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S2P (Source to Pay) Glossary
S2P (Source to Pay) is the full procurement cycle from finding a supplier to settling the final invoice: sourcing, negotiation, contracting, purchase order, quality control, payment, and reconciliation.
Safety Stock Glossary
Safety Stock is the buffer held against uncertainty: extra inventory covering the gap between expected demand and demand that arrives higher than expected, or expected lead times and supply that runs later than expected.
Sales Velocity Glossary
Sales Velocity is how fast inventory converts into sales: units sold per day, or per week, over a defined period. It is the pulse rate of a product, and it drives almost everything downstream — ranking, replenishment timing, storage exposure, and cash flow.
SAS (Strategic Account Services) Glossary
SAS (Strategic Account Services) is a paid support programme for eligible sellers that provides a dedicated account manager inside the platform: operational guidance, escalation routes, and strategic planning from someone whose job is your account.
SB (Sponsored Brands) Glossary
SB (Sponsored Brands) is the advertising format available to brand-registered owners: a headline, the brand logo, and either a collection of products or a video, placed prominently above search results.
SBSAS (Standards for Brands Selling in the Amazon Store) Glossary
SBSAS (Standards for Brands Selling in the Amazon Store) is the policy framework that governs how brands may sell on the platform — including the platform’s ability to require that certain manufacturers and brand owners supply through the wholesale vendor model rather than…
SC (Seller Central) Glossary
SC (Seller Central) is the operating dashboard where a third-party seller runs the business: listings, inventory, pricing, orders, advertising, reports, and account health, all in one interface.
SCAC (Standard Carrier Alpha Code) Glossary
SCAC (Standard Carrier Alpha Code) is the two-to-four-character identifier assigned to a transportation company across the freight industry.
SCM (Supply Chain Management) Glossary
SCM (Supply Chain Management) is the coordination of everything between raw materials and the customer’s doorstep: production, freight, customs, warehousing, and replenishment into the fulfilment network.
SCP (Supply Chain Programme) Glossary
SCP (Supply Chain Programme) — now part of the platform’s consolidated supply chain services — is an integrated logistics offering that connects ocean freight, bulk storage, and final-mile replenishment into one route from your manufacturer to the fulfilment network.
SD (Sales Discount) Glossary
SD (Sales Discount) is the deduction from gross sales created by promotional activity — deal events, coupons, and member-exclusive offers — recorded in vendor reporting as a reduction to revenue rather than as a cost line.
SDA (Small Domestic Appliances) Glossary
SDA (Small Domestic Appliances) is the product category covering portable electrical household devices: air fryers, coffee makers, blenders, toasters, irons, and the like. It is one of the higher-volume category families in home goods, with its own fee structure and compliance obligations.
SDA (Selective Distribution Agreement) Glossary
An SDA (Selective Distribution Agreement) is a contract that limits who may distribute a brand’s products: resellers must meet defined criteria for stores, presentation, expertise, and service before they are authorised to sell the range.
SDE (Seller’s Discretionary Earnings) Glossary
SDE (Seller’s Discretionary Earnings) is the valuation measure used for small and medium businesses: net income with the owner’s compensation, plus discretionary, non-recurring, and non-operating expenses added back.
SDN (Software Defined Networking) Glossary
SDN (Software Defined Networking) is infrastructure managed by software rather than by configuring physical hardware: routing and network control handled programmatically, which is what allows cloud platforms to scale and reconfigure at speed.
SDS (Safety Data Sheet) Glossary
An SDS (Safety Data Sheet) is the standardised document describing a product’s chemical properties, physical hazards, and safe handling requirements, organised in a fixed set of sections so that anyone receiving it can find the same information in the same place.
Search Term Report Glossary
The Search Term Report is the advertising data that shows what shoppers actually typed when your ads appeared — and how each of those queries performed. The distinction it captures is fundamental: you bid on keywords, but customers search in terms.
Search Volume Glossary
Search Volume is how often a query is entered on the marketplace over a period — the demand ceiling above every keyword decision. It determines how much traffic a keyword can deliver at all, which is why it belongs near the start of any product or advertising plan.
Selective Distribution Network Glossary
A Selective Distribution Network is a curated set of authorised sellers a brand distributes through, with membership conditional on meeting defined criteria. It is the enforcement arm of a selective distribution agreement: the agreement sets the terms, the network is who actually sells under them.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Glossary
SEO is the work of earning unpaid visibility in a search engine’s results. On a marketplace it means giving the ranking system the signals it weighs — relevance to the query, and evidence that shoppers who arrive through it buy.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Glossary
The SERP is the page of results a search query returns: the organic listings, the sponsored placements above and within them, and the filters and merchandising the platform applies around the edges. It is where discovery actually happens.
SFP (Seller Fulfilled Prime) Glossary
SFP lets sellers who ship from their own warehouses carry the Prime badge, provided they can meet the delivery promises attached to it — and keep meeting them after the trial ends.
SFR (Search Frequency Rank) Glossary
SFR is a ranking of how often a given search term is typed by shoppers — a relative popularity measure from first-party data, rather than an absolute count of searches.
Shipped COGS Glossary
Shipped COGS is the cost of the goods that were actually shipped to customers in a period, valued at your cost per unit. It is the cost counterpart to shipped revenue, and it measures what genuinely left the building rather than what was ordered or received.
Shipped Revenue Glossary
Shipped revenue is the sales value of products that were actually shipped to customers in a period: units that left the network multiplied by their selling price. It is the realised figure, as distinct from the order book.
Shipped Units Glossary
Shipped Units is the count of products that have actually left the fulfilment centre and are on their way to a customer — as opposed to ordered units, which include everything that was purchased, including what has not shipped, may still cancel, or is sitting in a pending state.
Shipped Volume Glossary
Shipped Volume is the unit count of products shipped to customers within a reporting period — the operational counterpart to shipped revenue, and a direct read on realised demand rather than on intent to buy.
SIA (Sell-In Agreement) Glossary
An SIA (Sell-In Agreement) is the commercial contract that sets the wholesale terms of a first-party relationship: baseline wholesale pricing, trade allowances, co-operative marketing contributions, return provisions, and logistics chargeback schedules.
SIOC (Ships in Own Container) Glossary
SIOC (Ships in Own Container) is a packaging certification tier within the frustration-free packaging programme: the product’s own packaging is engineered, tested, and approved to ship through the network to the customer without an overbox or any added protective packaging.
SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging) Glossary
SIPP (Ships in Product Packaging) is the programme under which products ship to customers in their original branded packaging, without an additional shipping box — the successor framing of ship-in-own-container, and a change that reduces packaging waste and operational cost at the same time.
SIV (Seller Identity Verification) Glossary
SIV (Seller Identity Verification) is the process of proving that a seller is who they claim to be: business entity details, identification documents, bank information, and the links between them all checked before the account is allowed to trade.
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) Glossary
A SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is the internal code a business assigns to each distinct sellable variant — distinguished by brand, style, colour, size, or pack configuration — and used to track that variant through inventory, orders, and accounts.
SLA (Service Level Agreement) Glossary
An SLA is a committed performance standard — a timeframe, a response window, or a quality threshold that one party undertakes to meet.
SnL (Small and Light) Glossary
SnL (Small and Light) was the programme built for low-priced, lightweight items: a separate fee structure that made the economics of cheap, fast-moving products workable by removing the cost elements that their margins could not carry.
SnS (Subscribe & Save) Glossary
Subscribe & Save is the recurring-delivery programme: shoppers commit to regular deliveries of eligible products at a discount, and the subscription renews automatically on their chosen schedule until they change or cancel it.
SOA (Sell-Out Agreement) Glossary
A Sell-Out Agreement is a margin-funding arrangement based on sell-through: the contribution a brand makes is tied to units sold to end customers, rather than to units shipped into the network.
SOH (Sellable on Hand) Glossary
SOH (Sellable on Hand) is the quantity of inventory that is available to sell right now: units in the network that could be picked and shipped to a customer immediately.
SoROOS (Sourceable Replenishment Out of Stock) Glossary
SoROOS (Sourceable Replenishment Out of Stock) is an availability metric that captures the worst kind of gap: occasions when the product could genuinely be replenished — it is sourceable — but the listing is not buyable for customers, because of a suppression, a flag, or a…
SORT (Sortable) Glossary
SORT (Sortable) is the logistics classification for standard-size products that pass through the network’s automated handling: units that fit conveyors and routing bins without manual intervention — within the standard size dimensions and under the weight limit.
SOV (Share of Voice) Glossary
SOV (Share of Voice) is the share of visibility a brand holds against its competitors for a given set of terms or within a category — the proportion of impressions or placements that belong to you.
SP (Sponsored Products) Glossary
SP (Sponsored Products) is the advertising format that promotes individual product listings in search results and on product pages, charged on a cost-per-click basis and targeted by keyword or product.
SP (Small Parcel) Glossary
SP (Small Parcel) is the inbound shipping method that sends inventory as individual, separately labelled cartons through standard ground carrier networks, rather than as palletised freight.
SP-API (Selling Partner API) Glossary
SP-API (Selling Partner API) is the platform’s official programming interface for developers, replacing the older web-service model: a modern, permission-scoped way for applications to read and write business data — orders, inventory, listings, finances, advertising —…
SPD (Small Parcel Delivery) Glossary
SPD (Small Parcel Delivery) is inbound shipping by individually packed, separately tracked cartons through commercial ground networks — the same method as small parcel under its delivery-side name, bypassing palletised freight requirements and usually reaching the network faster.
SPICS (Super Pan-European Inbound Consolidation Service) Glossary
SPICS (Super Pan-European Inbound Consolidation Service) is the European inbound programme that lets vendors and high-volume sellers send inventory to a single consolidation point, from which the platform manages cross-border distribution to fulfilment centres across several EU marketplaces.
SPN (Service Provider Network) Glossary
SPN (Service Provider Network) is the platform’s directory of vetted third-party providers — agencies, software, and service firms — that have been approved to support sellers, covering advertising, account health, logistics, and other operational functions.
SPOC (Single Point of Contact) Glossary
SPOC (Single Point of Contact) is the practice of channelling communication with an organisation through one designated person or team, so that questions, escalations, and commitments have a single owner rather than being distributed across whoever happens to answer.
Sponsored Display Glossary
Sponsored Display is a self-service advertising format that reaches audiences on and off the marketplace, targeted by shopping behaviour and product views rather than by keyword alone. Creative is generated automatically from the listing.
SQP (Search Query Performance) Glossary
Search Query Performance is an analytics view that maps the shopper funnel for a search term: from the searches made, through impressions, clicks, and cart additions, to the purchases completed. It shows what happens across the whole journey for a given query.
SR (Sales Rank) Glossary
Sales Rank is the category-level ranking of a product by recent sales velocity: a position that rises as the product sells and falls when it does not. Lower numbers are better, and the rank is relative to everything else selling in the same category.
SRP (Secure Receive Process) Glossary
The Secure Receive Process is a verified receiving workflow for inbound freight: the consignment is scanned and counted under a documented chain of custody as it is checked in, so that what arrived is recorded authoritatively rather than reconstructed later.
SRP (Suggested Retail Price) Glossary
The Suggested Retail Price is the manufacturer’s recommended shelf price for a product — the figure published as the reference price, which marketplaces display as a struck-through comparison where the current price is lower.
SSA (Shipping Settings Automation) Glossary
Shipping Settings Automation is the self-fulfilment tool that selects carriers and purchases labels according to rules you define: service levels, delivery promises, cut-off times, and coverage mapped to your own shipping configuration.
SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) Glossary
The Serial Shipping Container Code is the standard GS1 barcode that uniquely identifies each physical carton or pallet in transit: an eighteen-digit identifier, applied as a label, that travels with the unit from dispatch to receipt.
SSPA (Self-Service Performance Advertising) Glossary
SSPA, or self-service performance advertising, is the umbrella term for the advertising console a brand operates itself: the search and display formats bought, targeted, and budgeted without a sales representative involved.
SSR (Seller Central Ship Request) Glossary
A Ship Request is the authorisation created in the seller console to send inbound inventory for fulfilment: it defines the consignment, books the appointment, and sets the compliance expectations the shipment will be measured against on arrival.
Standard Size Tier Glossary
Standard size is the regular-product classification: the tier below oversize, carrying the more favourable fulfilment fee schedule because those units move through the network’s automated handling with less space and less labour per item.
Stockouts Glossary
A stockout is demand without inventory: shoppers arrive, the product cannot be bought, and the sale goes to a competitor. It is the most expensive routine failure in e-commerce because the loss is not limited to the missed orders.
Storage Fees Glossary
Storage fees are the recurring charge for holding inventory in the fulfilment network: a monthly rate based on the space the inventory occupies, with additional charges for stock held beyond defined age thresholds and during peak periods.
Storefront Glossary
A Storefront is the multi-page branded destination available to registered brands: a small site-within-the-marketplace that showcases the catalogue and the brand narrative, and carries no competitor advertising or search-results distractions.
STR (Sell-Through Rate) Glossary
Sell-Through Rate is the proportion of inventory that sells within a period: units sold relative to units available. It is the cleanest single read on whether purchasing and demand are matched.
Stranded Inventory Glossary
Stranded inventory is stock sitting in the fulfilment network with no live listing to sell it: the units exist, occupy space, and cannot be bought, because the listing that would sell them has been suppressed, closed, or otherwise made inactive.
Supply Chain Glossary
The supply chain is the whole pipeline from raw materials to a delivered product: sourcing, manufacturing, freight, inbound processing, storage, and fulfilment. It is the machine that makes the listing buyable, and its performance shows up as availability.
Supply Chain Logistics Glossary
Supply chain logistics is the physical execution layer of the pipeline: freight, warehousing, routing, receiving, and the handling of goods at every stage between the factory and the customer.
SW (Ship Window) Glossary
The Ship Window is the required delivery date range on purchase orders: the earliest and latest dates within which goods are expected to arrive. Deliver too late and supply is disrupted; deliver too early and the receiving network is holding stock before it planned to.
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