You might find the Amazon Seller Central dashboard a little daunting at first, so in this article we're going to guide you through the entire dashboard so you know where vital information can be found.
While we couldn't possibly cover every single feature inside of Amazon Seller Central, we're going to introduce you to the most important and frequently used features.
What is Amazon Seller Central?
You need to think of your Seller Central account as your main dashboard or hub that helps you control your entire Amazon selling account. Everything you need to know or do inside your selling account is accessed from Seller Central.
At a first glance, your Seller Central dashboard has a helpful "Key Metrics" section. This section shows you useful info such as your daily sales, open orders, buyer messages, total balance owing.
Below your Key Metrics section you will find an Actions section that contains any important notifications. In this example, the account is brand new and it indicates that I have not added my payment method or tax information.
Some of the other information you'll see inside your Seller Central home screen includes news, forum updates, and training recommendations.
Seller Central Account Menus
There are two main menus inside your Seller Central account. Let's start with the main menu on the left which has all of your inventory and sales performance related items. For the sake of ease, we are going to call this the "main menu".
From the main menu, you can manage important aspects of your Amazon business such as:
- Inventory
- Advertising (Amazon PPC)
- Amazon Stores (storefronts)
- Reports and Analytics
- Account Health
We're going to explore some of these above mentioned features in greater detail soon. Now let's take a look at the right hand side menu inside your Seller Central account.
The right hand menu is accessed via the settings cog icon. This section of your Seller Central account is where you can access your account information, change notification settings, add new users and so on.
The settings menu is not going to be used as much as the main menu, but it still has important account information that you will need to access and change from time to time.
Adding Product Listings in Your Seller Central Account
One of the first things new sellers want to do is start adding products to their Amazon account. To do this, you need to navigate to Catalog > Add Products in the main menu.
Once you choose Add Products, you will be redirected to a search bar with various options.
You can search products using various methods, but for this example we're going to start with Keywords. If you have the ASIN you can choose the Products IDs method.
When you enter your desired keyword, you'll be presented with a lot of search results. You can navigate to the product you want to list, choose the Condition from the dropdown box and then click "Apply to Sell".
Another great feature to note here is the "Show Limitations" section. When you click this, it will show you any limitations including whether or not you are ungated on Amazon for this product. If you are not, you will see that you need approval to sell the brand.
If you are gated for a particular brand or category, you will be taken to a Request Approval screen after you click Apply to Sell. This is where it is important that you know how to get ungated on Amazon.
Creating Amazon FBA Shipments in Seller Central
Right below the Catalog menu item in the main menu, you will see the Inventory option. This is where you can manage your inventory, including your Amazon FBA inventory and shipments.
You can simply choose Manage All Inventory from this menu if you like, but if we are dealing specifically with FBA inventory then I like to go to the Fulfilment by Amazon Dashboard.
This allows you to take a quick glance at your Amazon FBA sales stats, similar to the Key Metrics on the home dashboard, and you can also access FBA relevant menu items from the new horizontal navigation bar.
Under the Shipments menu, you can manage your shipments, choose to use the Send to Amazon workflow, or check on your Shipment Performance.
If you're starting to see more consistent orders in your Amazon FBA business and you want to streamline the time it takes to pick, pack, and ship to FBA, I recommend taking a look at a software called 2d Workflow.
Managing Orders in Seller Central
Using the main menu, navigating to Orders > Manage Orders will take you to a screen outlining all of your orders.
The order dashboard has some handy quick filters so you can see any urgent orders that need to be actioned, such as:
- Ship by today
- Premium unshipped
- Business customer unshipped
- Verge of late shipment
- Verge of cancellation
Further along the left hand side you can refine your order filters even further.
Checking Your Amazon Account Health Rating in Seller Central
Keeping on top of your account health is vital if you want to maintain good standing with your Amazon seller account.
To access your account health information inside of Seller Central, you will need to navigate to the Performance section of the main menu.
In addition to Account Health, the performance sub-menu also has useful sections such as your Feedback Manager for customer reviews, A-to-Z Guarantee Claims, Chargeback Claims, Performance Notifications, and Voice of the Customer.
When you navigate to the Account Health section of the dashboard, you will see three distinct sections and a rating called your Account Health Rating (AHR)
Your Amazon AHR is based on three criteria:
- Customer Service Performance
- Policy Compliance
- Shipping Performance
Under each of these sections in the Account Health dashboard, you will see how you are tracking and how your overall account health looks. It is vital that you understand and monitor your Amazon account health regularly.
How to Access Reports in Seller Central
As the saying goes, "what gets measured gets managed". Amazon seller central has entire section dedicated to reporting, the main reporting dashboard is called "Amazon Fulfillment Reports". This is accessed from the main menu under the Reports section.
Once you're on the Amazon Fulfillment Reports dashboard, you can choose from 4 most popular reports, or you can select from 41 other pre-defined reports on the left hand side.
You can also use the Custom Report Builder to build your own.
I highly recommend you start using at least the most popular reports shown. If you have an Amazon software tool that helps manage your inventory, you might get your reporting from there but in the meantime you should familiarize yourself with Seller Central's reporting.
Frequently Asked Questions
It's never easy dealing with an Amazon account suspension. That's why it's important that you know Amazon's policies and avoid any violations.
When you sign up to sell on Amazon, your Seller Central account will be created automatically. Simply head over to sell.amazon.com and start your Amazon journey.
Inside of Seller Central, you can access Help and Support from the top right hand corner of the dashboard. Most of your queries will already be answered in one of the help section but if you need, you can still contact Amazon via this section.
