Honestly I am about to lose my mind with our office amazon account. I'm trying to get supplies ready for a big product shoot we have here in Chicago on Monday morning and every time I log in the cart has changed. I've got five different designers all adding random stuff like expensive art pens and heavy duty cable ties but then someone else deletes the whole cart or checks out before I'm actually done reviewing everything. We have a $2,000 budget for this specific project and I'm seeing weird charges on our company card because people just hit buy now without thinking. It's absolute chaos and I spent two hours yesterday trying to untangle who ordered what and which project it even belongs to. It's so messy and we really need a better system because this is taking up way too much of my time when I should be prepping for the actual shoot. Amazon Business is supposed to make this easier but right now it's just a headache. How on earth do you guys manage a shared amazon business cart for a team without it becoming a total disaster? Is there some kind of approval setting I'm missing or do you just use wish lists or what because I'm ready to just lock everyone out...
To add to the point above: You really need to check out the Approval Workflows! Im still learning the ropes but it is an amazing tool for keeping your company card safe from those accidental clicks!! Seriously, go into the Business Settings menu and find the Buying Policies section. You can set up a rule where any order over a specific amount—like $100—requires your manual approval before the order actually processes. Total life saver. It is so fantastic for peace of mind! I also love using the Groups feature to separate different projects. If you put your designers into their own sub-group, their 'buy now' urges wont mess with your main product shoot cart. This is way more reliable than just hoping everyone follows the rules. Everything feels so much more secure and organized! Definitely give it a look before Monday.
> How on earth do you guys manage a shared amazon business cart for a team without it becoming a total disaster? Oh man, I totally feel your pain! I used to deal with that exact same nightmare back when I was managing a crew of twelve designers for a huge studio. It was absolute madness! People were buying random $50 sketchbooks and 100-packs of glitter on the company card without telling anyone... I nearly lost my mind! But honestly, once I discovered the Approval Workflows feature in the Amazon Business settings, everything changed! It is seriously fantastic and saved my sanity. You can basically set it up so any order over a certain amount, or even every single order, has to be approved by you before the payment actually goes through. It sends you an email, you click a button, and boom... total control! Heres the amazing process we used to stop the chaos:
To add to the point above: digging into those CSV exports of your order history can show you exactly where the budget goes. It really helps to have that factual overview of the $2k spend... it makes tracking way easier tho. Honestly, just look into any spend management tool from a brand like Brex to lock things down. It keeps everything way more organized for big projects. You might want to peek at Smartphone Board for some ideas on sharing Amazon carts without the headache.