Should You Give Your Prep Center Access to Your Amazon Seller Central Acct?

What does limited access mean on Amazon Seller Central?

It might seem a bit scary when a business partner such as a prep center asks for access to your Seller Central Account. While it is ultimately your choice to provide access or not, here are some reasons why it is beneficial to invite your prep center to be an authorized user with limited permissions on your account. 

1. With access to your account, your 3PL can create shipments and generate postage. This takes that off your plate, so you can focus on other aspects of your business. 
   1. Even if you or they are using an API, if they have limited access to your Amazon account, they are still able to help problem solve if there are issues with Amazon. 
2. They will have access to the TSV/CSV files from your account – these can be helpful as a “cheat sheet” sometimes. Rather than bother you for this information, they can download it on their own. This is even more helpful if you are in a different time zone than your prep center – there will be less delays when they have access to the information right away. 
3. Similarly, shipping labels have only 24 hours to be voided, or only 1 hour if the shipment is LTL – therefore, your account manager having quick access to void postage (on the rare occasion, if necessary) is important. This can stop things from leaving the facility incorrectly, and stop you from paying double shipping, or needing to call and email with Amazon, if this ever happens. 

Here is an example of a situation that can go awry for carton forwarding clients and how having access can fix this:

Let’s say we have 17 cartons of toothbrushes at our facility.

16 cartons have 45 toothbrushes each.

1 carton has 30 toothbrushes.

If our client accidentally creates a shipment for 17 cartons with 45 units each, Amazon will place a warning on their account. Our team is pretty good about catching this stuff. But once the 24 hours are up, nothing can be changed. We will have to ship short of the units Amazon is expecting. 

However, with access, your account manager might be able to void or update the shipment in time, so that you will not get a warning or get in trouble in any way. 

Colorful image of toothbrushes.

Here is an example of a situation that can go awry for wholesale or OA clients and how having access can fix this:

Let’s say we have 30 units of soap for you, and you submit a shipment to Amazon for 30 units. However, the listing is actually for bundles of 3. What you meant to do was submit a shipment for 10 units (10 bundles of 3 items each = 30 bottles of soap). 

Our team will notice that the units are supposed to be bundled. But the difference between 10 and 30 is too much – Amazon will not allow the quantity to be changed on the shipment. Your account manager can go in and void the shipment. Then they will create a new one for the correct amount of units. We will also communicate with you about all of the above – you won’t be left in the dark. 

Of course, adding anyone to your Seller Central Acct as an Authorized User is a personal decision and we as a prep center fully support our clients in making the best decisions for their businesses. 

If you prefer to be more involved in creating or editing your shipments or want to discuss more about this, please contact us today. We are happy to explain more, and work together however we can.