Amazon Vendor Economics · Glossary

Vendor Code

Updated October 25, 2026

A vendor code is Amazon's supplier number for a first-party (1P) vendor in Vendor Central: Amazon calls its supplier numbers vendor codes. Every purchase order is placed against one, and invoices, payments, deductions, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) messages and disputes all reference it.

Larger brands end up with several: one per product line or brand, a separate code for Direct Fulfillment, one per sourcing model or per marketplace, or codes inherited through acquisitions. The split fragments reporting and terms. A vendor code is also not a brand code. The vendor code records who Amazon bought from; the brand code records whose brand an ASIN (Amazon's product ID) carries.

Why don't reports add up across vendor codes?

Because Vendor Central reports some figures by vendor code and others by brand.

• Sourcing View reports on what Amazon procured from one vendor code.
• Manufacturing View reports on every ASIN under the brand code, and it is the only view that carries traffic and forecasting.

Before comparing a figure such as Net PPM (Net Pure Product Margin, Amazon's per-product margin metric) across divisions, check which view and which code it comes from.

The code also scopes other things a vendor holds:

1. Ships-in-Product-Packaging (SIPP) certification is held per vendor code, per marketplace, per region.
2. API (application programming interface) access covers every vendor code in the signing-in user's vendor group; confirm the scope in your own account.
3. Co-op, the allowances a vendor funds under its agreement with Amazon, can land on the wrong code. Co-op charged against the wrong vendor code is a billing error, and one to dispute.

Checking co-op against the right code is part of contra-COGS and co-op recovery, the work of recovering vendor-funded reductions to Amazon's cost of goods sold (COGS).

In practice, the split also follows Amazon's own structure. A brand's business can be divided between Amazon category teams so that each team's category accruals stay separate; supply chain programs such as Direct Import (Amazon buying at origin and importing goods made overseas itself) and Direct Fulfillment run on channel-specific codes; and brand owners or category teams can use separate codes to simplify reporting across business units or product groups.