How to Change the Amazon Business Account Administrator

People search for "transfer Amazon Business account ownership" expecting a form. There isn't one, and once you see how the role model works it is obvious why: the account is not owned by a person, it is administered by a role, and the role can be held by several people at once.

So a handover is not a transfer. It is an overlap — two administrators for a period, then one.

The rule that makes order matter

Amazon states it twice, on two different help pages, which is unusual: only administrators can add or remove other administrators. Administrators can add additional administrators to business accounts and to groups, and can remove other administrators from both.

Read that as a failure mode rather than a permission. If the only administrator removes their own role, or leaves the company with the role still on their departed account, there is nobody inside the organization who can appoint a replacement. Everything else on the account keeps working — buyers keep buying, invoices keep arriving — while the settings quietly become unreachable.

The handover, step by step

1. Confirm you are signed in as an administrator. Only administrators can add or remove other administrators. If Business Settings is not visible to you, no amount of clicking will produce this option.
2. Make sure the new person is already on the account. You are promoting an existing member, not inviting one. If they are not on the account yet, invite them first and wait for them to accept.
3. Open Business Settings and select Users. This is the member list, with each person's status, roles and groups shown against them.
4. Find the person and select Edit role. Use the search field or the filters. Roles are edited from the individual user page as well as from the list.
5. Select the Administrator role and select Update roles. Amazon's own wording for this screen is to select and deselect the relevant roles, then select Update roles. A person may hold several at once.
6. Verify the new administrator can see Business Settings. Have them sign in and confirm before you go any further. This is the checkpoint that makes the next step safe.
7. Only now remove the outgoing administrator's role. Same screen, same two clicks, in reverse. Doing this before the previous step is how an organization ends up with an account nobody can administer.

Step six is the one people skip. It costs a two-minute phone call and it is the only thing standing between a routine role edit and a support ticket.

What you are actually handing over

Worth being concrete, because the incoming administrator should know what lands on them. Amazon's description of the role covers inviting other users and managing shared payment methods, shipping addresses and delivery preferences. In practice the surface is wider:

• Every member on the account — roles, groups, approval policies, and the ability to remove people entirely. Amazon also states administrators can see members' order history, addresses, payment methods and personal information.
• Shared payment methods. A meaningful delegation: Amazon states that when a payment method is shared with a group, any administrator in that group can modify or remove it. See shared payment methods and group payments.
• Tax exemption enrollment. An administrator action, and one with real money attached — enrolling in tax exemption.
• Purchasing controls — approvals, buying policies and budgets, if you use them.
• The membership itself. Canceling, upgrading or downgrading Business Prime sits here too.

Roles are not one thing

A handover is a good moment to correct a common misconfiguration: giving somebody the administrator role because they needed one report. Amazon publishes five roles, and a person can hold more than one:

• Administrator. Manages the business account: invites users, and manages shared payment methods, shipping addresses and delivery preferences.
• Buyer (Requisitioner). Places orders for the organization, after an administrator assigns the permissions.
• Punchout user. Places orders through a purchasing system rather than the Amazon Business storefront.
• Finance user. Accesses, customizes and schedules Amazon Business reports.
• Tech user. Manages domain names, authentication methods, API keys and IT system integrations including single sign-on.

Finance and tech exist precisely so that accountants and IT staff do not need administrator rights. Multi-user accounts and approvals covers how the roles interact with groups and sign-off.

Group administrators

On a larger account you may not want a single all-seeing administrator at all. Roles and permissions can be assigned group by group, and one administrator can manage several groups — so a facilities manager can administer the facilities group without touching finance's settings. Amazon's route for this is to select the user, select Add to a group, and choose the roles that apply inside that group.

When the last administrator has already gone

This is the situation most people are actually in when they search for this, and the honest answer is that it is no longer a settings problem. Nobody remaining on the account can grant the role, by design. It goes to Amazon Business customer service, which is available around the clock and will require proof of identity for the account before it does anything.

Have ready: the email address the business account is registered under, the business name and address as registered, your own role and email on the account, and the departed administrator's details. Expect it to take longer than you want it to, and treat the outcome as an argument for keeping two administrators permanently.

If the handover is really a wind-down

Sometimes "change the administrator" means "this account should not exist any more". If so, note the constraint before you start moving roles around: Amazon states you may only close a business account with 5 or fewer users, so the work is removing people, not promoting them. Closing an Amazon Business account has the full sequence, including what happens to order history.