How to Close an Amazon Business Account

Most people arriving at this page do not actually want to close the account. They want to stop paying for something. Those are different actions with very different consequences, so we will separate them before anything else.

You probably want one of these instead

Cancellation is covered on how to cancel Business Prime and the plan-switch route on renewal and refunds.

What closure actually does

Amazon is clear about the outcome, and it is worth reading carefully because two of the three points are irreversible:

• The business account is no longer active and converts to a personal account. You can continue making personal purchases with the same email address.
• Order history for purchases made by users on individual payment methods transfers to those users' personal Amazon accounts.
• All order history associated with shared payment methods is deleted.

That third point is the one to plan around. For an organization that ran everything on a shared company card — which is the tidy way to run an account — the entire purchase record disappears. Amazon anticipates this and recommends running a Business Analytics report first as a record of your orders.

Take that advice literally. Export before you touch anything else, and keep the CSV with your accounting records. See Spend Visibility and reporting for the export route.

The two blockers

Too many users

Amazon states you may only close a business account with 5 or fewer users. That gate catches most people who are closing a duplicate account rather than leaving Amazon Business altogether — the tidier options for that case are in how many Amazon Business accounts you can have. A larger account has to be shrunk first:

1. Business Settings.
2. Users, within User Management.
3. Actions beside the person, then Remove from group.
4. Repeat for each group they belong to — Amazon notes that a person in more than one group must be removed from each individually.

Amazon also notes a spreadsheet can be used to remove multiple users at once, which is the sane route above a dozen people. See how to add users to Amazon Business for the same interface from the other direction.

Outstanding credit balances

Amazon states that before closing you should ensure any open Business Credit Account balances are resolved and that there are no funds available for disbursement. Settle the invoices and confirm nothing is pending back to you — see invoices and receipts.

The full sequence

1. Confirm you actually want to close, not downgrade. If the problem is the membership fee, cancel Business Prime instead — that keeps the free account, its users, addresses, approval workflows, reporting and tax exemption enrollment. Closing the account throws all of that away.
2. Export your records first. Amazon recommends running a report using Amazon Business Analytics and saving it as a record of your orders. Do this before anything else, because order history tied to shared payment methods is deleted on closure.
3. Resolve Business Credit Account balances. Amazon states you should ensure any open Business Credit Account balances are resolved and that there are no funds available for disbursement before closing.
4. Reduce the account to five users or fewer. Amazon states you may only close a business account with five or fewer users. Go to Business Settings, then Users within User Management, then Actions beside the person and Remove from group.
5. Remove people from every group they belong to. Amazon notes that if a person is a member of more than one group, you must remove them from each group individually. A spreadsheet can be used to remove multiple users at once.
6. Open Business Settings as the administrator. Closure is an administrator action. If you cannot see Business Settings, you do not hold the role that can complete it.
7. Find the Business Profile section. Within Business Settings, locate the Business Profile section.
8. Select close business account. The account stops being active and converts to a personal account on the same email address.
9. If you also want the data deleted, make a separate request. Amazon states that deleting your personal account and data permanently after closing the business account is a separate process — requesting the closure of your account and the deletion of your personal information.

Delete, close, deactivate, cancel: five words, five outcomes

People search for all of these interchangeably and Amazon does not treat them as interchangeable at all. Working out which word describes your situation is most of the job, because two of the five are free and reversible and one of them destroys records.

• "Delete my Amazon Business account." There is no delete button. The action Amazon provides is closure, and closure converts the business account to a personal account rather than erasing it. Erasing the data is a second, separate request — covered below.
• "Deactivate my business account." Amazon publishes no deactivate-and-park state for a business account. The nearest real thing is doing nothing: the free account carries no fee, so an unused account costs nothing to leave standing, and leaving it standing keeps the order history that closure would delete.
• "Cancel my Amazon Business account." Almost always means the paid membership rather than the account. Canceling Business Prime leaves the free account, its users, its approval chains and its tax exemption completely intact — see how to cancel Business Prime.
• "Remove my account from the company." If you are an employee rather than the owner, you want your user removed from the business account, not the account closed. That is an administrator action on the Users page, and it does not touch anyone else's access.
• "Turn it back into a normal Amazon account." This one is closure, and it is worth being sure that is what you mean before you start — switching a business account back to personal separates it from simply switching between two accounts you already have.

Only the fifth actually requires this page. The first four are cheaper, faster and reversible, which is a good reason to be certain before you reach the confirmation screen.

Deleting the data as well

Closing the business account converts it to a personal account rather than erasing it. Amazon states that to delete your personal account and data permanently after closing the business account, you should follow its separate process for requesting the closure of your account and the deletion of your personal information.

Two different requests, in sequence. If data deletion is your actual goal — a wound-up entity, a data-protection obligation — plan for both.

A note for anyone who inherited the account

A common situation: the person who set the account up has left, nobody knows who the administrator is, and the renewal is charging a card that no longer exists.

Before reaching for closure, note that the Prime Business terms describe renewals charging the original payment method used to purchase the membership, which Amazon says may be an individual payment method. If payments are failing, Amazon states the membership will be canceled unless a new eligible method is provided — so the fee problem may resolve itself while the account, and its records, survive.

Sort the administrator and payment method first — changing the account administrator has to be done in the right order, because only an administrator can appoint one, and if nobody currently holds the role that becomes a support conversation rather than a settings change. Closing an account you have not exported is the one mistake on this page you cannot undo.