How to switch Amazon agencies or accelerators and keep your accounts and data
Before you give notice, confirm your company holds the top role on every account: the Seller Central primary user, Amazon Ads Admin with spend billed to your payment method, and the Brand Registry Rights Owner and Administrator roles. Then list every authorized app, collect the creative files your contract assigns to you, and export your ads, sales and payments history. Hand over with an overlap, then remove old access.
- Amazon calls the person who registers a Seller Central account the primary user, or account administrator, with access to every page and feature (Amazon Seller Forums, checked September 25, 2026).
- In Amazon Ads, only an Admin can change payment settings, manage users and link accounts, and agencies can bill ad spend to their manager account or to the advertiser.
- Amazon DSP advertiser accounts created under an agency's manager account can't be unlinked from it; sponsored ads accounts can be.
- Amazon Ads unified reporting, generally available since June 8, 2026, offers up to 15 months of daily or weekly data and up to 6 years of monthly or summary data.
- Only the selling partner can revoke an app's authorization, in Seller Central under Apps and Services, Manage Your Apps; public apps must be reauthorized every year.
- Under US copyright law, commissioned work from an outside contractor is a work made for hire only in nine categories, and only with a written agreement both parties sign.
A brand might leave an agency over results, fees or communication. The expensive surprises come later: the ad account turns out to be billed through the agency, the product photos live in the agency's drive, and two years of bid history exist only in the agency's software. This guide is an own-your-stack checklist for avoiding that. It covers what your brand should hold no matter who runs it, what to check in the contract, what to export, and how to hand over without a gap in sales. It works the same whether you are leaving an agency, an ecommerce accelerator or a freelancer.
What should your brand own, no matter who runs it?
Three things: the top role on every account, the files and code made for you, and a copy of your data. Everything else, including who writes the ads, who designs the images and which software runs the bids, can change hands with far less disruption once those three are in place. A good agency can do its best work under this setup. It only changes what the day you part ways looks like: a few logins removed instead of a rebuild. And if your agency does good work and the only problem is the setup, fix the setup and stay.
On Amazon, owning the account means your company registered Seller Central and your own staff holds the primary user login. Amazon's guide to user permissions, posted on its seller forums by an Amazon team member, describes the primary user as the account administrator: the person who registers the account and has access to every page and feature (Amazon Seller Forums, checked September 25, 2026). The same guide says not to share your password and not to add outside service providers as users. To see who holds the account today, open User Permissions and find the user marked Owner under Account Role, as Amazon's Account ID announcement describes (checked September 25, 2026).
The own-your-stack checklist: accounts, roles and apps
Run this before you give notice, while the relationship is still cooperative. Each row is one thing your brand should hold. The permission steps themselves (adding users, choosing roles, reviewing apps) are in our guide to giving an agency access to Seller Central safely; this page only asks whether you hold each item today. Download the checklist below (or copy the table into a spreadsheet), fill in the status and owner for each row, and fix every "no" before anyone gives notice.
| What your brand should hold | What owning it looks like | Where to check | If you do not hold it yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Seller Central primary user | Your company registered the account, and someone on your payroll holds the primary user login on a company email address | Settings, then User Permissions: the user marked Owner under Account Role | Fix it before notice, with Amazon Seller Support and your lawyer |
| 2. Amazon Ads admin and billing | The advertiser account is registered to your company, two of your staff hold the Admin role, and spend is billed to your payment method | Administration in the Amazon Ads console: users, payment settings and Manager accounts | Ask the current Admin to make two of your staff Admin and to move billing now |
| 3. Brand Registry rights owner | Your company's account holds the Rights Owner and Administrator roles, and the trademark registration names your company | Brand Registry user permissions, and the owner on the USPTO record | Ask the current Administrator to add your staff; have a trademark attorney handle any change of trademark owner |
| 4. App authorizations | Every app connected to your account has a named owner and a reason to be there | Apps and Services, then Manage Your Apps, in Seller Central | Disable what you cannot explain on the day after the handover |
| 5. Creative files | Layered design files, raw photos, video masters and copy documents sit in your own drive, and the contract assigns them to you | Your drive, against a list of everything the agency produced | Request them in writing under the contract |
| 6. Data exports | A copy of sales, traffic, payments, inventory and ads data for every month the agency worked, in your own storage | Your drive or data warehouse, month by month | Export before notice, as described below |
| 7. Integrations and custom code | Custom integrations are registered to your own account, the code sits in a repository you control, and on Shopify your company is the store owner | Apps and Services, then Develop Apps, in Seller Central; your code repository; Shopify's owner and collaborator list | Ask for repository access and a written assignment of the code |
| 8. Reporting history and rules | Dashboards, bid rules, negative keyword lists and change logs can be exported from whatever tool holds them | Ask the agency which of these live only in its own software | Request CSV exports and rebuild the rules in a system you control |
Amazon Ads. Amazon's guide to the advertiser account describes standardized admin, editor and viewer roles, lets users be invited at the manager account or advertiser level, and lets agencies choose between billing spend to their manager account ("bill to partner") or to the advertiser (checked September 25, 2026). Both setups are normal. What matters on switch day is that an Admin on the account works for you, because only an Admin can change payment settings, manage users and link accounts (Amazon Ads account permissions, checked September 25, 2026). Otherwise, if billing sits with the agency, your ads can stop when its payment method leaves, and nobody on your side can change the payment settings.
Check how your account is linked, too. A sponsored ads account can be unlinked from an agency's manager account under Administration, Account access and settings, Manager accounts. But Amazon says Amazon DSP advertiser accounts created under a manager account can't be unlinked (Add accounts to your Manager account, checked September 25, 2026). If your agency opened a DSP account for you under its own manager account, ask in writing, before you give notice, what happens to that account and its reporting when you leave.
Brand Registry. Amazon assigns the Rights Owner role automatically to the account of the trademark owner that enrolls the brand, and Registered Agent is the role for third parties the trademark owner authorizes to report suspected IP violations (What are Brand Registry roles?, checked September 25, 2026). If an agency or law firm filed your trademark, look up the owner in the USPTO trademark search: it should be your company. Which roles an agency should get is covered in our access guide. The Brand Registry glossary entry explains the program.
Apps and integrations. Amazon's SP-API documentation says sellers must reauthorize public apps every year, starting from Manage Your Apps, and that private applications are for the exclusive use of a single organization (checked September 25, 2026). To self-authorize a private app on a Seller Central account, you must be that account's primary user (Authorize Private Applications). So a custom integration built for you should be registered to your account, not the agency's. Our SP-API glossary entry explains the difference between public and private apps.
What should you check in your agency or accelerator contract?
Many exit problems are written into the contract long before anyone thinks about leaving. Read it for these eight areas, and note the notice date, the renewal date and any fees that apply after the end date before you talk to the agency. A red flag is not proof of bad intent; it is a clause worth fixing or clarifying before the switch, while you still have something to negotiate with.
| Clause | What to look for | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts | Your company registers every account; the agency works as a user you can remove | The agency registers accounts in its own name or asks for your primary login |
| Ad spend and billing | Spend billed to your payment method, or passed through with invoices you can check | Spend billed through the agency with no written terms for moving billing back |
| Creative and copy | A written assignment of copyright in the work you paid for, plus delivery of the source files | A "license to use" that ends with the contract, or no mention of source files |
| Custom code and tools | Code written for you is assigned to you, in a repository you control; clear terms for software the agency only licenses | Rules, dashboards and history that exist only in the agency's tools, with no export |
| Data return | Exports of your data and the change log, in standard formats, within a set number of days after the end date | No data-return clause at all |
| Term and exit | A notice period you can live with, clear renewal terms, and what is owed after the end date | Automatic renewals with short cancellation windows, or fees on sales after you leave |
| Transition | A set period in which the old team cooperates with the new one | No handover duty |
| Resellers only | Buyback of remaining stock, what happens to listing content, and which Brand Registry roles the reseller holds | Exclusivity over markets you plan to run yourself |
The creative row matters more than it looks. The US Copyright Office's Circular 30 on works made for hire explains that, ordinarily, the author of a work is the person who actually created it. Work by an outside contractor counts as a work made for hire only in nine listed categories, and only when both parties sign a written agreement saying so (checked September 25, 2026). Much of what an agency makes for a brand, such as photos, designs and code, may not fall in those categories, so ask your lawyer about a written assignment.
If you are choosing the next agency now, the same questions belong in your request for proposals. Our list of questions to ask an Amazon agency turns them into a template you can send to every candidate. If you are weighing whether to bring the work in-house instead, our comparison of Growth OS and an in-house ops and tech team sets out the costs, what happens when people leave, and who owns the systems, code and data.
How do you export your data before you switch?
Export while the agency still has access and the goodwill to help. If the accounts are yours, their data stays in them whoever runs them, but not every level of detail stays available forever. Amazon Ads now reports through unified reporting, under Measurement and reporting, then Reporting, in the Ads console. Amazon says it offers up to 15 months of daily or weekly data and up to 6 years of monthly, yearly or summary data, and that the older Sponsored Ads reports and Amazon DSP reports pages are being sunset by December 31, 2026 (Amazon Ads announcement, June 8, 2026, checked September 25, 2026).
That has two consequences for a switch. Daily ad data older than about 15 months is not something the console offers, so if the agency kept older daily data in its own tools, that copy may be the only one; ask for it. And scheduled reports the agency set up on the old pages will need rebuilding in unified reporting. The same announcement says unified reporting moved to traffic-based attribution, so its totals may not match older exports exactly. Keep the old files as they are, and note which report produced each one.
| What to export | Where it lives | How to export it |
|---|---|---|
| Sales and traffic by ASIN | Seller Central, Reports, Business Reports | Month by month, as far back as the report allows, as CSV |
| Payments and fees | Seller Central, Reports, Payments, Date Range Reports | Monthly, as CSV |
| Inventory and FBA activity | Seller Central, Reports, Fulfillment | The Inventory Ledger report, month by month |
| Campaigns, targets and search terms | Amazon Ads console, Measurement and reporting, then Reporting; a bulk file for the campaign structure | Daily data for as far back as the console offers, then monthly |
| Brand Analytics | Brand Analytics in Seller Central, for brand owners in Brand Registry | Search Query Performance and repeat purchase data for your brand |
| Agency-held history | The agency's dashboards, bid tools and change logs | A written request for CSV exports and a list of every automated rule |
| Creative | The agency's drive | Source files, final exports, and the usage rights for any models, stock images or music |
You do not have to do this by hand every time. Most of the same data comes through Amazon's Selling Partner API and the Amazon Ads API. The Seller Intelligence Platform we built for Argometrix brings Amazon's Sales and Traffic report, Financial API data and Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display reports together for its analytics modules. A scheduled job that pulls reports like these into storage your company owns means you never have to ask a departing agency for your own history again.
What changes when you leave a reseller accelerator?
An agency works inside your accounts. A reseller accelerator works differently: it buys your inventory and sells it as the merchant of record, on its own marketplace accounts. Leaving one means more than removing logins. The offers and the selling history sit on the reseller's accounts, so you relaunch on yours, and the contract decides what happens to the stock it still holds and to the listing content it created.
Our comparisons set out what Pattern and MarketLeap say publicly about how their models work, and our five-model ownership table shows who keeps the seller account, the margin, the data and the ad account in each model. Before you give notice to a reseller, add three rows to the checklist: remaining stock and buyback terms, the listing content and images it created, and the Brand Registry roles its accounts hold for your brand.
How do you hand over without losing sales?
The sales risk in a switch sits in the gaps: ads that stop because billing moved, bids nobody owns for a week, a listing edited by both teams at once, or an inbound shipment nobody tracks. A dated plan closes each one. Put names next to every row, share the plan with both teams, and keep the old agency's access until the switch day, so nothing depends on goodwill after the last invoice.
| When | What happens | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 30 days before notice | Run the own-your-stack checklist and fix the gaps: primary user, Ads admin and billing, Brand Registry roles | You |
| Notice day | Written notice under the contract, with a dated request for data exports, source files, code and the change log | You |
| Overlap, one to two weeks | The new team gets viewer access and learns the account; listing and catalog changes freeze; agree the day bids and budgets change hands | Both teams |
| Switch day | The new team gets its working roles; billing is on your payment method; the old team's automated rules are paused and exported | You and the new team |
| Day after | Remove the old agency's users and its service provider authorization (User Permissions, Manage Services) in Seller Central; remove its users in Amazon Ads and roles in Brand Registry; unlink its manager account; disable its app authorizations; change any password that was ever shared | You |
| First week | Check that ads are spending, no listings are suppressed, inbound shipments are tracked and reports still fill | The new team |
| 30 days after | Confirm every export and file arrived, final invoices are settled, and nothing of the old agency's is still connected | You |
Amazon's docs say only the selling partner can revoke an app's OAuth authorization, under Apps and Services, then Manage Your Apps, and that a disabled app stays visible on that page (Amazon's guide to revoking authorizations, checked September 25, 2026). The app developer cannot switch off your OAuth authorization for you, so put it on your own team's list for the day after and check afterwards that each app shows as disabled. During the first week, also watch your Account Health Rating and the list of suppressed listings, so any problem from the handover is caught while both teams still remember what changed.
Other channels need the same pass. On Shopify, only the store owner can change or transfer ownership of a store (Shopify Help Center), so if an agency set up your store, check who the owner is under Settings, then Users. Agencies that are Shopify Partners get in through collaborator accounts, which you remove from the same page; Shopify says removal can't be undone, and the partner has to request access again (both checked September 25, 2026).
On Walmart, Seller Academy tells sellers to revoke a provider's access in Connected Apps in Seller Center once they stop working with it. Walmart also says existing Delegated Access keys continue to work only until the end of September 2026 (Walmart's notice, both checked September 25, 2026). If your agency's tools use such a key, agree before you give notice who reconnects them and when. Our Walmart OAuth guide covers finding and reconnecting each tool.
How do you set up the next partner so this never happens again?
Build the exit into the start. A partner set up this way from day one can be replaced without a rebuild, and that makes it easier to trust them with more of the work. These five rules cost nothing to agree at the beginning of a contract and a great deal to fix at the end of one.
- Your company registers every account, and your own staff holds the primary user, the Ads admin role and the Brand Registry administrator role.
- Partners get their own logins with only the permissions their work needs, and you review them every quarter.
- You authorize every app yourself, and custom integrations are registered to your account, with the code in your repository.
- The contract assigns the creative and the custom code to you and sets a data-return duty with a deadline.
- Your data lands in storage you own every night, not only in the partner's tools.
Ecomsellertool is a tech agency that grows brands through technology, and we build this setup into the work. We do not buy inventory or sell on your behalf. We deploy Ecomsellertool Growth OS on your own marketplace and ad accounts, add the custom software and AI agents your operation needs, and your data stays in your systems. You keep your accounts, your data and the custom code we build; the Growth OS base is licensed to you.
You stay the seller of record, set your prices and keep the retail revenue. If you stop working with us, your listings and selling history stay put. Your accounts, data and custom code stay with you; the Growth OS base continues under its license terms. See what Growth OS includes. Our brand facts page lists who we are and what we have shipped; we have built on Amazon's seller APIs since 2017.
If you are about to switch, start with the free 24-hour diagnostic. You connect Amazon with Login with Amazon, with no password shared, and get the report within 24 hours of connecting, on business days. We only read data; we never change listings, prices, stock or ads, so it can run while your current agency is still in place. Or schedule a call from the card below and bring your completed checklist.
Frequently asked questions
Can an agency keep my Amazon seller account when I leave?
Not if your company registered it and your own team holds the primary user login. Then the agency only has the access you granted, and you remove it. If the agency registered the seller account or the Amazon Ads account under its own company, sort that out with Amazon Seller Support and your lawyer before you give notice, while the relationship is still cooperative.
What happens to my PPC campaigns when I switch agencies?
If the advertiser account is yours, the campaigns stay in it and keep running unless someone pauses or archives them. The risk is the week nobody owns them. Agree the date the new team takes over bids and budgets, download a bulk file of the campaign structure and your search term history beforehand, and ask the old agency to list and pause any automated bid rules it runs from its own tools on that date.
How do I get my Amazon Ads account back from my agency?
Ask whoever is Admin on the advertiser account to add two people on your payroll as Admin; Amazon Ads says only an Admin can change payment settings, manage users and link accounts. Then move billing to your own payment method and unlink the agency's manager account under Administration, Account access and settings, Manager accounts. Amazon says DSP advertiser accounts created under a manager account can't be unlinked, so ask the agency about those before you give notice.
Do I own the listing images and A+ content my agency created?
The published images, A+ modules and Store pages sit on your listings and stay there. The copyright in the work, and the source files behind it, depend on your contract. Under US copyright law, a contractor's work is a work made for hire only in limited categories and with a signed written agreement, so ask for a written assignment and the layered files. This is not legal advice; have a lawyer read your contract.
When is the worst time to switch agencies?
The weeks before your peak season or a large sales event, when a handover mistake costs the most. If your contract ends then, consider extending it by a month, or freezing listing and bid changes until the event has passed. Starting the handover after peak gives the new team a quieter month to learn the account.
Should I switch agencies or bring the work in-house?
Start with what is actually wrong. If the agency does good work and only the ownership setup is wrong, fix the setup and stay. If the work itself is the problem, compare a new agency with an in-house team running software that carries the repetitive tasks, and put the ownership questions from this checklist to every option before you sign.
Do we have to leave our agency to work with Ecomsellertool?
No. Growth OS runs on your own accounts through access you grant and can remove, so an agency can keep running your campaigns or listings in the same accounts while it does. You keep your accounts, your data and the custom code we build; the Growth OS base is licensed to you.
How we research, fact-check and compare: our editorial standards. Spot an error? Email hello@ecomsellertool.com and we will correct it.
