Top 5 Amazon Business tools for success
Time is money. If you're running a small business, you know how important it is to manage your budget, simplify your processes, and make smart purchasing decisions. One of the best-kept secrets for small business owners is the suite of tools offered to Amazon Business customers. These tools are designed to make your life easier by providing insights into your spending, helping you stick to your budget, and making sure every purchase aligns with your business goals. Let’s dive into the top five Amazon Business tools you can start using today that can transform the way you manage your business.
Amazon Business Analytics
Amazon Business Analytics gives you deep insights into your purchasing habits and patterns, helping you see where your money is going and how you can optimize your spending. Want to track your spending over time or see which categories you spend the most on? No problem. With easy-to-understand reports and charts, you can make informed decisions that boost your business's performance. Check, save, and download detailed reports at any time tailored to your specific business needs like monitoring your total spending, savings, orders, or identifying your top shopping category. 'Annual spend comparison' is a key feature that lets you compare this year’s spending with last year’s and is a great way for you to spot trends and adjust your business strategy accordingly.
“Amazon Business Analytics is amazing for us to see sales from last year, where we are at this year with buying, and how we can support minority owned business through the dashboard.”
— Courtney Cline, HR Administration Coordinator, Aldevra
Guided Buying
Are you ready to help your team make smarter purchasing decisions? Guided Buying provides a structured approach to buying, helping you better manage employee spending. As an Amazon Business customer, you can create buying policies that prefer, block, and restrict different products and sellers, helping your team make compliant purchases. You can even set spend limits on orders or certain product categories to maintain control over spending. Get access to the enhanced capabilities of Guided Buying with Business Prime.
Bonus: Guided Buying integrates with Amazon Business Analytics, giving you detailed reports that can help you inform future buying strategies and take action within your account. Plus, it allows you to consolidate purchase orders, saving time and reducing errors.
Approvals
Dread the chaos of managing purchase approvals? Then you’re going to love Approvals. This tool lets you set up custom rules based on things like purchase amounts, product types, or preferred suppliers ensuring that every order gets the right approval without the endless back-and-forth emails. Perfect for smaller teams, Approvals help your buyers make purchases responsibly, knowing that their requests will be automatically routed to the appropriate approvers so they can spend less time going back and forth and more time shopping strategically.
Whether you have 2 people or 20 people making purchases in your organization, with a multi-user account you can not only streamline your purchasing process, but also centralize it. Gain more visibility into spending while granting team members various access levels and purchasing privileges. Automating this process not only saves you time but also improves efficiency and keeps your business running smoothly. Nobody’s perfect, but automation ensures routine tasks like this never fall through the cracks. Looking to get even more bang for your buck? Integrate this tool with your existing e-procurement systems and make the whole process that much more seamless.
Imagine being able to set clear spending limits for different product categories. That’s exactly what spend limits lets you do. This policy is perfect for keeping your spending in check and putting guardrails in place so no one on your team over spends. Within Approvals, spend limits let you set thresholds for various categories, and if a team member tries to make a purchase above that limit, it’ll automatically trigger an approval process. This not only helps your business stay within budget but also gives you valuable data on your spending patterns, helping you tweak your spending strategy to save even more.
Budget Management
Budget Management allows you to allocate budgets to your buyers to give them more freedom to make purchases while ensuring you still have control over the budget. You can generate custom reports that offer real-time insights into your spending, helping you identify where you can cut costs or allocate more funds.
You can also combine this with Approvals for more efficiency for your team and more control over your finances. Ready to take your budget management a step further? Amazon Business tools can be integrated with existing business systems, like Enterprise Resource Planning and accounting software, to even further enhance your operational workflows. Streamline your entire purchasing process with the help of Approvals and Budget Management. From placing orders to final approval. Using them together helps streamline operations, reduce inefficiencies, and focus on activities that drive growth and profitability.
Amazon Tax Exempt Program
Looking to simplify and streamline your taxes? The Amazon Tax Exempt Program (ATEP) makes it easy for your business to make regular Amazon Business purchases without the added burden of sales tax. The Amazon Tax Exemption Program (ATEP), supports tax-exempt purchases for sales sold by Amazon, its affiliates, and participating independent third-party sellers.
Get started with the Wizard setup to be guided through the process. The Wizard will ask a series of simple questions to figure out just the right form for your tax exemption. So how long will the whole process take? Manually entering the details typically takes about 15 minutes for approval, but you may still need to upload the actual document depending on the type of document and type of exemption your business qualifies for. Alternatively, uploading your forms can take up to 24 hours for approval. Either way, in just about a days time you’ll be well on your way to tax savings.
So which tool is right for you?
These Amazon Business tools are designed to simplify your purchasing process, helping you stay on budget while giving you the insights you need to grow your business. Whether you need insight into spend, a simplified approval workflow, or better budget management, there’s a tool to fit your needs. Take your small business to the next level. Start exploring these tools today and see how they can help you save time, cut costs, and focus on what really matters—growing your business.
Get started by visiting your business settings or by creating a free Amazon Business account.