Amazon Performance Update! This defect rate is included in the indicator

The US site has recently begun to restrict sellers from replenishing their stocks. Warehouses are overwhelmed. For some products, the delivery time of FBA inventory has even been delayed to nearly a month. This situation is closely related to the forced resumption of work in the United States and the second outbreak of the epidemic.

At the end of April, when European countries reached a turning point and began to resume work in an orderly manner, we predicted that the resumption of work in Europe would be much better than that in the United States . Many sellers with spare capacity have begun to deploy European sites.

Expanding new markets is a good thing, but everyone must pay attention. The European site has a lot of compliance policies and requirements. Just yesterday, the European site introduced a new policy that will introduce a new indicator in store performance - Invoice Defect Rate (IDR).

Invoice Defect Rate (IDR) refers to the fact that Amazon sellers in Europe must provide each Business buyer with a valid VAT invoice for the purchased products. After each Business order is shipped, the seller must upload the invoice within one working day. Failure to do so will be recorded in the performance.

After seeing the requirements for Business orders, some sellers must have breathed a sigh of relief. After all, business orders are few and far between, and small and medium-sized sellers generally only receive a few in a month. In fact, a very unusual incident occurred last year, where a 2C order also showed "missing invoice" .

We analyzed this in detail at the time, you can click here to review it. To sum up, most business orders and some B2C orders require sellers to provide invoices. In other words, this update of the "invoice defect rate" will also affect ordinary orders, and it is an issue that all European sellers need to pay attention to.

The calculation method of invoice defect rate (IDR) should be consistent with ODR, which is the number of defective orders/total orders within a certain period. The current requirement is that IDR cannot exceed 5%. However, if it exceeds the limit, it will only be warned temporarily, unlike ODR, which will face the risk of store closure.

Amazon also made it clear that the reason for not taking action is to give sellers a transition period. After the transition period, there will definitely be penalties for exceeding the IDR limit. As for the specific content, Amazon will notify sellers 90 days in advance before implementation.

There are three ways to solve this invoice problem:

1. Use the official automatic tax calculation service (VCS)

2. Use an officially certified third-party tax solution provider

3. Manually upload the invoice from the Manage Orders page

There is not much to say about the last two methods, so I will focus on the first method, which is also the method Amazon recommends sellers to use this time.

VCS is currently free and will automatically calculate VAT based on the parameters set by the seller, and directly provide the VAT invoice to the customer. In order to promote this function, Amazon even wrote on the IDR policy page that "For sellers who use VCS services, the store IDR is 0%."

From the perspective of free and convenient, VCS is indeed the best choice. However, activating VCS also means that there is not much room for maneuver in the tax calculation process. In addition, VCS had a bug last year, which included tax on self-delivered orders that were not subject to tax. Amazon has not yet given a definite answer to this matter.

Therefore, if sellers want to use VCS to solve invoice problems, they must carefully consider these situations and risks. When there are not many orders, manual uploading is also possible. You can choose according to your own situation. In short, IDR will be another important performance of the European site, which requires European sellers to maintain it well.

The European site is indeed very attractive now. On the one hand, the policies are favorable, and on the other hand, the impact of the epidemic is small. Many sellers who have recently been frustrated by the American site are watching the European site. In addition to paying attention to the unique policies of the European site, everyone should also pay attention to related issues.