Manufacturing vs. Sourcing: Understanding Amazon Vendor Central Distributor Views
When navigating Amazon Vendor Central, it’s crucial to understand the two main reporting views for sales data: Manufacturing and Sourcing. While they may seem similar, their differences can have a significant impact on the accuracy and completeness of your business insights. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know.
Manufacturing vs. Sourcing: A Quick Comparison
The table below highlights the key data point differences and shows why the Manufacturing view is generally the superior choice.
| Data Point | Sourcing | Manufacturing |
|---|---|---|
| Sellable Units | ✅ | ✅ |
| Shipped Units | ✅ | ✅ |
| Shipped Revenue | ✅ | ✅ |
| Shipped COGS | ✅ | ✅ |
| Ordered Units | ❌ | ✅ |
| Ordered Revenue | ❌ | ✅ |
| Glance Views | ❌ | ✅ |
| Net PPM | ❌ | ✅ |
| Hourly Sales | ❌ | ✅ |
Sourcing View: A Limited Snapshot
The Sourcing view provides a narrow dataset. It only includes data for ASINs that Amazon has purchased directly from you via your specific vendor code. This view has several key limitations:
- Limited Data: It doesn’t include vital metrics like ordered revenue or ordered units. This means you can’t see the value of purchases on the date a customer made a purchase, which makes it harder to align sales data with advertising campaigns.
- Delayed Reporting: Amazon reports shipped revenue and units on the dispatch date, not the purchase date. This makes it challenging to perform full attribution for your marketing efforts, such as organic traffic, ads, and promotions.
- Incomplete Picture: If your products are sold by other third-party wholesalers, the sourcing view won’t include that performance data, giving you an incomplete picture of your brand’s total sales on Amazon.
In essence, the Sourcing view provides a limited snapshot of the products you directly sold to Amazon, but it’s not the best tool for comprehensive analysis.
Manufacturing View: The Complete Picture
The Manufacturing view is the preferred option for most sellers because it offers a much richer and more complete dataset. This view aggregates performance data for every ASIN linked to your brand, regardless of who sold it to Amazon.
Here’s why the Manufacturing view is so valuable:
- Comprehensive Data: It includes all sales data for your brand, even if the products were sourced from other vendors or third-party wholesalers. This gives you a more accurate and holistic view of your brand’s performance on Amazon.
- Essential Metrics: The Manufacturing view provides crucial data points like ordered revenue and ordered units. These metrics are aligned with the date the customer checked out, which is essential for matching sales data with advertising conversion data.
- Market Sizing Insights: By including all ASINs associated with your brand, this view gives you more information to help estimate category sizes. This can be invaluable when evaluating the potential of new products or markets.
- Advertising Advantage: When your sales data aligns with your advertising conversions, it becomes much easier to calculate key metrics like Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACOS). Additionally, the manufacturing view allows you to track the performance of any ASIN you’re advertising, even if it wasn’t sourced directly from you.
While the Manufacturing view is powerful, it can sometimes be a bit finicky. An ASIN might disappear from your reports if its brand or manufacturing mapping gets disconnected in the Amazon catalog. However, this issue can usually be resolved by submitting a support ticket to Vendor Central.
Final Thoughts
While the Sourcing view is the default for new Vendor Central accounts, the Manufacturing view offers the comprehensive data you need to make informed business decisions. By providing a complete picture of your brand’s performance and aligning sales data with advertising conversions, the Manufacturing view is an essential tool for any seller looking to maximize their success on Amazon.