Amazon Business
With Amazon Business, the e-commerce has created a platform on which commercial customers can offer and buy products. Regardless of company size and revenue, the B2B platform is free for merchants and buyers. Amazon Business was launched in the USA in 2015 and started with over 400,000 companies. Already in the first year, the platform generated more than one billion US dollars in sales, with Amazon dealers handling half of the entire order themselves.
Especially for companies that, for example, often order a large number of office supplies, they benefit from lower business prices, as the offers are shown as net prices on and often show savings through differential prices.
In addition, there are special offers which, in addition to the standard products, are offered exclusively to business customers. For sales with Amazon-Business, the same relevance factors for the A9 search engine are valid on product level as for all other products. A targeted Amazon optimization of all business offers can also lead to a significantly higher turnover.
Registration on Amazon Business
Amazon offers the promise of registering your business account within a few minutes and this is true. In addition to a few mandatory details on the company data, the account is quickly created. You also have the possibility to convert your existing account to Amazon Business. If you have already registered a private Amazon account, you can activate it for Amazon Business.
The input of a sales tax identification number is not necessary: it is optional and can also be added after the registration. Even for trading with the B2B platform, the tax ID is not absolutely necessary. However, if you want to claim your invoices for tax purposes, this ID should be given.
Functions of Amazon Business
(image: purchase on account – high visibility – Business prices – exclusive business offers – display of net prices – automatic – invoicing)
In addition to better purchasing conditions and the ability to sell directly to businesses, the Amazon Business Platform offers a number of other options and features that are beneficial to businesses:
Multi-user accounts
Especially for companies that purchase goods with several employees, Amazon-Business offers the possibility to merge several users into one single account in the account management. This means that there is only one account for all employees, which can simplify accounting processes.
Payment limits and analysis
In order to have full control over the number of products ordered and maximum purchasing limits at all times, Amazon-Business offers various approval processes with which entrepreneurs can control and limit expenditures. With the help of dynamic diagrams and visualizations, purchases can be analyzed and reported in detail.
Adjusted order numbers (PO numbers)
In order to better integrate orders via Amazon-Business into existing business processes, the order numbers (PO numbers) can be individualized. In this way, invoicing can be considerably simplified by using your own information texts.
Purchase on account and value added tax
The “purchase on account” option is particularly important in the corporate sector, and this is exactly what Amazon-Business can do. With a maximum payment period of 30 days, business customers can order goods and pay either by direct debit or credit card. The purchase on account is also a big advantage for sellers, because Amazon takes over the complete service from credit risk assessment to invoicing and payment collection.
A further advantage of purchase on account from the dealer’s point of view is the higher sales probability. Especially in the business sector, companies buy the majority of their required goods on account and if this option is offered, the sales opportunity increases enormously.
Reported sales tax & Amazon net prices
If you are registered with your Amazon Business account, you will see the available products directly as net prices without sales tax, as this is a continuous item anyway (from the company’s point of view). The sales tax is shown directly on invoice documents and can therefore be entered more easily in the accounting department.
If the “business invoice” option is activated, the net prices are displayed on Amazon and are therefore easier to compare. For this to work, however, merchants must explicitly show their goods with net prices.
Amazon Business Prime
Prime delivery is already one of the most important factors for a high sales opportunity in the B2C sector on Amazon. This shipping option is also available for business customers; the condition for this is an activated Amazon Business account with at least three users linked. Similar to private customers, business prime also cost an annual fee with the following discount scale:
- Up to 10 users annual fee 200,00 € (excl. VAT)
- Up to 100 users annual fee 500,00 € (excl. VAT)
- Over 100 users annual fee 4.000,00 € (excl. VAT)
For smaller companies with maximum of two users in the business account, there is no possibility to use Amazon-Business-Prime. Larger companies can save with this option because the annual fee is for all users together.
Amazon Business Catalog Management
Especially for companies that use Amazon Business with many accounts, catalog management can be a very useful tool. It can be used to define preferred products as well as to exclude certain categories and product groups from purchasing with Amazon Business.
In order to control the purchasing decision of the employees, preferred products can be defined in the Amazon Business catalogue administration. If, for example, a user with an activated business account is searching for “Keyboard”, the search results list can display product recommendations that have been selected in advance via the catalog administration.
On the other hand, certain Amazon items can also be completely excluded from Amazon Business purchases. The message will then be displayed on the product detail page of an article, for example:
“Restricted product. Purchasing this product is not permitted. For more information, contact the administrator. Amazon Business Employee: this item does not comply with your company’s purchasing policies. Contact the administrator”.
These restrictions can be set category specifically via the Amazon Business Catalog Administration, so that this message is then displayed on all articles in the category.