Help please, I don't understand why I've had this
Got the following email from Amazon and I’m at a loss. I’m not a business, I sell a few - about 20 a year! - spare books of my own on Amazon. The original links don’t go through to anything in the least helpful.
Many thanks
We have found that you have violated a policy.
Why did I receive this message?
We have observed that your Invoice Defect Rate has exceeded the threshold of 5%. The Invoice Defect Rate is all orders from Amazon Business customers for which an invoice was not uploaded within one business day after shipment as a percentage of total orders from Amazon Business customers. The [Amazon Business invoicing policy can be found here](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/
We’re here to help
If you have questions about this policy or your account, please refer to the Invoice Defect Rate [help page](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/r
What can I do to avoid account deactivation?
Please ensure that you no longer violate the above policy by providing Amazon Business customers with a valid VAT invoice (or a receipt, if you are not legally obliged to issue a VAT invoice) for each order within one business day after order dispatch is confirmed. You do not need to submit a plan of action to us at this time.
How can I provide invoices to customers?
You can provide invoices to customers in one of the following ways:
- Activate automated invoicing (recommended): Amazon can generate VAT invoices or receipts on your behalf at no cost and make them available for customers to download.
- VAT registered sellers can [activate the VAT Calculation Service](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/redirectand benefit from automated invoice generation.
- Sellers exempt from VAT registration in both EU and the UK can [declare their VAT exemption status](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com and benefit from automated receipt generation.
- Invoice upload: you can upload your own invoices within one business day after shipment confirmation, either manually via the [Manage Orders](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.compage, or automatically through a [third-party solution](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/redirect
Has this message been sent in error?
If you believe that you have not violated the above policy, please [submit an explanation](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/sellermobile Your explanation should include the following information:
- How your account has not violated the Amazon Business invoicing policy
- Evidence that shows that your account has complied with the Invoice Defect Rate threshold
You can view your account performance on the [Account Health page](https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/nms/sellermobile/redirect/in Seller Central or by selecting Account Health on the home screen of the Amazon Seller app on your The Account Health page shows how well your account is performing against the performance metrics and policies required to sell on Amazon.
Thank you.
-Amazon
15 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
Amazon Business invoicing policy
All sellers are required to provide Amazon Business customers with a valid VAT invoice for each order within one business day after order dispatch is confirmed. Sellers that are not required to apply VAT on their sales are required to provide receipts. Similarly, credit notes on returns from Amazon Business customers must be provided within one business day of return confirmation.
Amazon allows sellers to provide invoices and credit notes via the Amazon VAT Calculation Service, in which case invoices and credit notes are either generated by Amazon or generated by the seller based on VAT calculation data provided by Amazon (available for eligible third-party solution providers only).
Sellers not required to register for VAT in the EU and the UK can let Amazon issue receipts on their behalf by declaring their VAT exemption status.
Sellers who do not use an Amazon solution to generate invoices or receipts must upload their own invoices, receipts, and credit notes, either on Seller Central via Manage orders or using a third-party solution provider.
For more information, please refer to this help page.
Amazon Business invoicing policy
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
You must have had an order from a business customer - check your recent orders to find which it was. Even though you are not running a business yourself, you must provide an invoice or receipt to any business customer automatically. This is a VAT requirement: the business needs the invoice to recover any input VAT and also for their general accounting purposes
As you are presumably not registered for VAT yourself (and there would be no UK VAT on books, anyway, only on the postage charge), you can only supply a receipt which makes no reference to VAT. For this order, you can create one yourself using Word, that include the buyer’s and your full name and address, and the purchase details (date, title, price etc). Save it as a pdf, go to the order in your seller pages and click on “Upload invoice”
For any future sales, you can do the same or use Amazon’s own invoicing service as set out in their message
Seller_DROodOAYHftnc
You don’t have to be a business, BUT if you sell a book to a business customer then you have to upload an invoice/receipt.
If you are not VAT registered, which I assume you are not, then you can opt in to declare you are VAT exempt and Amazon will automatically upload receipts for you - this is a fairly new thing.
Click on the link in Neil’s post above to declare your Vat Exempt status.
Prior to that we had to create a receipt and upload it to the order, which you will need to do for the previous ones.
Many of us used www.invoice-generator.com. Fill in the details, download to your computer then upload to the order on the shipped order page.
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
Here is the announcement from last year that you probably missed
Seller_AJESum8MeHQmw
Thanks folks, I very much appreciate the replies. The recent orders I had all seemed to be from individuals to domestic addresses, but presumably one of them must be registered as a business seller. I’m certainly not VAT registered, it’s my own books usually below original cost. I think a total of £150 last year. 
It would be helpful if Amazon flagged the buyer’s status on the order management page, unless I’ve missed it.
I think the few books I’ve left are off to the charity shop!
Seller_AJESum8MeHQmw
Thank you - I don’t recall it being flagged on the original order, but I may have missed it. What really annoys me is that none of the links in the original email from them go anywhere useful. And I queried it after I’d posted, and got a nonsense reply back which was totally unhelpful.
(Cue my rant about having worked all my life in IT and how badly designed Amazon systems are and how appallingly badly their emails are written!)
Seller_sLo12uu4sVKIH
If you go to manage orders screen and click no invoice uploaded it will show you all those which require and upload. It must be in pdf format to upload.
Seller_AJESum8MeHQmw
Thanks all. You’ve been way more helpful than Amazon Support!
I too suspect it was a dropshipper. Shame there’s no way to block them or business buyers. Amazon could help by doing a pop up flag, but that’s too simple, isn’t it.
Worse one I had was buying something on Amazon and it arriving from Ebay. Arg.
