Amazon Vendor Economics · Glossary

Backup Report

Updated October 25, 2026

A backup report is the line-item detail behind a co-op invoice in Vendor Central. It carries the base accrual, damage-allowance and freight-allowance lines, with the PO (purchase order) net receipts and the rate Amazon applied. Co-op is the set of allowances a first-party (1P) vendor funds under its agreement with Amazon, and it is part of contra-COGS, the vendor-funded reductions to Amazon's cost of goods sold. The remittance shows what Amazon took; the backup report shows how Amazon calculated it.

That makes it the document a vendor recomputes to test whether a co-op deduction is right. Not every agreement produces one: lump-sum or volume-incentive, estimated-reconciliation and price-protection agreements do not. Where a report exists, it sits under Payments, then Co-op, by invoice ID, agreement number or date. It is co-op evidence only, not evidence for a shortage claim or a chargeback.

How does a vendor check a co-op deduction with the backup report?

Recompute the charge and compare it with what Amazon deducted.

1. Multiply the PO net receipts by the contracted rate.
2. Compare the result with the amount deducted. The variance is the candidate claim.
3. Cross-check the agreement's rate, base and effective dates against the report.

That cross-check surfaces these co-op defects:

• charges on expired agreements,
• charges on overlapping agreements,
• the wrong rate,
• the wrong base, and
• duplicates.

Audit co-op to the remittance and the backup report, never to Net PPM (Net Pure Product Margin): its contra-COGS figure is an estimate booked at the time of sale. A variance found this way can be disputed in Dispute Management or from Payments, then Co-op. The window for co-op disputes is not publicly settled: it is commonly described as around two years, but some specialist sources apply the 30-day chargeback clock to co-op, so file anything current inside 30 days until your own Vendor Central record shows the window.

In contra-COGS and co-op recovery, this recompute is how each co-op charge is tested.