 13% the year before. It is one publisher's survey, not a market measure, but the direction is clear.

A rough decision guide:

• Small catalogue, few lost units: a monthly look at the Reimbursements report and the inventory ledger in Seller Central may be enough.
• Comfortable sharing access and a percentage: a service saves you the filing work.
• Larger catalogue, your own warehouse or several channels: your own tool keeps all the money, uses your receiving counts and costs, and keeps the history in your database. Someone on your side files the cases.

A checklist for FBA reimbursement work

• Enter real sourcing costs, update them when supplier prices change, and keep the invoices that prove them.
• Keep proof of delivery for inbound and removal shipments, and count every removal when it arrives.
• Pull the ledger and reimbursement reports at least weekly; a 60-day window leaves little room for a monthly habit.
• File the nearest deadline first, track each case to an outcome, and watch for reimbursements that are later reversed.

What a custom reconciliation tool costs

It uses the same SP-API pieces as any Amazon Seller Central automation: a private app in your own account, scheduled reports and a small database. A weekly reconciliation report from one marketplace is the kind of single automation my Marketplace & e-commerce apps MVP plan covers, from $2,500: one marketplace connected through its official API, one automation such as reports, and a simple dashboard or spreadsheet output. That is a starting price; every project gets a fixed quote after a short brief, payment is in milestones you can try, and the code and accounts are yours. More on my Seller Central automation work.

FAQ

Does Amazon still reimburse lost FBA inventory automatically?

Yes, for most cases. Amazon said that from 1 November 2024 it would proactively reimburse items lost in its US fulfilment centres once they are reported lost, with payouts shown in the Reimbursements report, and that most warehouse and customer-return cases would be paid automatically. Removal claims still need filing by hand, and anything the automatic process misses needs a manual claim inside the window, so a regular check of your reports is still worth doing.

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

For items lost or damaged in a fulfilment centre, Amazon's October 2024 notice gives 60 days from the date the item was reported lost or damaged. Removal shipments lost in transit can be claimed 15 to 75 days after the shipment was created. Customer-return claims have their own window that opens weeks after the refund. Windows differ by marketplace and change from time to time, so confirm them in Seller Central.

Should I keep paying a reimbursement service?

It depends on what is left for it to find. Since Amazon began paying most fulfilment-centre losses automatically and valuing pre-order losses at manufacturing cost, there is less left to claim by hand, and each pre-order loss is usually valued lower. Compare what the service recovered over the last six months, minus its fee, with the effort of a weekly reconciliation list and filing cases yourself. If you sell from your own warehouse or on several channels, an in-house check can also use data a service never sees.

If you want a weekly reconciliation list instead of a spreadsheet afternoon, send me a short brief: which marketplaces you sell in, roughly how many SKUs you keep at FBA, and how you track removals and costs today. You can also start with the wider picture in e-commerce automation: what to automate first.