How to Add Users to an Amazon Business Account

The invitation itself is the easy part and the part every guide covers. What follows is the order to do things in, because adding people before deciding permissions is how accounts end up with fourteen administrators and orders shipping to home addresses.

The steps

1. Decide the group structure first. Groups scope shared addresses, shared payment methods and invoice templates. Create a group per site, department or cost center before you invite anyone, so people land in the right one rather than being moved later.
2. Open Business Settings. Adding users is an administrator action, performed from Business Settings in the Your Account menu.
3. Create your buying groups. Amazon states you can create and manage buying groups in the Groups page within Business Settings.
4. Choose an invitation route. Amazon supports three: adding buyers by email, up to 20 users at once; sharing an invite link; or uploading a spreadsheet. Email suits a small team, the spreadsheet suits an onboarding batch.
5. Assign roles and permissions. Amazon states user roles and permissions are assigned in Business Settings, and that permissions can be based on roles or groups. Give the finance role to whoever needs invoices and reporting.
6. Set the address policy for each group. Groups on shared addresses cannot add a shipping address at checkout, which is how you stop business orders going to home addresses. Groups on individual addresses keep Amazon Hub pickup.
7. Add an approval workflow if you need one. Approval workflows are free on the account and route orders above your threshold to a reviewer before they are placed.
8. Tell new users the account is business-only. Amazon's Acceptable Use Policy requires exclusively business use, and gives account administrators access to each user's order history, addresses and payment information. Say so up front rather than after the first personal order.

Which invitation route to use

At real scale there is a fourth route that removes the invitation problem entirely: single sign-on with SCIM provisioning, where user accounts follow your identity provider. Amazon states SCIM is available for Okta and Microsoft Azure. See how to set up single sign-on.

Roles: the decision that matters most

Amazon states that user roles and permissions are assigned in Business Settings, and that permissions can be based on roles or groups. Two consequences worth planning around:

• Finance access is gated. Amazon states contacts without finance or administrator permissions cannot access invoices, credit memos, reporting or payment functions. Your bookkeeper needs the finance role or they cannot do their job — invoices and receipts.
• Administrators can see everything. The Acceptable Use Policy states the people controlling the Business Account have access to personal information in each User Account, including order history, addresses and payment information, and can close or disable accounts. Administrator is not a courtesy title.

Warn people before they convert an existing login

When you invite someone who already shops on Amazon, the path of least resistance is for them to use that account. Tell them what that means first.

Amazon's Acceptable Use Policy states that if a user had a personal consumer account that they converted to a User Account, the people who control the Business Account will also have access to all personal information on that account before it was converted.

Not future orders. All of it. Tell new users to register on their work email instead. See converting a personal Amazon account and personal use rules.

Users cost money once you have a membership

On a free account, users are free. On a paid membership they are not, and the mechanism is automatic. The Prime Business terms state that if the number of business users increases to a higher plan, your membership fee is increased to that plan's fee.

With ceilings at 1 (Duo), 5, 20 and 200, the sixth user is the expensive one. If you are on Duo, note that adding any second user makes the account ineligible for Duo at renewal — Business Prime Duo explained. Tier steps are on Business Prime plans compared.

Removing people

Just as important, and more often neglected. Amazon's route:

1. Business Settings.
2. Users, within the User Management section.
3. Actions beside the person, then Remove from group.
4. If they belong to more than one group, remove them from each group individually.

Amazon notes a spreadsheet can be used to remove multiple users at once. Two reasons to keep on top of this: leavers with live access, and the fact that a business account can only be closed with 5 or fewer users if you ever need to — how to close an Amazon Business account.

For the wider control picture, see multi-user accounts and approvals and Guided Buying and purchasing policies.