Amazon Integration – Feature & Process Guide

Amazon is really three integrations under one roof, all sharing the same Amazon SP-API sign-in: the standard Seller model (the seller lists and fulfils their own orders), Amazon Smart Connect ("Seller Flex" / Seller Fulfilled Prime, where Amazon treats the seller's own warehouse as one of its own delivery nodes), and the Vendor model (Amazon buys stock wholesale via Purchase Orders and resells it itself, rather than the seller fulfilling consumer orders). Which one an account runs as is a single account-level setting, and it changes what's supported quite a bit — this page calls out Seller vs. Vendor vs. Smart Connect wherever they differ.

Pentagon Connect connects to all three via Amazon's own authorisation flow (the seller or vendor approves access once per account, per marketplace region), after which products, prices, stock and orders sync automatically on a schedule — there's no manual per-item action needed from day to day.

Quick Reference

Product Management

Pricing & Stock

Orders & Fulfilment

Refunds, Returns, Cancellations & Claims

Product Management

Creating products

When a new product already exists somewhere in Amazon's shared catalogue, Pentagon Connect only needs to create an offer against it (price, stock, availability). When no matching catalogue item exists yet, Pentagon Connect creates a brand-new catalogue listing instead, validated against that specific product category's rules.

• Every Amazon category has its own required/optional attribute set, and these can differ by marketplace (e.g. a UK listing and a German listing in the same category can have different mandatory fields) — a product missing a category-required attribute is the most common reason a listing fails to go live.
• Listing creation is acknowledged immediately as received, but the actual pass/fail only comes back from Amazon afterwards (typically within minutes, occasionally longer) — a listing can sit as "sent" for a short time before its real status is known.
• Products can be grouped into variant families (e.g. size/colour of the same item); each variant is still its own listing, submitted individually.
• EU listings must carry GPSR product-safety information (manufacturer contact, a safety attestation, and compliance media details) — this applies regardless of where the seller itself is based.

Updating products

• Content updates (title, description, images, attributes) and price/stock updates can each be sent independently — a price refresh doesn't require resending the whole listing.
• A full content update must be validated against the specific category's own rules, even when the original offer was created against an existing catalogue item.
• As with creation, update success/failure is confirmed asynchronously by Amazon after the update is submitted.

Deactivating / removing products

A listing can be removed at the level of a single variant, or the whole variation family can be ended at once. Either way, this only removes the seller's own offer — the underlying Amazon catalogue entry itself is never deleted, since other sellers may still be selling against it.

Pricing & Stock Sync

• Price and stock changes are picked up and pushed to Amazon on a schedule; smaller pending batches are sent one item at a time, larger batches are sent together for efficiency.
• Amazon can reject a price update if the listing is currently locked into one of Amazon's own promotions or automated pricing rules.
• Price updates and stock updates can each be switched on or off per account, independently of each other — a client can have stock sync running while price sync is paused, or vice versa.
• Only merchant-fulfilled (non-FBA) listings are kept in sync through the standard product flow; Amazon-fulfilled (FBA) listings aren't managed this way.
• On the Vendor side, Vendor Direct Fulfillment vendors submit their own warehouse stock levels directly; standard Vendor Procurement vendors don't manage stock levels this way at all — inventory is worked out from Amazon's Purchase Orders instead.

Order Management

Getting orders

New orders and status/detail changes on existing orders are both picked up automatically and continuously — no manual import step is required. Amazon gives buyers a 30-minute window to cancel after placing an order, so a brand-new order is held in a pending state until that window has passed, at which point any items the buyer cancelled in that window are dropped from the order.

Orders can optionally be filtered by fulfilment channel (Amazon-fulfilled vs. merchant-fulfilled) if a client only wants one or the other synced.

As a Vendor, orders arrive as Purchase Orders rather than consumer orders, and Amazon can change a PO's contents (add, remove or change quantities on line items) any time before it ships — so PO changes are checked for on an ongoing basis, not just downloaded once.

Order information we store

For every order, Pentagon Connect stores:

• Marketplace order ID, order status, order type, currency, and the date/time the order was created
• Buyer email address and payment method
• Order subtotal, order total, discount amount, and total VAT
• Billing name, phone number and company name
• Shipping name, phone number, company name, country, state, street (two lines), city and postal code
• Shipping service level and the fulfilment channel (Amazon-fulfilled vs. merchant-fulfilled)
• Per line item: SKU, quantity, order status, item price, shipping cost, and the tax/VAT breakdown for both the product and its shipping
• Whether the order was flagged for buyer-requested cancellation, and the buyer's stated reason

If an item's shipping address can't be obtained from Amazon for an order that's otherwise ready to ship, the order is stored as Incomplete rather than being dropped.

Shipping orders

Once an order is ready, Pentagon Connect sends the shipment confirmation (carrier, tracking number, ship date) to Amazon in one step, which charges the buyer, credits the seller and notifies the buyer their order has shipped.

• Carrier name and tracking number are passed through to Amazon as free text — there's no fixed carrier list to match against (see Carriers Supported below).
• Seller Fulfilled Prime / Smart Connect accounts can additionally get live shipping rates and buy a label directly through Amazon in the same flow, rather than only reporting a tracking number after the fact.
• As a Vendor, shipment confirmation works the same way in principle, but is sent against a Purchase Order rather than a consumer order, and (for Direct Fulfillment) ships from the vendor's own warehouse rather than into an Amazon fulfilment centre.

Cancellations

Pre-shipment, an order can only be cancelled in full — there's no partial cancellation before an order has shipped. Amazon also tracks a fixed set of cancellation reasons, listed under Return & Refund Reason Codes below.

As a Vendor, the vendor acknowledges (accepts or rejects) each Purchase Order line individually rather than "cancelling" in the seller sense; bundle SKUs are acknowledged only at the bundle level, not per component.

Smart Connect shipments follow their own rule: a shipment can only be accepted or rejected in full, never partially.

Refunds & returns

Post-shipment, refunds are handled as adjustments and can be full or partial, broken down separately by product price, tax, shipping and shipping tax. Amazon tracks a fixed set of adjustment/refund reasons — see Return & Refund Reason Codes below.

• When a buyer requests a cancellation within Amazon's 30-minute window, this is tracked as a claim on the order; depending on the account's configured default action, this can automatically generate a refund once the request is confirmed.
• Smart Connect returns go through Amazon's own Returns mechanism: a cancellation and refund in Pentagon Connect are only created once the return reaches a final, confirmed status back at the seller's warehouse, and the refund includes a calculated per-unit share of the original shipping cost when the return was part of a multi-item order.
• As a Vendor, there is no consumer-facing refund/return at all — the customer relationship and any consumer refund belong to Amazon, not the vendor.

Claims / incidents

A buyer-requested cancellation is tracked in Pentagon Connect as a claim against the order (marketplace reason, initiated by the buyer), separately from the order's main status, and — depending on the account's default handling setting — can be actioned automatically or left for manual review.

Carriers Supported

Amazon doesn't publish or require a fixed carrier list for standard shipment confirmation — the carrier name and tracking number are sent through as free text alongside the shipment, so any carrier can be recorded. For Seller Fulfilled Prime / Smart Connect accounts using Amazon's own "buy shipping" option, the carrier and service are chosen from whichever live rates Amazon returns for that shipment (configured with a from-location, label format — PDF or PNG — and label size, 4×6 or standard 8.5×11).

Return & Refund Reason Codes

Cancellation reasons (pre-shipment, as recognised by Amazon):

• No inventory
• Shipping address undeliverable
• Customer exchange
• Buyer cancelled
• General adjustment
• Carrier credit decision
• Risk assessment information not valid
• Carrier coverage failure
• Customer return
• Merchandise not received
• Cannot verify information
• Pricing error
• Reject order
• Weather delay

Refund / adjustment reasons (post-shipment, as recognised by Amazon):

• No inventory
• Customer return
• General adjustment
• Could not ship
• Different item
• Abandoned
• Customer cancel
• Price error
• Product out of stock
• Customer address incorrect
• Exchange
• Other
• Carrier credit decision
• Risk assessment information not valid
• Carrier coverage failure
• Transaction record
• Undeliverable
• Refused delivery

Known Limitations

• Listing creation/update success is only confirmed asynchronously by Amazon after submission — a "sent" status isn't yet a confirmed outcome.
• Only merchant-fulfilled (non-FBA), fully complete listings are pulled into the standard product sync — Amazon-fulfilled listings aren't kept in sync this way.
• Pre-shipment cancellation only supports a full cancellation — partial cancellation before shipping isn't available; partial refunds are only possible after shipment.
• Automatic invoice submission is only required, and only supported, for Spain, UK, France, Germany and Italy.
• A Smart Connect shipment can only be accepted or rejected in full — no partial acknowledgement.
• Smart Connect inventory updates are one SKU at a time — there's no bulk stock update for Smart Connect accounts.
• Smart Connect shipping-label printing isn't handled directly for the client — it's exposed as a pass-through layer that mirrors Amazon's own label/rate calls.
• Vendor Purchase Orders can be changed by Amazon (quantities, added/removed lines) any time up to shipment, so vendor orders need ongoing reconciliation rather than a one-time download.
• Vendor order acknowledgement and invoice submission have no explicit "success" signal from Amazon — a successful outcome is inferred after a wait period if no failure is reported.
• A+ Content is scoped but not yet built.
• Carrier names aren't validated against a fixed list, so a mistyped or unusual carrier name is still accepted and passed through as-is.

Source Materials

This guide was built from Pentagon Connect's Amazon SP-API integration specifications covering account setup and authorisation, product and taxonomy management, order management, Amazon Smart Connect, and the Vendor (Procurement and Direct Fulfillment) technical scope.