Walmart is introducing a new performance metric called Late Shipment Rate. If you are fulfilling your own orders, this is something to pay attention to.
What is Late Shipment Rate
Late Shipment Rate is the percentage of your orders that are not confirmed as shipped by the Expected Ship Date.
Walmart expects sellers to keep this at 5% or below.
How it is different from On-Time Delivery (OTD)
It is important to understand the difference between these two:
• Late Shipment Rate tracks if you ship on time
• OTD tracks if the order arrives on time
OTD depends heavily on carriers. Late Shipment Rate is fully in your control.
This means Walmart is putting more focus on how quickly sellers process and hand off orders, not just final delivery.
How to stay within the limit
To avoid issues with this new metric, sellers should:
- Ship orders on or before the Expected Ship Date
- Mark orders as shipped immediately after handing them to the carrier
- Monitor tracking updates and carrier performance regularly
Even small delays in confirming shipment can impact your score.
When this goes into effect
Late Shipment Rate will soon be visible in the Performance dashboard. It will become an official Seller Performance Standard later this summer. Walmart is expected to share a detailed timeline before enforcement begins.
This change pushes sellers to tighten their fulfillment process.
At GeekSeller, we already see that delays in marking orders as shipped can lead to account issues. This update makes that even more important.
It will also be interesting to watch how this affects sellers using USPS, where scan delays are more common.
If you are fulfilling your own orders, it is worth reviewing your workflow now and making sure everything is as fast and consistent as possible.
