What Amazon Business is and how it works

Amazon Business is Amazon.com's new store for business shopping. Millions of small, medium and large enterprises around the world, freelancers and startups, buy on this company.

Amazon Business helps large and small companies, startups and freelancers, to save time and money in business purchases, with innovative solutions.

With this new Amazon.com store for business purchases, through a free account, you can keep personal and business purchases separate, moving from one account to another.

There is a wide selection, with the ability to access millions of products (over 250 million) sold by suppliers around the world in categories relevant to our business.

Therefore, if we have a company and we need to buy the material that the company or its employees need, Amazon Business can be the ideal choice, even for companies that need to buy wholesale from other companies.

What is Amazon Business and how it works

Amazon Business, as we have seen, is dedicated to the purchases of businesses and, in particular, to the expenses between companies themselves. In essence, it is the so-called B2B trade (Business to Business), the inter-company trade, for electronic commercial transactions between companies.

It allows you to order bulk quantities, track payments and monitor costs, with the same ease and experience of use that made Amazon famous.

Ultimately, Amazon Business works in a very intuitive way: and it can be used both by a small or medium-sized company, as well as by a large or a startup, even for sectors such as education or health.

The catalog consists of over 250 million products, which can be purchased in large quantities and at wholesale prices, therefore very advantageous:

1. Discounts and flexible payment methods, by company credit card or direct debit,
2. Invoices can be downloaded automatically,
3. You can use useful tools to keep business expenses under control and make ends meet. .

Among the paid services of the marketplace dedicated to companies, there is also Amazon Business Prime:

• the cost varies according to the number of users who wish to use it,
• includes shipping and delivery of the goods within one working day,
• delivery of special items at no additional cost,
• early access to some visible offers and expenses.

So let's see how to access and what are the Amazon Business service rules.

Amazon Business costs and service rules

The basic subscription to Amazon Business for entrepreneurs and companies is free and there is the possibility to create a multi-user account, in which to add employees, who have a normal profile on Amazon, so as to practice proxies for the purchase of the business material.

For the Amazon Business Prime service, we will have to join a paid plan, chosen from those available:

• the Duo plan, manageable by a user, which includes fast deliveries for companies and at no additional cost, the possibility of receiving scheduled deliveries and progressive discounts, at a cost of € 25 per year excluding VAT,
• the Basic plan which, in addition to the advantages of the Duo plan, can also be managed by 3 users and offers the possibility of analyzing the company's spending patterns on the platform, using 3 Readers (employees), as well as preparing the guidelines on Recommended and Not Recommended Products to Buy Amazon Guided Buying. This service shows employees which products or sellers to choose first, avoiding the ones they should never buy. At the price of € 36 per year excluding VAT,
• the Small plan, usable up to 10 users, which allows the company to add the role of Author for the analysis of spending models. This person will be able to have under control through a specific dashboard (control panel), in real time, a lot of information of different nature and complexity, obtained from expenses and income, useful for the whole team to make ends meet. At a cost of € 100 per year excluding VAT,
• the Medium plan includes the advantages of all the other plans and has the possibility of being managed by 100 users and adding up to 100 readers to analyze the expenses, at a price of € 250 per year excluding VAT,
• the Unlimited plan, manageable by an unlimited number of users, with all the benefits of the Medium plan. It allows you to have up to 2 active readers for the study of expenses and the right to block purchases not recommended by the business plan, at a cost of € 2000 per year excluding VAT.

For whichever plan you choose, you can take advantage of a free trial period before upgrading to the paid Amazon Business Prime version.

So far we have examined the case of companies that have to buy materials for their work, but Amazon Business also caters to B2B companies that sell products directly to companies. To take advantage of this service, however, you must first have created a store on Amazon.

After configuring our account on the platform, we will have the possibility to analyze purchases, with the Visibility function on expenses, to manage the purchase budget.

If the business profile is administered by several people within the company, it will be possible to direct them to certain products to buy, rather than others, with the Amazon Guided Buying service.

As for the payment methods, you can use:

• SEPA direct debit on current account,
• all credit and debit cards such as:

1. Visa,
2. MasterCard
3. American Express.

There are methods and integrations for managing purchases, with discounts on orders for large quantities of items.
Amazon Business helps the company with regards to invoicing, accepting, as required, also electronic invoicing: all products within Amazon Business have prices excluding VAT.

Amazon Business Membership

After this extensive description, let's now see how to register for the service.
A "normal" Amazon profile can be transformed into an Amazon Business account, and an Amazon store type account can be used to sell to other companies within the marketplace.

That said:

• use your PC to connect to the official Amazon Business Spain website,
• click on the Create a free account button at the top right,
• on the next page, press the Create a new account button or,
• click on Convert your account, according to our specific case,
• on the next screen, enter our company email address in the appropriate field, or,
• use the credentials of our Amazon account to log in and proceed with the conversion.

Better not to provide a generic e-mail address, because that of our company will also be used by the system to verify and authenticate the new account, a process that could take up to 3 days to complete.

To the next step:

• enter the other data requested, such as the company name and VAT number,
• press the Send key.

To use the functions of the Amazon Business service from smartphones and tablets, simply download the Amazon Shopping app available for devices:

• Android, from the Google Play Store or an alternative store without Google services,
• iOS/iPadOS from the App Store,
• start the App and log in with your credentials

Touching the menu icon will open a tab, from this:

• tap on the item My account,
• in the next menu, choose the words Subscribe Amazon Business,
• follow the instructions already seen at the beginning of this chapter.

Benefits of Amazon Business

Let's see in summary the advantages of Amazon Business illustrated so far:

• by joining Amazon Business to make business purchases, you will have access to a vast range of products:

1. office items,
2. IT products,
3. professional beauty products,
4. for the management of spaces in common areas,
5. for the cleaning,
6. safety at work,
7. many other specialized and professional supplies.

Access to Amazon Business is also allowed to institutional structures, such as schools, universities, health facilities, such as:

1. hospitals,
2. clinics,
3. dental centers,
4. doctors in general,
5. nursing and retirement homes.

• the service membership plans have affordable costs for companies and allow them to take advantage of specific services:

1. fast delivery of Amazon Business Prime,
2. facilitated billing,
3. the possibility of having orders managed by several people within the company.

Other supplementary opportunities to the service:

• tools to obtain purchase data and stipulate a list of products that are really needed by the company,
• always keep an eye on your spending budget.

Not all product categories are, however, subject to discounts and, as regards logistics, we will have to rely on Amazon for packaging, shipping, returns and customer assistance.