- A useful audit starts with account health and the catalogue, not with advertising.
- Set a clear warning sign for each area, so the check becomes repeatable.
- Buy Box, stock and fees are where most money is lost without anyone noticing.
- Auditing every quarter costs less than fixing a problem you find too late.
Many Amazon accounts lose sales and margin to problems nobody is looking at: broken variations, an on-off Buy Box, fees charged on the wrong dimensions. An audit is how you find them before they get expensive. Here’s the 12-point checklist we use, with what to check and the warning sign for each point.
How to use this checklist
Work with the last 90 days of data and start with the products that make up 80% of revenue. For each point note three things: current status, whether the warning sign is present, and the action and owner. At the end you’ll have a list of priorities, not a document to file away.
Involve the people who work on the account every day: whoever runs logistics, whoever manages advertising, whoever looks after content. Many problems only make sense when you combine their information. A stock-out, for example, often explains a sales drop that looked like a campaign problem.
The order isn’t random. First you look at what could block the account or catalogue, then at what limits conversion, and finally at what erodes margin.
Account health and catalogue
1. Account health
What to look at: the Account Health page in Seller Central, with the overall rating, policy violations, order defect rate, late shipments and cancellations.
Warning sign: open violation notices with no response, or a metric getting close to the at-risk threshold.
2. Catalogue and variations
What to look at: suppressed or inactive ASINs, listings with missing attributes, correct parent and child relationships, variations that should be grouped but are separate (or the other way round).
Warning sign: reviews split across several listings of the same product, or variations that disappear after a flat file upload.
3. Buy Box
What to look at: Featured Offer (Buy Box) percentage by ASIN in the Sales and Traffic business report, and who wins it when you don’t.
Warning sign: below 90% on your main products, or unauthorised resellers consistently on your listings.
Pricing, content and reviews
4. Pricing
What to look at: price consistency with your other channels, the struck-through reference price, any uncompetitive pricing alerts, margin after fees and advertising.
Warning sign: offers losing Buy Box eligibility on price, or products selling at a loss once every cost is added up.
5. Content
What to look at: title, bullet points, images, A+ content, video, translations on foreign marketplaces. Read the listing as a customer who doesn’t know the brand.
Warning sign: conversion rate below the category average, a non-compliant main image, machine-translated foreign listings. If structured work is needed, that’s what we do in our free Amazon audit, starting with the listings that matter most.
6. Reviews
What to look at: average rating, number of reviews, recurring themes in negative reviews, the Voice of the Customer dashboard.
Warning sign: a rating dropping below 4 stars, or the same defect mentioned several times in the last month.
Advertising and stock
7. Advertising
What to look at: campaign structure, search terms that spend without selling, share of spend on branded versus generic searches, ACoS and TACoS by product.
Warning sign: TACoS rising while total sales stay flat, or automatic campaigns that have been eating most of the budget for months.
8. Stock, IPI and capacity
What to look at: weeks of cover by ASIN, stock-outs in the last 90 days, excess or aged inventory, the IPI score and the capacity limits Amazon has set.
Warning sign: hero products that have gone out of stock, or capacity restricted by stock that isn’t selling. A stock-out costs you sales and organic ranking too, which then has to be rebuilt.
Fees, returns and brand
9. Fees
What to look at: fulfilment fees by ASIN, the dimensions and weight Amazon has recorded, storage fees and aged inventory surcharges, referral fees by category.
Warning sign: a product placed in a higher size tier than its real one. It’s one of the most common errors and you fix it by requesting a remeasurement.
10. Returns
What to look at: return rate by ASIN, stated reasons, reimbursements for returned stock that never came back or was damaged in the warehouse.
Warning sign: a return rate above the category, or a reason such as “not as described” that keeps coming up. Often the problem is the listing, not the product.
11. Brand Registry
What to look at: trademark registered and linked to every ASIN, access to brand-only tools (A+, Brand Store, Sponsored Brands, search analytics), users with the right roles.
Warning sign: ASINs of your brand not linked to it, or listing changes proposed by third parties being accepted.
12. Brand protection
What to look at: unauthorised sellers, counterfeits, duplicate listings, misuse of your trademark in other sellers’ titles.
Warning sign: new sellers on your ASINs every month, or reviews describing products different from the ones you make.
The checklist at a glance
| Area | Warning sign |
|---|---|
| Account health | Open violations or metrics close to the threshold |
| Catalogue and variations | Suppressed ASINs, split reviews |
| Buy Box | Below 90% on main products |
| Pricing | Lost eligibility or negative margin |
| Content | Conversion below category average |
| Reviews | Below 4 stars or a recurring defect |
| Advertising | TACoS rising while sales are flat |
| Stock and capacity | Stock-outs on hero products |
| Fees | Wrong size tier |
| Returns | Rate above the category |
| Brand Registry | ASINs not linked to the brand |
| Brand protection | New unauthorised resellers |
How often to repeat it and with which tools
A full audit once a quarter is a good rhythm. Some points, though, need checking every week: account health, Buy Box, stock on your main products. Doing it by hand on a large catalogue takes hours and it’s easy to miss something. That’s why in the projects we run we use Bettershop Analytics, our own software, to see many of these metrics in one place instead of scattered across different reports.
Whatever tool you use, what matters is that the checks are always the same and every anomaly has an owner and a deadline.
What to do now
Take your ten highest-revenue ASINs and run them through all 12 points. It takes half a day. Note only the warning signs that are present, rank them by impact on revenue and fix the top three within two weeks. Next quarter, repeat the check and extend it to the rest of the catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
What do you check in an Amazon account audit?
A full audit covers account health, catalogue and variations, Buy Box, pricing, content, reviews, advertising, stock, fees, returns, Brand Registry and brand protection. For each area you compare the data against clear thresholds. The result is a list of problems ranked by impact on revenue.
How often should you audit an Amazon account?
A full audit every quarter is a good rhythm for most brands. Some metrics, such as account health, Buy Box and stock on main products, should be checked every week. It's also worth running an extra check before peak periods such as Prime Day or Q4.
How do I find out if Amazon is charging me the wrong fulfilment fees?
Compare the dimensions and weight Amazon has recorded for each ASIN with the real measurements of the packed product. If Amazon has placed it in a higher size tier, you pay a higher fee on every unit. In that case you can request a remeasurement through Seller Central support.