Amazon Account Health: The Metrics That Matter for Sellers Who Ship Their Own Orders

If you ship your own Amazon orders (Merchant Fulfilled, often called FBM), Amazon is watching how you do it. A handful of performance metrics decide whether your listings stay live, whether you win the Buy Box and, in the worst case, whether you keep your selling privileges at all. Here is what each metric measures, the target Amazon expects, and what actually moves the number.

Where to find your metrics

Open Performance → Account Health in Seller Central. You will see customer service performance, shipping performance and policy compliance, each with its own targets. Check it weekly: problems build up over a 7, 30 or 60-day window, so by the time you notice a dip it has usually been coming for a while.

1. Order Defect Rate (target: under 1%)

The Order Defect Rate (ODR) is the share of orders over 60 days that received negative feedback, an A-to-z Guarantee claim or a chargeback. It is the metric Amazon treats most seriously.

Describe products accurately so the item matches what the buyer expected.
Ship on time with tracking: most A-to-z claims start with “my order never arrived”.
Answer buyer messages within 24 hours and offer a fix before the buyer opens a claim.

2. Late Shipment Rate (target: under 4%)

An order is late if it is confirmed as shipped after the expected ship date. The fix is operational: set a handling time you can actually meet, process orders every working day and confirm shipment as soon as the label is created, not when you remember.

3. Pre-fulfilment Cancel Rate (target: under 2.5%)

This counts orders you cancel before shipping, usually because the item is out of stock. Keep inventory counts accurate across every channel you sell on. If the same stock is listed on Amazon, eBay and TikTok Shop, one sale needs to reduce the quantity everywhere.

4. Valid Tracking Rate (target: above 95%)

Amazon only counts tracking as valid when the carrier has at least one scan for it. Typos, the wrong carrier or labels that were printed but never handed over all count against you. Use a carrier Amazon recognises, pick it from the list rather than typing it as “Other”, and make sure every parcel is actually scanned when it is dropped off.

5. On-Time Delivery Rate (target: above 90%)

This measures whether tracked orders arrive by the promised date. Shipping templates that promise faster delivery than your carrier can manage are the usual cause. Be realistic, particularly for rural or remote addresses.

A simple daily routine

Check new orders and confirm stock.
Buy labels and ship inside your handling time.
Confirm shipment with the correct carrier and tracking number.
Reply to buyer messages.
Glance at Account Health once a week and act on anything trending the wrong way.

Want someone else to run the routine?

That daily work is exactly what our Amazon account management service covers. Our team ships and tracks your orders, adds valid tracking to every one and shows the results in a view-only portal, for one flat $30 every 30 days. We work on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.au.