Your Retail Analytics Net PPM is wrong.

Some accounts in the study are small secondary accounts of larger vendors, so the vendor-by-vendor figures use the 58 accounts with at least $100,000 in 2025 shipped revenue. For 59% of vendors, Retail Analytics understated Net PPM: their calculated Net PPM was higher than what Amazon reported. Nearly 25% of vendors were off by more than 5 points, or $500,000 per $10 million.

For 41% of vendors, the contra-COGS in Retail Analytics was higher than what Amazon deducted, so their calculated Net PPM was lower than reported. This is worth investigating because any errors in the brand's favor may be caught in later Amazon audits. A vendor in that position should know it before the vendor manager does.

But the majority of missed coop favors Amazon and hurts vendor Net PPM. In dollars, Retail Analytics misstated $48.2 million of coop across all 62 accounts, and $42.4 million of that was coop vendors paid that never showed up in their 2025 reports.

The difference between Amazon's estimate and your actual deductions is larger for brands with more coop invested. Leaving out four outliers whose coop ran above half their COGS, every 10 points of coop as a share of COGS comes with roughly 2.8 more points of Net PPM.

We split vendors into four equal groups by the Net PPM Retail Analytics reported. In the highest group, 80% had a calculated Net PPM even higher than Retail Analytics showed. In the lowest group, 40% did.

So the vendors whose numbers look healthiest are the most likely to be paying for margin Retail Analytics doesn't credit.

High Net PPM can mean a healthy business, or it can mean heavy funding. Amazon books some of its variable costs below the Net PPM line, in contribution profit, and asks vendors for funding to offset them; that funding raises Net PPM. Our data can't separate the two cases for any single vendor, which is the reason a vendor with a strong Net PPM should check.

Retail Analytics shows contra-COGS as a lump-sum estimate. Amazon makes assumptions so it can show Net PPM quickly, but Net PPM can't be accurately calculated until deductions, payments and adjustments settle, sometimes two to three months after products ship. Your remittance is the accounting view: what Amazon actually deducted, in what period, for what reasons, regardless of what your agreements or Retail Analytics say.

Major drivers include:

• Agreement setup errors. An ASIN enrolled in the wrong coop agreement, or in two programs that overlap. A vendor selling in several categories can have one ASIN tied to coop accruals for more than one of them, accidentally paying more. Amazon is less likely to notice this error because it makes PPM look healthier.
• Overbilling and underbilling. Amazon deducts more or less than an agreement calls for, usually due to operational errors, agreement setup errors, or exceptions like distributor returns.
• Timing and accounting method. Funding accrued in one period and deducted in another, or measured against a different date. This study uses invoice dates because they line up financial and remittance activity most accurately, and a full year of historical data to allow settlement and timing differences to largely net out. Any analysis should state which dates it uses so it can be compared and audited.
• Unattributed payments. Straight payment agreements and other funding never tied to the right ASIN or time period. This can make Net PPM look off when analyzing by ASIN. However, straight payments should be credited to account-level Net PPM even if the agreements aren't tied to ASINs.

For example: a brand with $25 million in shipped revenue in 2025 might see $500K more in coop paid for 2025 than is reflected in Retail Analytics. For a typical brand the distribution might look like this:

• $200K due to agreement setup errors, which is recoverable through cases.
• $75K due to overbilling and underbilling errors, which is recoverable through cases.
• $125K due to timing differences or errors. While these funds are not recoverable, they can be bridged to the correct period. The brand can repeat this analysis for the affected period to make sure the $125K is attributed somewhere.
• $100K that can't be easily explained or attributed, and requires a deeper dive with Amazon.

This list isn't comprehensive, and it's difficult to create benchmarks due to the variety in operational and accounting setups: tracing every dollar would take a forensic audit of each agreement. Knowing the size and direction of the total gap, and where it's most concentrated in your catalog, is enough to change how you negotiate and to point you at the agreements worth a closer look.

This check is obvious enough that most brands have considered it, but few complete it because the data is fragmented: contra-COGS is available in Retail Analytics with a couple clicks, but your actual coop deductions have to be manually added up from remittance reports after settling weeks or months post-sale. Here is the process:

• Pull the Net PPM inputs from Retail Analytics. Use the Sales report in Sourcing view with the optional columns for shipped revenue, shipped units, shipped COGS, contra-COGS and sales discount. Skip the Net PPM report, which has had display bugs.
• Pull remittance for the same period and extract the line items.
• Isolate the coop deductions using the transaction type and description fields, and note each ASIN.
• Compare by ASIN. Total the deductions for each ASIN and set them against the contra-COGS Retail Analytics reports for it.

It's a simple process involving lots of manual work. Once complete you can answer the key questions: what is the difference between your deductions and Amazon's reported contra-COGS, and is it positive (in Amazon's favor) or negative (in your favor)?

If the difference is positive, your calculated Net PPM is higher than Retail Analytics. Include your analysis and the supporting details when responding to funding requests, especially annual negotiation proposals framed through Net PPM targets. It's important to ensure Amazon is properly crediting you for all payments before committing to any more.

If the difference is negative, your calculated Net PPM is lower than reported, often because Amazon is underbilling you. You still want to find this first. Amazon can audit and collect underbilled coop later, and a surprise catch-up bill is hard on cash flow. Knowing early lets you raise it on your terms.

Either way, the ASINs with the largest gaps point to the agreements worth auditing. Check that each coop program and straight payment is tied to the right ASINs and periods, and that no ASIN sits in overlapping programs. The check pays off most when it runs regularly, not just before an annual negotiation.

BASIS, Reason's analytics platform for Amazon vendors, runs this entire check for you: it pulls your Retail Analytics and remittance data, matches every coop deduction to its ASIN, and recalculates your Net PPM. Book a demo and we'll run the analysis on your own accounts, so you see your actual gap instead of a sample.

“Within minutes, Reason was able to surface a $413k gap in co-op payments that Amazon isn't crediting in our net PPM.”

CEO, midmarket outdoor brand, $7M annual revenue

Show me my Net PPM gap