Before day one: what to have ready
Onboarding goes faster when the agency is not waiting on you for basic information. Before the kickoff call, gather the following so the audit can start straight away:
- A named person on your side who can approve access requests and answer questions within a day or two.
- Product costs (landed cost per unit) for your main SKUs, so the agency can judge advertising against real margins instead of revenue alone.
- Your goals for the next six to twelve months, stated plainly: growth, profit, a launch, clearing old stock or fixing a specific problem.
- Anything that has gone wrong recently: past suspensions, open cases, listing disputes, supplier issues or a previous agency's changes.
- Upcoming plans that affect the account, such as new products, price changes, packaging changes or planned stock-outs.
- Who else has access today, including former staff, freelancers and old agencies, so you can tidy up permissions at the same time.
None of this is glamorous, but each missing item tends to cost a week somewhere in the first month.
Weeks one and two: access and audit before action
The first job is access; optimisation comes later. You grant Seller Central or Vendor Central user permissions limited to what the agency needs, plus advertising console access and Brand Registry access if relevant. You should never be asked to hand over full account ownership or your primary login. Scoped user access that you can revoke is the right arrangement.
In Seller Central, you add a user under Settings, then User Permissions, by inviting the agency contact's email address and then choosing view or edit rights area by area. Give edit rights only where the agency will actually work, and leave sensitive areas such as bank details and account settings as view only or with no access. Advertising access is managed separately, through user management in the Amazon Ads console, and Brand Registry has its own user settings. Invite named individuals at the agency so you can see who did what, and avoid a single shared login.
Alongside access, a competent agency runs a proper audit before changing anything. It should cover the current advertising structure and how efficiently the budget is spent, listing and content quality across the catalogue, account health and any open cases, inventory position including stranded or aged stock, and past performance data to see what has and has not worked.
An agency that starts changing bids or campaigns in week one, before that audit is done, is showing you a warning sign. Speed is not the point. Changes made before anyone understands the account risk fixing the wrong thing, or breaking something that was working for reasons nobody stopped to check.
There are sensible exceptions. If the audit turns up an active account health problem, a listing that has been suppressed, or a campaign spending heavily on clearly irrelevant searches, a good agency will flag it and fix it straight away, and tell you what it did and why.
Weeks three through six: the audit findings and the first plan
You should receive a written summary of the audit, ranked by impact. A good audit tells you plainly what is costing you most right now and the order in which things will be fixed. A long list of every issue found, with no ranking, is much less useful.
This is also when the first real changes usually start: campaign restructuring if needed, negative keyword cleanup, content fixes on the highest-impact listings, and resolving any urgent account health issues the audit found. Advertising efficiency is the fastest-moving lever, so expect changes there to start showing in this window.
Agree the reporting cadence clearly at this point too. You should know exactly what you will receive, how often and what it will cover. If reporting is still vague six weeks in, raise it directly.
A useful audit summary usually fits on a few pages and answers four questions: what is working and should be left alone, what is losing money now, what is blocking growth, and what will be done first, second and third. If you cannot answer those four questions after reading it, ask for a shorter version that does.
By month three: a working rhythm, still a work in progress
By now you should have a regular weekly or fortnightly meeting with your account team, a reporting format you understand and can act on, and visible progress on the top priorities from the audit. Organic rank improvements depend on conversion history building up, so this is typically when they start to show.
Do not expect a finished, fully optimised account by month three. Amazon account management is ongoing work with no completion date. At this stage you are looking for signs of a working system: clear priorities, visible progress against them, and a team that gets in touch before you have to chase it.
The first three months at a glance
| Period | What the agency should be doing | What you should receive |
|---|---|---|
| Before kickoff | Sending a clear list of access and information requests | A named account lead and a kickoff date |
| Weeks one and two | Setting up access, auditing the account, fixing only urgent problems | Confirmation of access, and notes on any urgent fixes made |
| Weeks three to six | Presenting audit findings, starting the highest-impact changes | A ranked written audit, a plan, and an agreed reporting format |
| Weeks seven to twelve | Working through the plan, adjusting based on results | Regular reports against the baseline and a standing meeting |
Why the baseline matters
Ask the agency to record a baseline before it changes anything: sales, advertising spend, ACoS, TACoS, conversion rate, sessions and account health for a recent period, ideally covering the same weeks last year too. Without it, nobody can say later whether results improved because of the agency's work, because of seasonality, or because the whole category moved.
The baseline also protects you if the relationship does not work out. When you review the engagement at the end of the first quarter, you compare against numbers both sides agreed at the start, instead of arguing over memories. Our article on the KPIs worth tracking with an agency covers which numbers matter for different goals.
Warning signs during onboarding
- Asking for your primary login, password or two-step verification codes instead of creating their own user.
- Large changes to bids, budgets or listings in the first days with no audit and no explanation.
- No written audit by the end of the first month or so.
- Reports that show only advertising metrics, with nothing on total sales or organic performance.
- A different contact every time you get in touch, or nobody able to say who works on your account each week.
- Reluctance to put the reporting cadence, scope or exit terms in writing.
One of these on its own may have an innocent explanation. Several together in the first six weeks usually do not. Our guide to Amazon agency red flags covers the wider list, and the agency contract guide explains which terms to settle before you sign.
What the agency needs from you
Onboarding is a two-way job. Agencies stall most often waiting for approvals, answers about stock or pricing, and decisions on content changes. Agree up front how quickly you will respond and who on your side can say yes. If you plan a price change, a promotion or a new product, tell the agency before it happens; a change they do not know about can make their reports misleading and their next decisions wrong.
Keep your own records too. Note what you agreed in each meeting, and download a copy of key reports each month. If you ever change agencies, you will want that history in your hands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scoped user permissions covering exactly what they need to do the work: Seller Central or Vendor Central access, advertising console access, and Brand Registry access where relevant. You should retain full account ownership and grant access you can revoke, never hand over primary login credentials or account ownership itself.
Urgent fixes, such as an active account health issue or an obviously broken campaign burning budget, are reasonable to address immediately. Broader strategic changes before completing an audit are not, since changes made without understanding the account risk fixing the wrong problem first.
Advertising efficiency changes typically show within four to six weeks once the audit is complete and initial fixes are in place. Organic rank movement takes longer, generally two to three months, because it depends on conversion history accumulating over time rather than a change you can make instantly.
A prioritised summary of findings across advertising efficiency, listing and content quality, account health status, and inventory position, with a clear view on what is costing the most right now and the sequence of planned fixes. A report that lists every possible issue with no prioritisation is less useful than one that tells you what matters most.
Raise it directly and ask for the specific cadence and reporting structure you were told to expect at signing. A properly run engagement has clear communication rhythms established within the first few weeks, and persistent vagueness this far in is worth treating as a real signal rather than early-stage noise.
You should. Campaigns should run inside your own Seller Central and Amazon Ads accounts, with the agency added as users. If an agency wants to run your ads from an account it controls, ask what happens to the campaigns and their history if you part ways, and get the answer in writing.
Remove each agency user from Seller Central user permissions, from user management in the Amazon Ads console and from Brand Registry. Then check for any connected apps or tools the agency authorised and revoke those too. Because each person had their own login, removing access takes minutes and nothing changes for your own login.