Amazon Now Caters to Businesses

In the news this week was a report that Walmart purchased the online retailer Jet.com for $3 billion. Walmart has struggled with online selling and sees value in spending that amount of money to have a better position to break into the online retail shopping space.

Walmart needs to find a way to compete with Amazon.

Like you, when researching the purchase of a product, I almost always check out the product on Amazon first for price and product reviews.

It is easier than ever to just click on the buy button and have that product show up on my doorstep any day of the week, including Sundays, now that Amazon has an agreement with the United States Postal Service to deliver on Sundays.

I recently discovered that Amazon also has a complete section — using a separate account — specifically designed to cater to a business that needs to purchase items for their business. You may have already known this but I figured that if I didn’t, then you might not.

To set up an Amazon business account, you need to own a business that can be verified by Amazon. This may be by location address or by providing an EIN number. Once the account is set up, the administrator can add their designated associates (users) to the account and allow them to shop for business supplies on Amazon. Your employees can then make purchases on Amazon.com.

Some of the options the account administrator can manage include:

• Payment methods, such as a debit or credit card, or Amazon line of credit, can be set up to support one or multiple people in your organization.
• Assign different employees different purchasing roles.
• Require purchase approvals before the orders are finalized.
• Add purchase order (PO) number information.

Some of the benefits of having a separate Amazon business account include:

• Different business pricing discounts that are only available to registered business account customers.
• Quantity discounts are available on a select set of items for higher volume purchases.
• Free two-day shipping to addresses in the U.S. (this would be similar to Amazon Prime) with a minimum $49 order.
• More extensive order history reports that are available on your account.

Setting up an Amazon business account may just help you save a bit of money and streamline the ordering of routine office supplies.

What have you found to be the easiest way to purchase supplies for your office? Let me know in the Comments Section below.