Amazon Business Features Your Small Business Can Use

What is Amazon Business?

Amazon Business is a free platform that makes purchasing on Amazon easier, more insightful and more convenient for registered businesses.

After registering with Amazon Business, you can take advantage of the following features — and more:

• Access specific business products: Access business- and industry-relevant products not available to regular Amazon account holders.
• Shipping perks: Fast, free shipping is available for eligible items; you can set delivery preferences to control purchases. You can even arrange for consolidated delivery of qualifying purchases on a pallet to your doorstep or dock.
• Special pricing and discounts: Access bulk discounts, special business pricing, recurring delivery discounts, customized bulk pricing and more.
• Easy reordering: Set up reorders to receive the items you regularly need so you always have enough.
• Maintain current relationships: Invite current suppliers to become part of Amazon Business and save preferred suppliers for easy purchasing access.
• Flexible account management: Use your Amazon Business account as a central purchase-management hub where you can control purchasing groups and permissions. You can manage all your Amazon Business account users, establish order-approval procedures and spending caps, and make a business credit card accessible to specific account users.
• Flexible payment options: Set up various payment methods with specific permissions. You can also use buy now, pay later options like Pay by Invoice — more on this below.
• Analytics: Amazon Business Analytics offers data analytics and insights that help you monitor account transactions and track expenses. It includes charts and other infographics that track and monitor your spending, helping with your business budget.
• Link to your Prime accounts: You can also link your existing Amazon Prime account to your Amazon Business services. Prime membership makes you eligible for exclusive Prime Day deals during the company’s annual sales extravaganza. Plus, if you use an Alexa-enabled device like an Amazon Echo, you’re eligible for even more deals.
• Tax-exempt benefits: If you have tax-exempt status, you can make tax-exempt purchases on eligible orders. Amazon guides users through the enrollment process. Once you review an order, you can modify specific items that should have the tax-exemption certificate applied.

How do I create an Amazon Business account?

Creating an Amazon Business account is free and straightforward. Here’s how it works:

1. Visit the Amazon Business website and select Create a Free Account.
2. Enter your business email address.
3. Select Get Started.
4. Enter your name, email address and create a password. Select Next Step.
5. Verify your email address via a one-time password sent to your email.
6. Select Create Your Amazon Account.
7. Enter your business details and select Create Business Account.
8. Proactively verify your business. This step is optional but makes business verification quicker — and you can’t take full advantage of all features until you’re verified. You can quicken the verification process by:
   • Entering a business credit card number.
   • Entering your business tax ID, employer ID number (EIN) or Social Security number — the latter only works if you’re a sole proprietor.
   • Entering an invitation code.
   • Entering your business website URL.
   • Uploading official documents.
9. If you don’t want to verify your business at this time, select Skip This Step.
10. Optionally, sign up for Amazon Business Prime; it’s a paid upgrade for Amazon business accounts that includes additional benefits and features. More on Amazon Business Prime below. Select Skip This Step if you don’t want to sign up for Amazon Business Prime at this point; you can sign up at any time after account creation if you change your mind.
11. Amazon will verify your business, after which you can begin shopping and setting up your account. As the account creator, you’re the administrator. So, you can:
    • Link your other Amazon accounts and switch between them easily.
    • Create groups.
    • Purchase items.
    • Create approval workflows.
    • Add purchase order numbers.
    • Add and manage business-account features such as payment methods and shipping addresses.

How does Amazon Business work?

Amazon Business works almost exactly like a standard Amazon account. If you’ve ever used Amazon to purchase something, you’re already familiar with its interface, basics and how it works. Here’s a brief overview:

1. Log in: To use Amazon Business, log in to your Amazon Business account. Once signed in, you can explore flash deals, wholesale options, quantity discounts, specific business categories and more.

The Amazon Business home page has an intuitive interface similar to the traditional Amazon home page. Source: Amazon

2. Manage your account: Hover the cursor over your account to access your account details and manage your business. Select Business Analytics to access your Analytics dashboard; select Business Settings to set up your team, add users and more. You can also set approval workflows, control user permissions and much more.

Select the drop-down menu to manage all aspects of your Amazon Business account. Source: Amazon

Is Amazon’s pricing different for businesses?

Amazon Business offers business-only pricing and discounts on millions of products. It also provides price breaks on multi-unit purchases and allows users to view multiple offers from various sellers on a single page.

Amazon Business also offers bulk discounts and tiered pricing discounts for higher-volume purchases on select items. To see items for sale at a discounted price from participating sellers, click Request a Quantity Discount.

How is payment handled with a business account?

Amazon Business offers various payment options: add a business credit card, ACH payment information or wire information to the primary account. Then, designate which payment method users can access.

Amazon also lets you open a corporate credit line, though eligibility requirements apply. If you go that route, you can authorize multiple buyers on a single account. You can also download order history reports and pay by purchase order.

Amazon Business integrates with numerous purchasing systems, including BirchStreet, Oracle iProcurement and Workday. You can also set up punchout via a self-configuration tool.

What kinds of businesses can use Amazon Business?

In theory, businesses of any size and in any industry can use Amazon Business. If you have an online store, Amazon Business can help automate the regular delivery of crucial office supplies. Larger businesses, such as those with over 100 employees, may find Amazon Business helpful for ensuring guaranteed delivery of vital packages.

Businesses that earn money by selling their products to other businesses can also use Amazon Business as a marketplace to reach their customers. If you run a venture selling business goods in bulk at discount prices and want to shift toward an e-commerce business model, register as a seller on Amazon and create a Business profile.

What is Amazon Business Prime?

Amazon Business Prime is a paid membership that enhances the benefits of an Amazon Business account. It’s separate from a typical consumer Amazon Prime account. Amazon offers a 30-day free trial for Amazon Business Prime to test the service and see if it’s right for you.

All Amazon Business Prime tiers include the benefits of Amazon Business in addition to valuable services, tools and perks.

The Amazon Business Prime tiers and their features are as follows:

Amazon Business Prime Duo

The Amazon Business Prime Duo tier is free and is for existing Prime single-user accounts. In this tier, you’ll get:

• Free one-day shipping on millions of available items.
• Free same-day delivery on eligible orders.
• Your own designated Amazon Day to receive your shipments.
• Consolidated shipping, which gets your items delivered in fewer packages.
• Customer survey and analytics tools.
• Five percent back and 90-day payment terms via the Amazon Business American Express Card for eligible customers.

Business Prime Essentials

The Business Prime Essentials tier allows up to three users. The cost is $179 per year. In this tier, you’ll get all Amazon Business and Amazon Business Prime Duo benefits along with the following:

• Guided Buying, which allows you to tag certain suppliers and products as preferred, place restrictions on specific product categories, and more.
• Spend Visibility reporting dashboards, which display visualizations of your business’s spending to analyze data and track spending trends.

Business Prime Small

The Business Prime Small tier allows up to 10 users. The cost is $499 per year. It includes everything in Essentials plus:

• Extended payment terms with Pay By Invoice, meaning your business can make purchases and pay later without interest or fees — subject to approval and eligibility requirements.
• Expert advice on optimizing your Business Prime features.
• Additional Spend Visibility insights.

Business Prime Medium

The Business Prime Medium tier allows up to 100 users. The cost is $1,299 per year. It includes all previous benefits along with 45-day extended terms and even more Spend Visibility insights.

Business Prime Enterprise

The Business Prime Enterprise tier allows over 100 users. The cost is $10,099 per year. It includes all previous benefits plus:

• 60-day extended terms, subject to approval and eligibility requirements.
• Expert assistance from Amazon Business Professional Services.
• Exclusive offers from Amazon partners.

Can businesses use a personal Amazon Prime account?

In theory, a business can join Amazon Prime to get free shipping and delivery benefits — note that sales tax is still charged. However, Amazon Prime is intended for personal consumer use; using it for business purposes may violate Amazon’s terms of service. Additionally, it lacks the business tools, compliance features, and steep discounts that Amazon Business and Amazon Business Prime provide.

Businesses that need business pricing, bulk discounts and deeper purchasing controls should consider Amazon Business Prime.

Amazon Business has helpful purchasing and management tools

Amazon Business is tailored to large and small businesses to streamline purchasing and help companies boost sales and revenues. The e-commerce giant has created a platform to help automate and manage procurement, providing insights into purchasing trends and spending habits. Amazon Business Prime takes these features further with additional shipping and analytics perks.

Consider the benefits of Amazon Business and Amazon Business Prime to determine if these platforms are right for your business.