Amazon wholesale glossary: the terms that matter, in plain English

Looking for one word? Jump to the terms by stage or the A to Z index.

Selling on Amazon comes with its own vocabulary, and wholesale adds a second one from the supplier side: price lists, case packs, minimums and net terms. Most of what confuses new sellers isn't a hard idea. It's the words: two names for the same thing, or one word that means something different to your supplier, to Amazon and to the seller group you just joined.

This glossary is for people who resell existing brands on Amazon in the US, whether they use FBA or ship orders themselves. Each entry gives a short definition and links to the guide that covers the term properly, with Amazon's sources. A term joins the list once its guide is published and reviewed, so every link takes you somewhere useful.

How this glossary is organized

The terms follow the ten stages of the Amazon wholesale roadmap, in the order you meet them in a real business, and within each stage they run A to Z.

If you're new, read the stages from the top, because each one makes the next easier to follow. If you just heard a word in a seller group or a supplier email, the A to Z index at the end of the page takes you straight to it.

Stef's course runs in much the same order. In The Game, from the first module of Apex University, he lists the skills a wholesale business is built on:

"These are the few pillars that we need to master: how suppliers work and how we reach out to them, how to do product research, how to do the proper amount of purchasing, prepping and shipping, scaling, and optimizing."

From Stef's lesson (The Game, at 7:38)

You don't have to come back here every time you meet a new word. Across our guides, the first mention of a term such as landed cost often links to the guide that explains it.

Words that mean something different at Amazon

Some everyday words mean one thing to suppliers and other sellers and something narrower to Amazon. Amazon's help pages and notices use Amazon's meanings, so it pays to know both. If a search in Seller Central Help comes back empty, try Amazon's word instead of the one from your seller group.

The meanings in the Amazon column come from Amazon's A-to-Z selling glossary, apart from the Buy Box rename, which is from Amazon's Featured Offer article, and the gated row, which is from its guide to finding wholesalers. All three are public pages on sell.amazon.com.

You'll see the same split in Seller Central, where the workflow for creating an FBA shipment is called Send to Amazon: it moves your stock into Amazon's network, and orders ship to buyers from there.

Words that get mixed up

These pairs come up again and again in seller groups. This table puts them side by side so you can see where one ends and the other begins.

Shorthand you'll see in seller groups

Seller groups, supplier emails and Amazon's notices are full of abbreviations. Here are the common ones and what they stand for.

Several of these, such as AHR, ODR, POA, OA and RA, have an entry under their full name below. Amazon's own list of the acronyms it uses for its programs, AWD and IPI among them, comes right after the entries in its A-to-Z glossary.

How we keep these definitions accurate

The Apex team keeps each definition to a sentence or two. The detail lives in the guide each entry links to, and when a term involves one of Amazon's rules or fees, that guide cites Amazon's own US pages. We don't put fee amounts in the glossary at all, because Amazon changes them; the fee guides show Amazon's current tables or link to them.

If an entry here ever disagrees with an Amazon page about your account, go with Amazon's page, and please tell us so we can fix it. Our editorial policy explains how we source and update every guide.

Questions about the glossary

Where can I find Amazon's own definitions of selling terms?

Amazon publishes an A-to-Z selling glossary on sell.amazon.com that anyone can read without signing in. It covers Amazon's own words, such as the Offer Display, Brand Registry roles and stranded inventory, and after the A to Z entries it lists the acronyms Amazon uses and the terms people mix up. It doesn't cover most of the supplier-side words in this glossary, such as ungating, letters of authorization, MOQ or DD+7. For the rules behind a term, Seller Central Help is the source, and most of its pages need a sign-in. Amazon's Seller University has its own courses too.

Which terms should I learn before my first wholesale order?

Before you place a first purchase order, make sure these are clear: ASIN and UPC (how a price list matches Amazon), BSR (how well a product sells compared with others in its category), price list, case pack and MOQ (what a supplier sells and how), referral fee and FBA fulfillment fee (what Amazon takes), landed cost and ROI (what you keep), gated (whether you can sell it at all) and FNSKU (how your units are labeled). Most of them belong to stages 2 to 7 of the roadmap (some join the list below as their guides are reviewed), and the rest can wait until you need them. If you'd rather hear them used in context, Apex University uses them lesson by lesson.

Why is a term I heard missing from this glossary?

Usually because its guide is still being reviewed, or isn't written yet. We add a term when its guide is ready, so the list grows over time. Advertising terms such as ACoS aren't here because our guides don't cover running Amazon ads. If you meet a word in Seller Central that isn't here, try Amazon's A-to-Z glossary, and if you think we should add it, let us know through our contact page.