Amazon's Q4 cutoffs: 21 or 28 October, and your split setting decides

Amazon has published its Q4 inbound cutoffs, and there are six of them rather than three. Two events, three dates each, and the Prime Big Deal Days set is already running out.

The dates

If you are reading this on the day it was published, the AWD date for October's event has gone.

The two FBA dates are one decision

The table reads as though 21 and 28 October are alternatives. They are not. Which one applies to you is already decided by how you inbound, and the difference is a week.

Minimal shipment splits send everything to one location and leave Amazon to spread it across the network. Simple freight, and an inbound placement service fee on every unit.

Amazon-optimized shipment splits send the same inventory directly to several destinations Amazon nominates. More freight to arrange, and the placement fee falls, to nothing when the shipment meets Amazon's conditions on identical cartons and destination count.

Amazon does not say why the two options have different deadlines, but the dates make sense in one direction only. Inventory sent under minimal splits still has to be moved internally after it arrives, and that transfer takes time Amazon has to reserve. Inventory sent under optimized splits is already sitting where it will be picked from. The seller who did the distribution work gets the week back.

So the question to answer this month is not "when is the cutoff". It is "which cutoff are we under", and the answer can change per shipment.

Firm is not the word Amazon used

Amazon's own wording is that inventory arriving after these dates "isn't guaranteed to be processed in time". That is not the same as a closed door. What lapses is the guarantee, not the possibility, and in a normal year plenty of late inventory is received and sells.

The distinction matters for planning, in both directions. A shipment that misses by two days is worth sending anyway. A shipment you are counting on for Black Friday revenue is not worth resting on that.

The cutoff is arrival, not dispatch

Read the deadline as the date the units are received, not the date you create the shipment or hand it to a carrier. Transit, appointment scheduling, and the receive queue are all on your side of the line, and the receive queue is longest in exactly the weeks these dates fall in.

Work backwards from 21 or 28 October with your actual lane times, not your best ones.

What the cutoffs do not change

The peak fulfillment fee still applies. It runs 15 October 2026 to 14 January 2027, at an average of $0.32 per unit above non-peak rates, the same increment as the previous peak. It is charged when the unit ships to a customer, so arriving early does not avoid it.

AWD keeps the off-peak storage rate through 31 October 2026, which is the one part of the calendar that rewards sending early rather than merely on time. Amazon reports that Q4 2025 AWD participants shipped more than 13 percent more units and lost more than 30 percent fewer days to out-of-stock. That is Amazon's figure for its own programme, and it is worth what such figures are usually worth, but the direction is not surprising.

Where this reaches advertising

A stockout during Black Friday week is not just lost revenue for the days it lasts. Campaigns keep spending until somebody notices, the listing loses the sales velocity its organic position was built on, and the position is still lower in December when the inventory finally lands.

The advertising decision that follows from the calendar is unglamorous: know, per ASIN, how many days of cover you have at peak sell-through rather than at today's, and decide in advance which campaigns get paused rather than discovering it on the day. An ASIN with four weeks of ordinary demand behind it can have nine days of Black Friday demand behind it.

What we would do first

Confirm the split setting on the next inbound. It decides which of the two dates you are working to, and it is the only item on this list that moves a deadline.

Rank the catalogue by what actually needs to be there. Cutoffs apply to shipments, not to ASINs. The units that matter are the ones behind the search terms you intend to be visible on in November.

Check cover against peak demand, not current demand. Last November's sell-through is a better input than last week's.

Decide the ad plan for a stockout now. Which campaigns pause, which keep running to protect rank, and who is watching.

The rest of the seasonal work, forecasting, pricing against Q4 surcharges and the listing checks, is in preparing an FBA account for the holiday season. This article is only about the dates.

Amazon's own post is in the Seller Central forums. If you want the fee arithmetic behind a decision to send more or less, the revenue calculator works from an ASIN without an account.