Selling on Amazon Business in the UK: business prices, quantity tiers and VAT invoices

If you run a sizeable Amazon catalogue, some of your customers are already buying for work: a school ordering classroom supplies, a trades business restocking consumables, a facilities team buying for several sites. Most sellers never notice, because those orders arrive through the same store and the same seller account as everyone else’s. Amazon Business is the set of tools that lets you serve those buyers on purpose: with their own prices, quantity tiers, VAT invoices and faster quotes. This guide covers how it works for a UK seller, what it costs, and which numbers Amazon actually publishes.

What Amazon Business is, for a UK seller

Amazon describes Amazon Business as the B2B segment of Amazon, serving small businesses, enterprises, schools, healthcare organisations and public sector buyers. Business customers buy through the same store as consumers, Amazon.co.uk in the UK, but see a business interface with features such as business pricing, Prime Business and multi-user accounts¹.

For sellers, three facts matter most¹:

• There is no separate Amazon Business seller account. Any offer you list can be bought by business customers.
• The B2B tools need a Professional selling plan, which costs £25 a month excluding VAT plus selling fees¹¹³. Business prices and quantity discounts are available “at no additional charge”.
• Fulfilment works the same way. You can ship business orders yourself or through FBA, and FBA business orders come from the same inventory as consumer orders.

The figures Amazon publishes, and how to read them

Older articles on Amazon Business, including the earlier version of this one, quoted an out-of-date figure and, in one headline, put it in pounds rather than dollars. Here is what Amazon publishes today.

None of these is a UK market size. Amazon does not publish a current UK-only figure, so treat the global numbers as evidence of direction, and size your own opportunity from your business orders in Seller Central.

How to start selling to business customers

1. Check your plan. You need a Professional selling plan to use the B2B features³. Our guide to Amazon selling fees in the UK sets out what the plan and the selling fees cost.
2. Open B2B Central in Seller Central, where Amazon groups the business tools and shows product opportunities¹.
3. Enrol in the VAT Calculation Service, so business buyers see VAT-exclusive prices and receive invoices automatically (see below).
4. Set business prices and quantity discounts on the products business buyers order, starting with your best sellers.
5. Complete your business profile, and check whether you are eligible for Request for Quote.

Business prices and quantity discounts

Amazon offers two pricing tools³:

• Business price: a discounted price shown only to registered business customers, whatever quantity they buy.
• Quantity discount: tiered discounts for higher-volume purchases, with the tiers set by you.

You can manage both by hand in Manage Inventory, through bulk upload files, or with an automated business pricing rule³.

The fee discounts most sellers miss

Business pricing does more than win orders. It can reduce what Amazon charges you.

• FBA multi-unit fulfilment fee discount. If you offer at least 3% off the standard price through a business price, a quantity discount or both, multi-unit business orders get a per-unit discount on the FBA fulfilment fee. The discount must apply to the quantity ordered: a 3% discount on orders of 10 or more qualifies an order of 12, not an order of 5. Amazon’s UK table runs from £0.24 a unit for 2 to 4 envelope-sized units up to £0.63 a unit for 25 or more standard parcels⁴.
• Bulk order referral fee discount. On qualifying business orders in eligible categories, the referral fee on the part of the order value above £1,000 drops in steps, to 5% on the portion above £100,000. Request for Quote orders qualify without a business price or quantity discount⁵.

The referral rate, digital services fee and FBA discount follow Amazon’s published UK rules¹³⁴; the base fulfilment fee and cost of goods are illustrative, and our FBA calculator for the UK will give you the real fee for your product. The 5% discount takes £1.50 off the price but only 47p off the profit per unit, because lower VAT, a lower referral fee and the FBA discount absorb most of it. In exchange you get ten units in one order. The business buyer, who reclaims VAT, compares your price at £23.75 a unit without VAT.

Before you set tiers, work out each product’s margin after fees and advertising, using the method in our guide to break-even ACoS. A discount that wins a large order but leaves no margin after advertising is not a B2B strategy.

Business-only offers and case packs

A business-only offer has a business price and no consumer price, so only registered business customers can buy it. Amazon lists reasons to use one, including products whose manufacturer limits sales to consumers through channel rights restrictions, fragile products that need professional handling, and specialist products that could injure an untrained user⁶.

For manufacturers, this is a useful way to offer a trade range, such as bulk cases or professional grades, without it appearing to consumers or competing with your retailers’ consumer packs. Our guide to Amazon for manufacturers covers how to separate Amazon ranges from trade ranges without channel conflict.

Two cautions from Amazon’s own instructions: converting an existing offer means deleting it first, which can strand FBA inventory, and adding a standard price later turns it back into an offer visible to everyone⁶.

VAT invoices: the detail business buyers notice

A VAT-registered business buyer needs a valid VAT invoice to reclaim VAT. Amazon’s rule for sellers is strict: you must provide Amazon Business customers with “a correct and legally valid VAT invoice, if applicable, for each order within one business day after the dispatch of the order was confirmed”, and credit notes for returns within one business day of the return being confirmed. VAT-exempt sellers must provide a receipt instead, and failure to comply “can result in actions being taken against your selling account"⁹.

The VAT Calculation Service handles this for you. Amazon says it displays VAT-exclusive prices to business customers, adds a “Downloadable VAT Invoice” badge to your offers, calculates the VAT at checkout and prepares electronic invoices for customers to download⁸. It relies on the accuracy of your VAT registration numbers, product tax codes and other settings⁸, so check those before you enrol. If you do not use it, you must upload invoices yourself through Manage Orders or a solution provider⁹.

Whichever route you choose, a full UK VAT invoice must show, among other things, a unique sequential number, the time of supply, your name, address and VAT number, the customer’s name and address, a description, the quantity, the VAT rate and amount excluding VAT for each item, the unit price and the total VAT in sterling¹⁰. Retailers may issue a simpler invoice for supplies of £250 or less including VAT; above that, a full or modified VAT invoice is needed when the customer asks for one¹⁰.

Prime Business and fulfilment

Prime Business is a membership for business buyers. On Amazon.co.uk it runs from Duo, free with Amazon Prime for a single user, through Basic (£95 a year excluding VAT, up to 5 users), Small (£250, up to 20 users) and Medium (£600, up to 200 users), to Unlimited at £4,500 a year. Members get free One-Day or Same-Day delivery on eligible items, and Prime Business only provides free One-Day delivery to UK addresses¹¹. Amazon says Prime Business members worldwide saved more than $880 million in shipping fees in 2025².

For a seller, the practical point is simple: if your business-relevant products are not Prime-eligible, these buyers see a delivery charge on your offer and none on a competitor’s. In our experience, that difference decides a lot of repeat business orders, so keep your B2B lines in FBA or Seller Fulfilled Prime, and keep them in stock. If you are new to FBA, our guide to what Amazon FBA is explains how it works in the UK. A business buyer who finds you out of stock usually switches supplier.

Request for Quote

Request for Quote lets business customers negotiate price and quantity on large orders, which Amazon defines as more than 999 units or £10,000. Eligible sellers respond from the Manage Quotes page, and each quote is available only to the customer who requested it⁷. Three rules to know before you reply⁷:

• It can take up to 24 hours for Amazon to create the private offer, and you cannot change the temporary SKU it creates through Manage Inventory or third-party tools.
• Once the customer has confirmed the order you cannot cancel it, and cancelling after purchase can lead to suspension from the programme.
• Because the basket limit is 999 units, larger requests are met with case packs, for example 50 cases of 30 units for a 1,500-unit request.

Advertising to business buyers

Sponsored Products lets you raise bids for Amazon Business placements, which Amazon defines as all Sponsored Products placements on Amazon Business, including top of search, rest of search and Amazon Business product pages. The uplift works on top of your bidding strategy, and it is not available in Sponsored Products across retailers campaigns¹². Amazon’s help page does not list the marketplaces where it applies, so check that the option appears in your UK console before planning around it.

Our practice is to start with a modest uplift on products with strong business demand and a healthy margin, and to judge it on profit, not on the ACoS of business placements alone, since business orders are larger and more of them come back without an ad. Our Amazon PPC strategy guide explains how we structure campaigns.

A 30-day plan

Amazon Business is not a separate shop to build. It is a set of settings on the account you already run, and most of the work is pricing, invoicing and stock discipline. Get those right and business buyers become one of the most profitable groups of customers in the account.