Glossary
79 terms
Amazon Vendor Central Glossary
The reports, metrics, acronyms, chargebacks, claims, and programs a vendor meets in Vendor Central, defined in plain language, with where each one lives in the console. Includes the metrics InsightLeap reports.
InsightLeap metrics
The metrics InsightLeap reports, each with where it comes from: Vendor Central, Seller Central, Amazon Ads, or the daily Amazon.com crawl. Formerly the Metric Descriptions support page.
ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales)
Ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales: what you spend to earn a dollar of ad sales.
Ad Sales
Sales Amazon attributes to an ad click: within 14 days, or 7 days for Sponsored Products on Seller Central accounts.
Ad Spend
Spend on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns in the period.
Amazon Ordered Units and Revenue (Vendor Central)
Units customers ordered in the period, before shipment, and Amazon's retail revenue from those orders. Manufacturing view only.
Amazon Shipped COGS
What Amazon paid you for the units it shipped to customers in the period, adjusted for returns.
Amazon Shipped Units
Units Amazon shipped to its customers in the period.
Amazon Unit Cost
What Amazon pays you per unit of a product: shipped COGS divided by shipped units.
Average Customer Review
The star rating across your monitored products on Amazon.com, weighted by each product's review count.
Buy Box Share
The share of daily crawl checks where your account, Amazon, or a third-party seller held the buy box on your monitored products.
Contra COGS Rate
Contra COGS divided by shipped COGS: the share of what Amazon paid you that went back to Amazon as vendor funding.
Conversion Rate (Vendor Central)
Shipped units divided by glance views for the period, computed by InsightLeap.
Customer Returns and Return Rate
Units customers returned to Amazon in the period, and those returns as a share of shipped units.
Effective COGS
Shipped COGS less contra COGS: what Amazon pays you after vendor funding is deducted.
Estimated at Risk (Insights)
The monthly sales an Insights finding puts at risk, in dollars.
In-Stock Rate
The share of daily crawl checks of your monitored products that found a buyable offer.
Listing Quality Score
A 0 to 100 score for each monitored listing: the content rules it passes divided by the rules that apply.
Net PPM Bridge
A ledger on vendor reports from shipped revenue to the net margin Amazon earns on your products.
Net Proceeds (Seller Central)
What is left of a Seller Central account's sales after Amazon subtracts fees, advertising charges, and the cost of goods sold.
Net Received
The cost of the inventory Amazon received from you in the period, less the cost of the inventory Amazon returned to you.
On Hand Revenue
InsightLeap's estimate of what a product's sellable inventory at Amazon would sell for.
Open PO Quantity
Units on purchase orders Amazon confirmed but has not yet received, as of the end of the period.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Ad-attributed sales divided by ad spend, shown as a multiple of spend.
Sales Discount
The value of the vendor-funded price discounts Amazon applied in the period.
Shipped Revenue
Amazon's retail revenue from the units it shipped to customers in the period, at the prices Amazon sold them for, adjusted for returns.
TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales)
Ad spend divided by total sales: ad spend measured against the whole business.
Third-Party Sellers
The number of distinct other sellers the daily crawl saw offering your monitored ASINs in the period.
Top Out-of-Stock Products
The products with no sellable units at Amazon at the end of the period that still shipped units in it, ranked by shipped units.
Total Fees (Seller Central)
Every Amazon fee charged to a Seller Central account for the period, shown as a positive cost.
Ultra Fast Track In-Stock Rate (UFT)
The share of time an ASIN was available to ship from an Amazon fulfillment center, against the selection Amazon intended to carry.
Unit Cost
The cost per unit you upload for a product, used for Your Gross Profit and Your Gross Margin.
Weeks of Coverage
How many weeks a product's sellable inventory at Amazon would last at this week's rate.
Your Gross Margin
Your Gross Profit divided by your net revenue from Amazon, over the products with a unit cost.
Your Gross Profit
What you keep from Amazon sales after your own unit cost, over the products you have entered a unit cost for.
A
A+ Content (and Premium A+)
A+ Content is the image-rich module content that brand owners enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry add to an ASIN's detail page through the A+ Content Manager in Vendor Central, offered as Basic A+ and an expanded Premium A+ tier.
ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales)
Ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales: what you spend to earn a dollar of ad sales.
Ad Sales
Sales Amazon attributes to an ad click: within 14 days, or 7 days for Sponsored Products on Seller Central accounts.
Ad Spend
Spend on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns in the period.
Amazon Fast Track buy box
Fast Track Buy Box rate is an Amazon Vendor Central metric that measures vendor performance and product availability, taking into account the in-stock percentage, pricing, and selection of your available items, and it tracks how often those items carry a Fast Track offer.
Amazon Ordered Units and Revenue (Vendor Central)
Units customers ordered in the period, before shipment, and Amazon's retail revenue from those orders. Manufacturing view only.
Amazon Shipped COGS
What Amazon paid you for the units it shipped to customers in the period, adjusted for returns.
Amazon Shipped Units
Units Amazon shipped to its customers in the period.
Amazon Unit Cost
What Amazon pays you per unit of a product: shipped COGS divided by shipped units.
Andon Cord (Amazon)
On Amazon, an Andon Cord is a hold that suspends a single ASIN from sale after customer complaints point to a physical or functional defect, or to a mismatch between the item and its product page, until the vendor responds and the complaints are resolved.
ASN (Advance Shipment Notice)
An ASN (Advance Shipment Notice) is the electronic notice a vendor sends Amazon before a shipment reaches the fulfillment center, declaring what is on the truck, in which cartons, and against which PO.
Average Customer Review
The star rating across your monitored products on Amazon.com, weighted by each product's review count.
AVS (Amazon Vendor Services)
AVS (Amazon Vendor Services) is Amazon's paid, invitation-only account-management program for 1P vendors, distinct from Alexa Voice Service, the unrelated Amazon developer platform that shares the same abbreviation.
B
Born to Run (Amazon)
Born to Run is an invite-only Amazon Vendor Central program that lets a first-party vendor set the size of the opening purchase order for a new ASIN by submitting a Launch Buy Quantity, in exchange for sharing the cost of any units that do not sell within the program's 10-week window.
Brand Analytics (Vendor Central)
Brand Analytics is Amazon's shopper-behavior reporting for brand owners enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry (what customers searched for, what else they bought, whether they came back), available to Brand-Registered vendors inside Vendor Central as well as in Seller Central.
Buy Box Share
The share of daily crawl checks where your account, Amazon, or a third-party seller held the buy box on your monitored products.
C
Carrier Central
Carrier Central is Amazon's appointment portal at carriercentral.amazon.com, where a vendor or its carrier books, tracks, and reschedules delivery appointments for inbound freight arriving at an Amazon fulfillment center.
Case Log
The Case Log is the Vendor Central tool where a vendor manages and tracks every support case they have submitted to Amazon or been copied on, with each case listed by its case ID, status, and status notes.
Chargebacks
A chargeback on Amazon Vendor Central is a fee Amazon deducts from your remittance when an order or shipment misses one of its compliance requirements.
Contra-COGS (Contra Cost of Goods Sold)
Contra-COGS is Amazon's accounting term for the vendor-funded allowances that get netted against Shipped COGS, lowering the cost of goods sold Amazon books on the products it buys from you.
Contra COGS Rate
Contra COGS divided by shipped COGS: the share of what Amazon paid you that went back to Amazon as vendor funding.
Conversion Rate (Vendor Central)
Shipped units divided by glance views for the period, computed by InsightLeap.
Co-op (Cooperative Marketing Agreement)
Co-op, short for cooperative marketing agreement, is a vendor-funded share of your Amazon business that Amazon deducts from what it pays you, covering the marketing, freight, and damage terms your vendor agreement commits you to.
Customer Returns and Return Rate
Units customers returned to Amazon in the period, and those returns as a share of shipped units.
D
Damage Allowance
A damage allowance is a standing, negotiated rate an Amazon vendor pays as a deduction to cover damaged and defective units, in place of Amazon handling each one as its own claim.
Direct Fulfillment (Amazon Vendor Central)
Direct Fulfillment is Amazon's vendor dropship program: Amazon still buys the unit from you, but you ship it straight to the customer from your own warehouse, where it stays until Amazon has a customer order for it.
E
F
FFP (Frustration-Free Packaging)
FFP (Frustration-Free Packaging) is Amazon's Tier 1 packaging certification, the highest of its three tiers, confirming that a vendor's retail packaging is fully recyclable, easy to open, and free of excess protective material.
Fill Rate - Accepted Rate
Percentage of Items Confirmed as ‘Accepted’ during PO confirmation.
Fill Rate (Receive Fill Rate)
Fill Rate (Receive Fill Rate) is the share of the units an Amazon vendor confirmed on its purchase orders that Amazon's fulfillment centers actually received, measured at the receiving step that follows the accept and backorder answers given at PO confirmation.
Freight Allowance (Amazon Vendor Central)
Freight Allowance is the percentage Amazon deducts from a vendor's payments to cover the cost of moving inbound shipments, charged only to vendors who ship to Amazon on Collect freight terms.
I
L
Listing Quality Score
A 0 to 100 score for each monitored listing: the content rules it passes divided by the rules that apply.
Lost buy box due to price
LBB (Lost Buy Box) due to price is the Vendor Central metric for the percentage of an ASIN's page views during which Amazon had the item in replenishable state and lost the buy box to a third-party merchant due to uncompetitive price.
N
Net PPM Bridge
A ledger on vendor reports from shipped revenue to the net margin Amazon earns on your products.
Net PPM (Net Pure Product Margin)
Net PPM (Net Pure Product Margin) is Amazon's product-level margin metric for vendors: pure product margin after cost of goods and services are deducted, shown as a percentage against the prior period and year over year.
Net Proceeds (Seller Central)
What is left of a Seller Central account's sales after Amazon subtracts fees, advertising charges, and the cost of goods sold.
Net Received
The cost of the inventory Amazon received from you in the period, less the cost of the inventory Amazon returned to you.
NIS (New Item Setup)
NIS (New Item Setup) is the spreadsheet template an Amazon vendor fills in and uploads through Vendor Central to add new items to Amazon's catalog or to change the details of items already in it.
O
On Hand Revenue
InsightLeap's estimate of what a product's sellable inventory at Amazon would sell for.
Open PO Quantity
Units on purchase orders Amazon confirmed but has not yet received, as of the end of the period.
Out of Stock & Replenishable
Rep OOS (Replenishable Out of Stock) is the percentage of customer glance views during which the item was Out of Stock but Replenishable, measured over the total customer glance views the item had.
P
PO (Purchase Order) On-Time Accuracy
PO (Purchase Order) On-Time Accuracy is the Amazon Vendor Central chargeback category that measures whether a vendor ships or delivers confirmed units within the ship or delivery window named on the purchase order.
Price Claim (Price Discrepancy)
A price claim is the deduction Amazon raises against a vendor invoice when the unit cost on that invoice does not match the cost on Amazon's purchase order (PO), and the difference comes off the payment on that invoice.
Procurable Product OOS
Procurable Product OOS (also called Retail OOS or ROOS) is the Vendor Central metric for the share of an ASIN's glance views that arrived while the item was out of stock, measured across every ASIN Amazon can procure from the vendor.
Purchase Order (PO)
A purchase order (PO) on Amazon Vendor Central is the order Amazon issues to a vendor against its own demand forecast, naming the items and quantities Amazon wants shipped and the window it wants them in.
R
Remittance Advice
Remittance advice is the statement Amazon sends a vendor showing what it paid against invoiced purchase orders, what it deducted from that payment, and why.
Retail Analytics (formerly ARA)
Retail Analytics is the reporting section of Amazon Vendor Central where a first-party vendor sees its own business with Amazon (what was ordered and shipped, what inventory exists, what it cost, what margin came out, and what the forecast says), and it was formerly branded Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA).
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Ad-attributed sales divided by ad spend, shown as a multiple of spend.
S
Sales Discount
The value of the vendor-funded price discounts Amazon applied in the period.
Shipped Revenue
Amazon's retail revenue from the units it shipped to customers in the period, at the prices Amazon sold them for, adjusted for returns.
Shortage Claim (SC)
A shortage claim is Amazon's claim that a vendor invoiced for more units than Amazon's receiving process recorded, and the difference comes off the payment on that invoice.
SIOC (Ships in Own Container)
SIOC (Ships in Own Container) is Amazon's Tier 2 packaging certification, confirming that a product's own packaging can travel through Amazon's fulfillment network to the customer without an overbox or any added Amazon packaging.
SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging)
SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging) is Amazon's current name for the packaging certification previously called SIOC (Ships in Own Container): the same program with the same certification standards, renamed.
SoROOS (Sourceable Replenishable Out of Stock)
SoROOS (Sourceable Replenishable Out of Stock) is the Vendor Central metric for the share of an ASIN's customer glance views that landed while the item was out of stock even though Amazon's systems showed it could still be sourced and reordered from the vendor.
SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) Label
An SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) label is the GS1-128 barcode that carries the 18-digit number identifying a single carton or pallet in a vendor shipment to Amazon.
Suppressed ASIN
A suppressed ASIN is an Amazon product that still exists in the catalog with an active ASIN, but Amazon has removed its listing from search and browse, or pulled its offer, because of a content, compliance, or policy problem it wants fixed.
T
TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales)
Ad spend divided by total sales: ad spend measured against the whole business.
Third-Party Offer (on a 1P ASIN)
A third-party offer is an offer on an Amazon product listing from a seller other than Amazon.com, and for a 1P (first-party) vendor it means another seller competing with Amazon's own retail offer on an ASIN you supply to Amazon.
Third-Party Sellers
The number of distinct other sellers the daily crawl saw offering your monitored ASINs in the period.
Top Out-of-Stock Products
The products with no sellable units at Amazon at the end of the period that still shipped units in it, ranked by shipped units.
Total Fees (Seller Central)
Every Amazon fee charged to a Seller Central account for the period, shown as a positive cost.
U
Ultra Fast Track In-Stock Rate (UFT)
The share of time an ASIN was available to ship from an Amazon fulfillment center, against the selection Amazon intended to carry.
Unapplied Cash (Unapplied Credit)
Unapplied cash (also called unapplied credit) is a payment or credit that has reached a vendor's Amazon account but has not been matched to the specific invoice or purchase order it was meant to settle.
Unit Cost
The cost per unit you upload for a product, used for Your Gross Profit and Your Gross Margin.
V
Variation Error (Broken Variation)
A variation error, or broken variation, is an Amazon parent-child listing whose relationship has failed, so the child ASINs that should sit under one parent ASIN are split apart, missing from the family, or grouped with the wrong products on the detail page.
Vendor API (Selling Partner API for Vendors)
The Vendor API is the vendor-scoped part of Amazon's Selling Partner API (SP-API), a free service that lets a Vendor Central account pull its retail reports and exchange purchase orders and invoices with Amazon programmatically, as an alternative to EDI.
Vendor Code
A vendor code is the short identifier Amazon assigns inside a Vendor Central vendor group to one specific relationship, such as a product category, a brand, or a business agreement, which is why a single company's Vendor Central login can carry several of them.
Vendor Flex
Vendor Flex (VF, also written VFlex) is an Amazon program for high-volume vendors in which Amazon runs a dedicated operational area inside the vendor's own warehouse, with Amazon staff picking, packing, and shipping Amazon orders on Amazon's systems.
Vendor Lead Time (VLT)
Vendor Lead Time (VLT) is the number of days from when Amazon raises a purchase order (PO) to when the goods are received at an Amazon fulfillment center (FC), as Amazon measures it for Vendor Central vendors.
Vendor Manager (Amazon)
A Vendor Manager (VM) at Amazon is the Amazon employee who owns a 1P vendor's commercial relationship within one product category, a different role from the general corporate job title of vendor manager, which describes someone who oversees their own company's suppliers.
Vendor Returns (Return to Vendor, RTV)
A vendor return, or Return to Vendor (RTV), is inventory Amazon sends back to a vendor's own warehouse on Amazon's initiative, with the cost deducted from what Amazon pays the vendor.
