Must Arrive By Date (MABD)

The Must Arrive By Date – commonly abbreviated MABD – is the date a retailer sets as the latest acceptable delivery for a given purchase order. It's the hard deadline that drives everything backward in the shipping timeline: when to release the order, when to tender to a carrier, which service level to book, and when the carrier must pick up to arrive on time. Missing the MABD is the primary trigger for on-time failures in retailer OTIF programs.

MABDs are communicated on the purchase order itself, typically via EDI 850 or through the retailer's supplier portal. Some retailers define a delivery window around the MABD – for example, a two-day window where delivery is acceptable one day before through the MABD itself. Others enforce a single-day requirement. The specifics vary by retailer, distribution center, and sometimes by product category or promotional timing.

For shippers managing dozens or hundreds of POs per week across multiple retailers, MABD management quickly becomes a planning bottleneck. Each PO has its own deadline, its own destination, and its own compliance rules. Without a system that automatically calculates ship-by dates based on transit times and flags POs at risk of missing their window, teams end up in constant reactive mode – expediting shipments that should have left a day earlier.

The most common MABD failures aren't dramatic – they're a carrier picking up six hours late, an overlooked PO sitting in a queue, or a transit time estimate that didn't account for a weekend. Automation that ties PO data directly to carrier booking and tracks progress against the MABD in real time is the difference between consistently hitting windows and absorbing avoidable fines.