Guide
Authorized Reseller Management Guide
How to build and keep the list that makes MAP monitoring meaningful — the Authorized Network — from distributor agreements to Amazon seller ids, with the rules for matching, classification and review.
A MAP program is only as good as its answer to "who does the brand recognize as an authorized reseller?" The answer lives in a list — the Authorized Network — and this guide is about building that list, keeping it current, and using it so that every seller observed on your listings is either explained by an entry or waiting for a decision.
The companion article Authorized vs Unauthorized Amazon Sellers explains why the three categories — authorized, unauthorized, unknown — are three and not two. This guide assumes that and gets practical.
1. What a network entry holds
An entry is a partner, as your own records know them, plus the storefront they sell through.
| Field | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Company name; account or contract reference | So the entry ties back to an agreement your sales or legal team can find. |
| Contact name, email, phone | So your team can reach them. This contact is for your conversations, not for enforcement notices. |
| Marketplace and Amazon seller id | The storefront. The seller id is what matching uses. An entry without one matches nothing. |
| Storefront name | For recognition. Names change; the id is the identity. |
| Scope | What the partner is authorized to sell, in your words: everything, a brand, a product family, a territory. |
| Status: authorized, inactive, revoked | Whether the relationship is current. |
| Authorized from / through | The term. An entry past its "through" date should stop matching without anyone editing it. |
| Tags and notes | Whatever your program files: tier, territory, account manager, the reason for a revocation. |
The network is per brand. A distributor authorized for one of your brands is not thereby authorized for another; declare them under each.
2. Where the seller ids come from
The seller id is the field partners are least likely to have given you and the one that makes everything work. Sources, roughly in order of reliability:
- The partner's own storefront page on Amazon. The id is in the URL of a seller's storefront and profile. Ask the partner for the link; it is not confidential.
- The partner, directly. A distributor that sells on Amazon knows its seller id; a distributor whose customers sell on Amazon may be willing to share theirs.
- Observation. Once monitoring is running, storefronts appear on your listings with their ids. A storefront whose name you recognize as a partner can be matched to the partner's entry — by adding the observed id to the entry — from the observed sellers to decide about list.
- Your own storefront. Add it, and classify it as brand internal, so your own offers never read as an unknown seller.
Do not guess an id from a name. Two storefronts with similar names are two sellers until the ids say otherwise.
3. How automatic matching works, and its one rule
When a storefront is observed on your listings, its seller id is compared with the network for the brand on that marketplace.
- A match links the entry to the seller. If the entry is authorized and the date is inside its term, the seller's standing becomes authorized, with the entry recorded as the reason.
- No match leaves the seller unknown.
Matching never sets unauthorized, and it never downgrades a standing a person set. A seller your team marked brand internal or exempt keeps that even if an entry later matches, because the person knew something the match does not.
The one rule is worth stating as a policy for your team: the system may say "authorized" because you declared it; only a person may say "unauthorized", with a reason. MapProtector's matching is described on Authorized Network.
4. Classifying the rest
Sellers that match nothing are unknown, and unknown is the honest state until someone decides. The standings a person may record:
| Standing | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Authorized | A partner you had not recorded. Better: add them to the network so the standing is explained by an entry. |
| Unauthorized | A seller your brand has decided is not authorized — with the reason: agreement ended on a date; no supply relationship; the distributor confirms they are not a customer. |
| Formerly authorized | A relationship that has ended. Keeps the history readable. |
| Brand internal | Your own storefront. |
| Exempt | A seller your program deliberately does not act on — a liquidator you have agreed terms with, a marketplace's own retail arm. |
Every classification carries a reason and is audited. The reason is not paperwork: it is what a future notice, a future dispute and a future colleague will rely on.
The investigation that precedes the decision is in How to Investigate an Unknown Amazon Seller and the Seller Investigation Framework.
5. Importing and reconciling
For a network of any size, import a CSV rather than typing entries: one row per partner storefront, with a required company name and the other fields as columns. Validate first, read the row report, correct the file, then apply. Existing entries are updated by seller id or company name rather than duplicated, so the same file can be re-applied after corrections.
After an import — and after adding ids to entries that lacked them — run a reconciliation: every observed storefront is compared with the network again, and the list of unmatched sellers shrinks to the ones that genuinely need a decision.
6. Authorization is not compliance
Keep the two facts in separate columns, always. An authorized partner below the floor is still below the floor; what changes is the response — a call before a notice — not the measurement. And a seller's claim to be authorized is a claim: check it against the network; if it is right, the network was incomplete and should be corrected; if it is wrong, nothing changes.
If you want a partner measured but never enforced — during a renegotiation, say — that is an exception with monitor only, not a change of standing.
7. A maintenance routine
The network decays quietly: partners are signed, agreements end, storefronts are added. A light routine keeps it current.
Weekly (15 minutes). Filter the seller list to unknown, sort by products observed or last seen, and work the top. Add partners' storefronts to the network; classify the rest with reasons; leave what you genuinely do not know as unknown with a note.
Monthly. Review entries with an "authorized through" date inside the next sixty days. Confirm renewals with the account manager; let the others expire.
On every agreement event. A new distributor, a terminated one, a territory change: update the entry the same day. The network should be as current as your contracts file.
Quarterly. Reconcile against the distributors' own customer lists where they will share them. This is where sub-distributors — the largest source of legitimate unknown sellers for a manufacturer — get recorded.
8. What good looks like
- Every partner storefront has a seller id and a term.
- The unknown list is short and consists of storefronts that appeared recently.
- Every unauthorized standing has a reason a colleague could read and agree with.
- Below-floor findings from partners are visibly partners, and are handled as conversations.
- No notice has ever gone to a seller who turned out to be a partner's sub-distributor.
The last one is the test. A network kept this way makes it true.