AMAZON FOR CHARITY
Amazon For Charity: Selling on Amazon
This documentation has been created to help guide charities and/or non-profit organisations (NPOs) through the steps required to sell on Amazon, through the Amazon for Charity programme.
Registration and Verification
Firstly, you need to register for a Seller Central Account. You may be asked to provide some information and documents for verification purposes. Then, you will have some operational preparation to complete, after which you can make your listings live and start selling!
Registration
You will have been provided with a link through your Amazon contact for Amazon for Charity. Proceed through the steps, ensuring you register your account as a ‘Registered Charity’. In the ‘Company Registration Number’ field, you should input your Charity Registration Number or your Fiscal Code (depending on your UK/European region).
Verification
In accordance with EU & UK regulations, Amazon requires sellers to provide information about themselves and their business so that they can begin or continue to sell on Amazon and receive the proceeds of their transactions on Amazon EU & UK Marketplaces. This applies equally to charities and NPOs. For more information on this step, why we need your information and how we use it, please see this link - Information Required to Sell on Amazon. To provide the required information, please sign in to Seller Central using the email address and password you set up your account with during the registration process.
What information do I need to have prepared?
- Governing Documents
- Current Appointments Report
- Charity Commission Report
- Confirmed list of all trustees (i.e. the persons having the general control and management of the administration of a charity as set out in section 177 of the Charities Act 2011) – this must display their full name and date of birth. The document must be dated within the last 180 days and signed.
- Utility Bill, Bank Statement or Credit Card Statement in the name of the business and (with registered address) dated within the last 180 days. Documents from financial service providers or online digital banks are not acceptable.
- Letter of Authorisation (“LOA”) for the Primary Contact Person (i.e the individual added to Seller Central during set up), signed by an authorized representative who can act on behalf of the charity.
- Payment Card Information
Things to Note:
Beneficial Owners/Trustees
Before you begin the verification process, compile a list of all trustees with their full name and date of birth. This can take time and we recommend starting this immediately, so as not to delay your verification process.
During verification, you will see requests for information on up to 4 ‘Beneficial Owners’. For charities/NPOs, this refers to your trustees. Please register these trustees (beneficial owners) in Seller Central for your organization. These individuals will be required to provide an in date, government-issued form of identification (such as a passport), and a document that verifies their residential address (such as a utility bill).
Point of Contact
You will be required to appoint a Point of Contact for your account upon registration. This individual will be required to provide an in date, government-issued form of identification (such as a passport) and a document that verifies their residential address (such as a utility bill) for verification purposes. Should you wish to amend the Point of Contact details on your account post-verification, or replace this individual entirely with another individual, this is possible as we accept that the Point of Contact may change over time.
Addendum to Business Solutions Agreement (BSA)
To complete your on-boarding process, you will be asked to sign an Addendum to our Amazon Services Europe Business Solutions Agreement. This is a document that confirms your participation in Amazon for Charity. You should read this carefully. Once confirmed, you are ready to get started!
Before you begin the verification process, compile a list of all trustees with their full name and date of birth. This can take time and we recommend starting this immediately, so as not to delay your verification process.
During verification, you will see requests for information on up to 4 ‘Beneficial Owners’. For charities/NPOs, this refers to your trustees. Please register these trustees (beneficial owners) in Seller Central for your organization. These individuals will be required to provide an in date, government-issued form of identification (such as a passport), and a document that verifies their residential address (such as a utility bill).
Point of Contact
You will be required to appoint a Point of Contact for your account upon registration. This individual will be required to provide an in date, government-issued form of identification (such as a passport) and a document that verifies their residential address (such as a utility bill) for verification purposes. Should you wish to amend the Point of Contact details on your account post-verification, or replace this individual entirely with another individual, this is possible as we accept that the Point of Contact may change over time.
Addendum to Business Solutions Agreement (BSA)
To complete your on-boarding process, you will be asked to sign an Addendum to our Amazon Services Europe Business Solutions Agreement. This is a document that confirms your participation in Amazon for Charity. You should read this carefully. Once confirmed, you are ready to get started!
Account Setup
Before you start listing your products, we strongly advise consulting the below help pages to learn more about Amazon policies, agreements and guidelines.
VAT Registration
These fees are charged per item sold, and they include referral fees (which are a percentage of the selling price and vary depending on the product’s category), and variable closing fees (which apply only to media categories).
Shipping & Returns Settings
One of the first decisions you’ll need to make when selling on Amazon is how to get shoppers their orders. Explore the Shipping Method that is right for you:
Get started with Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)
Seller Fulfilled Prime
Manage Returns
Get started with Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)
Seller Fulfilled Prime
Manage Returns
Deposit & Charge Methods
Learn about how the payment process works for your sales on Amazon and the reports you have access to in regards to your payments.
Register your Brand(s) in Brand Registry
Enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry is the first step to become eligible for many brand building programs. Amazon offers an exclusive set of tools to brand owners to help you improve conversion, drive discoverability, and protect intellectual property. Register your trademark, promote your brand and create a safe and trusted experience for customers on Amazon.
Additional Resources
If you have little (or no) experience running an online business and want to build your knowledge on e-commerce, you can access free, online educational content through Amazon Small Business Accelerator | Enterprise Nation. You do not need to access or utilise this content in order to start Selling on Amazon, these are additional resources to be used entirely at your discretion.
Did you know:
Tools for brand owners
If you own a brand, Amazon offers tools to help you build, grow, and protect it. Enrolling in Brand Registry can help you personalize your brand and product pages, protect your trademarks and intellectual property, and improve the brand experience for customers - along with unlocking additional advertising options and recommendations on improving traffic and conversion.
Get to know Seller Central
Now that you have covered the basics, you are ready to list your products and start selling!
Seller Central & Seller University
Seller Central is the web interface you will use to set up and run your Amazon account. Within Seller Central, there is a Seller University that contains educational modules to support each stage of your Selling on Amazon journey.
To kickstart your journey, we have highlighted 7 key modules to help you get started with listing, shipping, payment, account health and much more. We recommend following them in order, and ensuring you spend some time getting familiar with the basics:
To kickstart your journey, we have highlighted 7 key modules to help you get started with listing, shipping, payment, account health and much more. We recommend following them in order, and ensuring you spend some time getting familiar with the basics:
1. Protect Your Account
You may receive emails from Amazon, such as Sold, Ship Now emails or Technical Notification emails. However, sometimes you might receive emails that are not really from Amazon, even if at first glance they may appear to be. Learn about Identifying False (Spoofed) Emails in order to keep your sensitive account information safe.
2. Listing your Product Selection
There are two aspects to listing your products; operational and optimization.
Operationally, you will need to list your catalogue within Amazon in order to create detail pages for customers to discover your products online. Additionally, there are optimisation steps you can take to ensure that the information you are presenting to customers is of high quality to boost views and sales.
Operationally, you will need to list your catalogue within Amazon in order to create detail pages for customers to discover your products online. Additionally, there are optimisation steps you can take to ensure that the information you are presenting to customers is of high quality to boost views and sales.
Add or Create Product Listings:
- Match to an existing product listing: If the product you want to sell already exists on Amazon, you must match it to the existing product detail page.
- Create a new product listing: If the product that you want to sell does not exist on Amazon, you can list a new product and Amazon will create a new product detail page. The below table shows the operational steps you need to take to list a new product. If you own the trademark of a particular brand and have registered as above in Brand Registry, follow the right-hand side. If you do not own the trademark, follow the left-hand side. You can find additional information with links here.
Optimize your Product Detail Page:
- To ensure information is optimally presented to the customer and increase your chances of sales, you should also pay attention to the quality of your detail pages. Click here to read more about Product Detail Pages, the various attributes and how to optimise your pages for conversion, traffic and customer experience.
3. Connect to Customers with Brand Registry
Use Amazon’s Brand Stores to create a personal, highly customizable shop window for your charity.
Add A+ Content to your product detail pages to help customers make purchase decisions by proactively answering their questions, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and increased sales when used effectively.
Add A+ Content to your product detail pages to help customers make purchase decisions by proactively answering their questions, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and increased sales when used effectively.
4. Ship FBA Products to Amazon
For Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) shipments, ensure you inbound at least 2 weeks before you want products to go live. You can create your FBS shipments with either Send to Amazon, or through Amazon Marketplace Web Service API or Selling Partner API. To use the Send to Amazon workflow, go to your Shipping Queue and click on Send to Amazon near the top of the page to display the list of your FBA SKUs. Next, follow the steps in the workflow to Create your Shipment. You can also visit the site navigation training here.
5. Manage your Account Health
Account Health refers to the overview of your selling account's adherence to the performance targets and policies required to sell on Amazon. We track various metrics on seller performance to ensure that sellers (including charities) are meeting our high bar for customer experience. It is important that you aware of Amazon policies, the relevant metrics and adhere to them, in order to continue selling through your account:
- Order defect rate (a measure of a selling partner’s customer service standards): < 1%
- Pre-fulfilment cancel rate (initiated by the selling partner before shipment): < 2.5%
- Late shipment rate (orders that ship after the expected date): < 4%
You can find an overview of your performance within Seller Central under 'Performance' > 'Account Health'.
6. Get Support through Seller Central
To get support with any day-to-day operational issues with running your Amazon Seller Central Account, you should contact Seller Support. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to do this.
Step 1
Select your marketplace
Before raising a case make sure that you raise it in the Marketplace that your case applies to, e.g. If you are a UK Selling Partner and experiencing an issue in the Spanish Marketplace, ensure that you change your marketplace in seller central to www.amazon.es before raising the case.
Step 2
Navigate to 'Help'
When you have the right marketplace click the Help section on the right hand of the screen to begin raising the case.
Step 3
Select 'Get Support'
Step 4
Choose your service
Select 'Selling on Amazon'.
Step 5
i. Choose your issue category
Now you have selected ‘Selling on Amazon’ we recommend scrolling straight down to ‘browse for your issue in the menu’ as illustrated below. This ensures your issue is correctly classified and the right level of information is provided but this choice is of course down to you. You will get the opportunity to describe your issue in more detail later in the process.
Issue categories include:
Make sure you are clear on your issue type before raising a case, for example:
ii. Describe your issue or follow the recommended pathway
If prompted to describe your issue refer to the below checklist to ensure your case includes all the necessary information for associates to begin working on your cases after submission.
The basics:
1. Provide a clear description of the problem. Where does it happen and what happens?
2. Provide context – what has been done so far?
3. Provide clear instructions on what you want the outcome of the case to be. Do not just list the problem.
For example, if your product title is wrong and you need it changing,
- Do not say ‘The Product Title for ASIN X is incorrect and needs changing’
- Do say ‘The Product Title for ASIN X is incorrect and needs changing to ‘XXX’.
- If you have a screen shot of the problem, for instance the error message you received from Amazon, attach this to provide your associate with context.
If you do not have the option to add this within the initial case submission, then you can attach this after raising your case.
Add some additional detail:
- Impacted ASINs
- Order numbers
- Uploaded IDs
- Product Title (including any variations in colour, size, measurements, model/part number, etc.)
In addition, make sure to include the information relevant to your case category:
E.g. If your case was related to an FBA issue relevant information to provide could include:
- FNSKU
- Shipment ID
- Barcode
- Tracking ID
- Shipping Service
Or if your case was related to ‘products listings’ or for instance changing information on the product page of an ASIN, then relevant information to provide could include:
- Brand
- Manufacturer
- Category
- Description
- SKU
- UPC/EAN/JAN OR screenshot of the GTIN Exemption landing page with the number of the error code e.g. 5461
(If using inventory files)
- The Batch ID of your inventory file process report
- Images of the product (front and back images of the product including barcode, UPC and brand name, packaged and unpackaged, and unfolded if the item is apparel)
- Clear images of the product displaying barcode, size and brand
- Letter of authorization from the Brand Owner.
- Manufacturer proof (Manufacturer website)
- The desired change – e.g. The attribute and the new value
Finally, do not include personal or sensitive data in your description.
E.g. Do not include:
- Bank details
- Credit Card information
- Personal IDs.
When all this information has been received a detailed review will be taken to process your request.
The review may take between 24 to 48 hours and you will be contacted once the review is complete.
The basics:
1. Provide a clear description of the problem. Where does it happen and what happens?
2. Provide context – what has been done so far?
3. Provide clear instructions on what you want the outcome of the case to be. Do not just list the problem.
For example, if your product title is wrong and you need it changing,
- Do not say ‘The Product Title for ASIN X is incorrect and needs changing’
- Do say ‘The Product Title for ASIN X is incorrect and needs changing to ‘XXX’.
- If you have a screen shot of the problem, for instance the error message you received from Amazon, attach this to provide your associate with context.
If you do not have the option to add this within the initial case submission, then you can attach this after raising your case.
Add some additional detail:
- Impacted ASINs
- Order numbers
- Uploaded IDs
- Product Title (including any variations in colour, size, measurements, model/part number, etc.)
In addition, make sure to include the information relevant to your case category:
E.g. If your case was related to an FBA issue relevant information to provide could include:
- FNSKU
- Shipment ID
- Barcode
- Tracking ID
- Shipping Service
Or if your case was related to ‘products listings’ or for instance changing information on the product page of an ASIN, then relevant information to provide could include:
- Brand
- Manufacturer
- Category
- Description
- SKU
- UPC/EAN/JAN OR screenshot of the GTIN Exemption landing page with the number of the error code e.g. 5461
(If using inventory files)
- The Batch ID of your inventory file process report
- Images of the product (front and back images of the product including barcode, UPC and brand name, packaged and unpackaged, and unfolded if the item is apparel)
- Clear images of the product displaying barcode, size and brand
- Letter of authorization from the Brand Owner.
- Manufacturer proof (Manufacturer website)
- The desired change – e.g. The attribute and the new value
Finally, do not include personal or sensitive data in your description.
E.g. Do not include:
- Bank details
- Credit Card information
- Personal IDs.
When all this information has been received a detailed review will be taken to process your request.
The review may take between 24 to 48 hours and you will be contacted once the review is complete.
Step 6
Once your case has been closed
Always remember to action any recommendations given by the associate.
Once you have received the recommendations you will be given two options:
1. I need more help with this issue
2. I have a different issue
If you are unclear on the action that you need to take to resolve your issue, or the case response is unclear, then you can reopen the case and ask your associate for clarity. We recommend only doing this once.
Once you have received the recommendations you will be given two options:
1. I need more help with this issue
2. I have a different issue
If you are unclear on the action that you need to take to resolve your issue, or the case response is unclear, then you can reopen the case and ask your associate for clarity. We recommend only doing this once.
Amazon jargon:
Seller University
Seller University is an online resource from Amazon, with videos featuring step-by-step guides, tutorials, and training to help entrepreneurs start (and grow) their Amazon business.
Build and Protect your Brand
If you have a registered trademark and have registered your Intellectual Property within Brand Registry, you will also have access to a suite of tools such as enhanced brand content (A+ Content), Sponsored Brands, Brand Analytics and dedicated Amazon Store that allow you to build your brand through Amazon. Click here to learn about programs available to help you connect with customers.
Grow Your Audience
- Sponsored Products
Help customers find your products by quickly creating ads that appear in related shopping results and product pages. Sponsored Products generates ads from your product listings and offers automatic targeting so you can start advertising with no experience necessary. - Sponsored Brand
Build brand awareness, connect shoppers to your products, and control your costs with Sponsored Brands advertising. Ads feature your brand’s logo, a custom headline, and up to three products to help generate recognition for your brand and product portfolio. They appear in multiple locations when shopping using a desktop and mobile app including above search results.
Inform your Brand Strategy
- Brand Analytics
Amazon Brand Analytics (ABA) is a tool existing within Seller Central that contains valuable insights to empower Brand Owners to make informed, strategic decisions about their product portfolio and marketing/advertising activities. Brand Analytics provides competitive and aggregated information about top Amazon search terms and products, including click and conversion share data. You can find Brand Analytics under the Reports tab in Seller Central.
Protect Your Brand
- Report a Violation
If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been infringed, sign in to Amazon Brand Registry and notify us through the Report a Violation tool. To submit a complete and accurate report and avoid common mistakes, go to Reporting Intellectual Property (IP) violations. - Report Infringement
Amazon’s Report Infringement form is intended for use by rights owners and their agents to notify Amazon of alleged infringements such as copyright and trademark concerns. If you are not a rights owner or their agent, Amazon will not be able to process complaints submitted through this form. Please report your concerns to Amazon through the appropriate venue:
Sellers may use this form to report inappropriate listings, other sellers, policy violations, etc.
Buyers may use this form to report problems with orders, seller policy violations, etc.
Start selling today
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£25 (excl. VAT) per month + selling fees
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