What an Amazon Agency Needs From You on Day One
Most onboarding problems come from giving too much or too little. Too little, and the first two weeks go to chasing logins and logo files. Too much, and an outside company holds your password or your ad account. Here is the access each job needs, the files to send, what a good agency asks for, and the six things no agency should ever ask for. Amazon's access rules are from its own pages, checked October 22, 2026.
Short answer
On day one, an Amazon agency needs its own user access (never your password), sized to the job. A PPC team needs edit access in Amazon Ads through its manager account, plus view access to sales reports. A listing writer needs catalog edit access in Seller Central. A designer needs A+ and Brand Store access. Send a shared folder you own with logos, brand guide, photos and packaging, ship finished samples, and share unit cost, margin and an ad budget ceiling. No agency should ask for your primary login password, ownership of your ad account, or your card numbers.
Give Access by Job, Not by Trust
The rule that keeps onboarding safe is that access follows the job. Every person at the agency gets their own login, sized to what they do, and you can remove any one of them without touching anyone else. Amazon's tools are built for this. The forum guide on seller account user permissions, posted by an Amazon staff account, says outside contractors and companies should be added as authorized partners, that you should grant the minimum permissions required, and that you should not share your password. Amazon's seller blog for India on setting multiple user permissions (the same User Permissions tool) describes turning access on or off tool by tool, without sharing your own username and password.
Brand Registry and Amazon Ads work the same way. Amazon's guide to Brand Registry roles (April 23, 2025) says the Administrator assigns every role and advises giving protection roles only to accounts internal to the brand. The Amazon Ads manager account guide says the advertiser approves an agency's link and can remove it. The Amazon Ads custom access controls announcement (April 22, 2021) names admin and editor levels plus narrower ones such as billing access and Stores builder access for creative agencies. Help pages behind the Seller Central login could not be loaded, so we quote only these public pages.
Which Permission Level Each Job Needs
This table is our recommendation; Amazon does not publish one. Use it as a starting point. If an agency does more than one job, add the levels together, and no more. "View" means the person can see a page but not change it. "Edit" means they can change it. Seller Central sets these tool by tool, so you can mix them for one user.
PPC manager
Amazon Ads: editor access through the agency's manager account, which you approve. Seller Central: view access to Business Reports and inventory, so they can see sales and stock. Brand Analytics view if available. No payments, no account settings.
Listing and SEO writer
Seller Central: edit access to catalog and inventory pages (Manage All Inventory, Add a Product). View access to Business Reports. No advertising, no payments.
A+ and Brand Store designer
Seller Central: edit access to A+ Content Manager and Stores. If you build your Store in Amazon Ads instead, give Stores builder access there. Nothing else.
Photographer or video studio
No account access at all. They need your product, your brand guide and a shot list. Final files go into your shared folder; you or your listing person upload them.
Account health and case manager
Seller Central: edit access to Account Health and case logs, view access to orders and performance notifications. Brand Registry: a Registered Agent role, the one protection role Amazon defines for outside parties, and only if they report IP violations for you.
Reporting or analytics partner
View access only: Business Reports, Brand Analytics and Amazon Ads reports. If they use software, connect it through Amazon's approved app connections so you can revoke it in one click.
Full-service agency
The sum of the jobs it actually does this quarter, listed in writing. Full service is not a reason for Admin. Keep primary user, Brand Registry Administrator and payment settings inside your company.
12 Onboarding Steps, In Order
Steps 1 to 4 are about access, 5 to 8 are what you send, 9 to 12 are how you run the relationship. Most brands can finish steps 1 to 8 in a day if the files exist.
Write the job and the number you will judge it by
Before any access goes out, write one paragraph: what the agency is hired to do, by when, and the measure of success (for example, ACoS, or advertising cost of sales, under 30% on three hero ASINs in 90 days). The access list in step 3 follows from this. An agency hired for photos does not need your ad account.
Confirm you own every account you are about to share
Check that you are the Seller Central primary user, the Brand Registry Administrator and Rights Owner, and an admin on your own Amazon Ads account. Amazon describes the primary user as the person who registered the account and can reach every page. You can only grant and remove access you control.
Invite the agency with its own login, never yours
In Seller Central, outside companies are added through User Permissions or as authorized partners, and each person creates their own login. Amazon says not to share your password. In Amazon Ads, the agency links your ad account to its manager account and you approve the request. Each route lets you remove one person later without changing your own password.
Grant only the permissions the job needs
Seller Central sets access tool by tool, so a listing writer can edit catalog pages without seeing payments. Amazon's guidance is to grant the minimum permissions required and review them regularly. Use the role table in section [03] to pick the level for each job.
Send the assets in one shared folder you own
Create the folder in your own Google Drive or Dropbox and share it with the agency. Put in: logo files (vector), brand guide, approved photos and video, past A+ and Brand Store designs, packaging dieline or artwork, and claims you are allowed to make. When the work ends, you remove their access and the folder stays with you.
Send the brand guide, or the ten lines that stand in for one
If you have a brand guide, send it. If not, write ten lines: colors with hex codes, fonts, three words for the tone, words you never use, competitors you do not want to resemble, and the one thing a shopper should remember. That page saves a full round of revisions.
Ship product samples with a packing list
For photo, video or UGC (user-generated content, short creator-style videos), ship finished retail units, not prototypes, in the packaging shoppers receive. Include every color or size being shot, a packing list, and a note on whether samples come back. Send tracking numbers the day they ship.
Share the numbers that let them make decisions
Give unit cost (COGS, or cost of goods sold), price, Amazon fees, target margin, a monthly ad budget ceiling, and 12 months of sales by ASIN. Without margin, a PPC team cannot tell a profitable sale from an expensive one. Share these as a document, not as access to your bank or payment settings.
Set the approval rules in writing
Write down who approves what and how fast: budget changes above a set amount, price changes, new listings, A+ and Brand Store submissions, and anything that changes a product claim. Name one person on your side who answers within one business day.
Set the first report date and format
Agree on what the first report covers, when it arrives, and what it must say: what changed, why, and what happens next. A good first report lands within the first two to four weeks and is readable without a call.
Put a 30-day review on the calendar
Book a review 30 days in. Check the access list against the work being done, remove anything unused, and compare progress against the measure from step 1. This is also when you find out whether the agency asked the right questions.
Keep an access log
Record who has which permission, where, and when it was granted. When someone leaves the agency, or the agency leaves you, this log is how you remove everything in one sitting.
What Goes in the Shared Folder, Item by Item
Build the folder once and every future agency, freelancer or employee starts from it. Name each subfolder plainly so nobody has to ask where the logo is. If an item does not exist yet, write that down instead of leaving the space empty, so the agency can quote it.
Questions That Show They Did the Homework
Your margin and a spend ceiling
A PPC team that asks for unit cost and a monthly ad budget ceiling is planning for profit, not just sales.
Which products matter most
Your hero ASINs, the ones with stock problems, and any you plan to discontinue. Effort should follow what you want to sell.
Claims you can and cannot make
Especially for supplements, beauty and children's products. A careful agency asks before writing the first bullet.
Past reports and what was tried
So they do not repeat a test that already failed.
Who approves what
One named contact and the response time you can keep.
Your inventory plan
Ads that run into a stockout waste money and can hurt rank. A good team asks when the next shipment lands.
What an Agency Should Never Ask For
Your primary login password
Amazon says not to share your password. Users and authorized partners get their own logins. A shared password means you cannot remove one person without locking out everyone, and two-step verification codes go to the wrong phone.
Ownership of your ad account
The agency should link your ad account to its manager account, which you approve and can remove. It should not create your ad account under its own login or ask you to transfer it.
Your card or bank numbers
Ad spend is billed by Amazon to the payment method on your account. No agency needs the card number. If an agency wants to pay for your ads and bill you, get the markup and the terms in writing first.
Brand Registry Administrator or Rights Owner
Whoever holds Administrator can add and remove everyone else. Amazon advises keeping protection roles inside the brand.
Admin rights for a narrow job
A designer asking for full Seller Central admin, or a writer asking for payments access, is asking for more than the job.
Your two-step verification codes
If they need a code to log in, they are using your login. Stop and set up their own user.
When to Wait Before Handing Anything Over
You do not own your accounts yet
If an old agency or a former employee is the primary user or Brand Registry Administrator, fix that first. Onboarding a new team on top of someone else's control repeats the problem.
You cannot name the job
"Grow the account" is not a job. Write the outcome and the measure first, or the access list has no edges.
There is no signed scope
Access before a written scope and price means work starts without agreed limits. Sign first, share access second.
An agency fee would be a large share of your margin
If you are a small seller, the fee can eat most of what the agency adds. Fix the listing and run Sponsored Products yourself first.
Peak season starts in under six weeks
A new team learning your account during Prime Day or the holidays is a risk. Start after, or start earlier.
About the Author
Ian Smith
Founder, Evolve Media Agency
Ian has run Evolve Media Agency since 2017 and has spent more than a decade in ecommerce, building and selling his own brands and producing listing content, video and ads for Amazon, Shopify and TikTok Shop brands. He writes every page on this site himself and the prices quoted for Evolve are the prices you pay.
Evolve Media Agency sells fixed-price Amazon projects and month-to-month PPC management, paid 100% upfront, with every price on our pricing page. Examples: listing keyword research and copy $495, a Brand Store $1,495 (five pages, one revision round, you own the files), PPC management $995 a month for up to $10,000 in ad spend, with ad spend billed by Amazon. We also offer a free listing audit.
Agency Onboarding Questions
What does an Amazon agency need from me to get started?
What permission level should an Amazon PPC agency have?
Should I give my agency my Seller Central password?
How does an agency get access to my Amazon Ads account?
Does a creative agency need Seller Central access?
What should I never give an Amazon agency?
What should a good agency ask me in onboarding?
What should happen after onboarding?
Get the Access List Before You Sign
Book a free 30-minute call. Tell us the job you want done and we will tell you exactly which access it needs, which files to send, and what it costs at our published prices, before you share a single login.