How to access? "Apps" > Select "Amazon VCS"
What is it?
Amazon communication - January 2021
To meet a need of its Amazon Business customers who need to receive their invoices (or receipts) as soon as possible, Amazon introduced in July 2020 the Invoice Default Rate- From April 5, 2021, all professional sellers will be required to meet this 5% target to sell on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it and Amazon.es. Failure to meet this upcoming performance requirement may result in account deactivation.
How does it work?
Pre-requisites
To use Amazon VCS, make sure:
- To have a Professional Seller Account on Amazon
- If you have an individual seller account, you need to upgrade it to a professional seller account.
Step 1: Activate Amazon VCS on Amazon
✅ Follow these steps in your Amazon BO to activate the VCS service on your account:
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Enter any VAT / GST registration numbers you have
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Enter a default shipping address
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Enter a default Product Tax Code. Ex : A_GEN_STANDARD is the code for "always taxable at the standard rate". (These codes can be completed directly from your Lengow feeds for more detailed attribution on your products. To do so: use the "Product Tax Code" attribute.)
Select the type of invoicing: Self Invoicing
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Enter the invoice activation date (Choose the date from which you will have to download invoices for each shipment. Often the same activation date as for VCS).
- Lengow's "orders" API: "IsAmazonInvoiced" (or is-amazon-invoiced) parameter. If the value is true, it indicates that you have enabled VCS.
- Complete the "Product Tax Code" attribute in each of your Amazon feeds in Lengow if you wish to modify for some products or all of your products the default value already defined in your Amazon BO when choosing "Amazon Invoicing". (values are mandatory, eg values "A_GEN_TAX")
- All prices sent to Amazon must remain "VAT included" even if you use the VCS service
Step 2: Activate the VCS App in Lengow
✅ Follow these steps to use Amazon VCS on Lengow:
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Activate the VCS App in your Lengow’s Account : « Apps » tab > search for « Amazon VCS » and click on « Connect Amazon VCS »
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Go to your Amazon feed > settings > Launch step > orders and enable Amazon VCS.
Step 3: Manage Amazon VCS with Lengow
Once an order is in shipped status, the billing/credit note information is immediately available through our API so you can use it for your invoices/credit notes.
✅ Here is the Lengow workflow:
1/ Retrieving invoice information
(Lengow API)
Having chosen the "self invoicing" invoicing option, you must first retrieve the invoicing data via our API.From the Lengow solution, in the orders tab, you can find in each order an icon indicating the status of the billing information that Amazon sends us back (for invoice or credit note to be edited).
When invoice information is availble for upload the staus is:
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Invoice Pending / Credit Note Pending
Amazon recommends that merchants schedule VIDR retrieval at least twice a day so that invoices can be uploaded within a maximum of 12 hours after the order has been shipped.
2/ Editing your invoice
(Merchant back office)
Once you have retrieved this billing information, you can create your invoice and customize it.
For information, here is the list of mandatory information for Amazon:
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Registered company name and address of the seller
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VAT identification number of the seller (if applicable)
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Complete official name and address of the customer
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VAT identification number of the customer. Only necessary if the customer is responsible for the taxation of the purchase order (e.g., for intra-Community delivery, reverse charge procedure). Customer VAT Number is provided in VIDR.
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Invoice date/service date
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Invoice number
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Order date
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Product name
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Purchase quantity
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Unit price of the item (without VAT)
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VAT rate applied
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Discounts/promotions, if not included in the unit price
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VAT amount
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Justification/references if the customer is responsible for the payment of VAT. Citation is a legal text required on an invoice when Customer owes VAT, in other words, when VAT charged by the Seller is zero percent. This can happen in cases such as Domestic Reverse Charge, export out of EU, or intra-community supply of goods
3/ Upload your invoice in Lengow API
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Invoice Processing: Amazon processes the invoice.
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Invoice_Uploaded: Amazon has received and posted the invoice. When you see this status, the end customer then has the possibility of downloading the invoice from his Amazon customer account.
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Invoice_Rejected: Amazon received the invoice, but there are errors (ex: "Multiple shipments": the order ID has multiple shipments. Please indicate the shipment ID) - See images 2 & 3 for status
