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Customer Help & References
New Customer Onboarding Guide

New Customer Onboarding Guide

Table of Contents

1. Connect to your database

To access your Reason Automation database, you will need to set up a connection between your database and a SQL server or business intelligence (BI) tool. If you’d like to do this with SQL, we recommend using pgAdmin:

Setup: pgAdminSetup: pgAdmin

To connect to a BI tool instead, follow one of these sets of instructions:

Setup: ExcelSetup: ExcelSetup: Excel for MacOSSetup: Excel for MacOSSetup: Power BISetup: Power BISetup: TableauSetup: TableauSetup: Looker StudioSetup: Looker Studio

2. Common Connection Errors & Troubleshooting Tips

Having trouble connecting? Here are some common connection errors and troubleshooting tips.

  • Common errors:
    • Copying blanks in either the hostname, databasename, username, or password.
    • Putting in the incorrect port.
    • Password related errors. Certain programs can’t process certain characters. For example, Power BI doesn’t recognize “%” (it’s an encoding issue). We try to make sure passwords don’t include these weird nuances.
  • SSL configurations settings
    • SSL is default enabled on Reason Automation DB.
    • Default SSL processing should generally be set to preferred.
    • Exception: If you are using Google Data Studio please contact us to update your database SSL configurations.

3. Validate Your Data

Click one of the following links for portal-specific data validation instructions:

4. Nuances of Amazon data

Working with Amazon data can be tricky. Here’s a list of the most important nuances to look at when working with Vendor, Seller, and Advertising data -- and tips for dealing with this complexity.

4A. Vendor Retail Analytics

  1. Distributor Views and Programs. We provide data for all available Distributor Views and Programs. When connecting to retail analytics tables, remember to filter by distributor_view and program to avoid duplication
  2. Manufacturing view access. Some brand-registered accounts may only have Sourcing view available in Retail Analytics. If you do not see Manufacturing view available in the Vendor Central UI, Reason Automation cannot provide Manufacturing data via SP-API for you. This can be corrected by filing a case with Amazon requesting access to Manufacturing view and resolving any Brand Registry issues.
  3. Reporting periods. Amazon provides retail analytics data for different reporting time periods. We provide data at the lowest-available granularity, unless the data contains ratio metrics (e.g. Net PPM) that cannot be aggregated from daily data. If you are using a table with multiple reporting periods, remember to filter by period to avoid duplication.
    • Sales: DAILY
    • Traffic: DAILY
    • Forecasting: WEEKLY
    • Inventory: WEEKLY, MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, ANNUALLY
    • Net PPM: DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, ANNUALLY
  4. Amazon data latency. Amazon’s published service level agreement (SLA) for retail analytics is 72 hours for DAILY reports, and 48 hours after the last day of the period for WEEKLY, MONTHLY, and QUARTERLY reports.
    • Amazon is more likely to miss SLA for brands with large catalogs and high sales volume. We have observed up to 48 hours of additional latency.
    • To accommodate Amazon's unreliable data availability, we check Amazon systems multiple times per day.

4B. Seller Central

  1. Two Sales and Traffic tables. We provide sales and traffic data by SKU, and by child ASIN, in separate tables. The sales and traffic data is identical between tables unless you use multiple SKUs per ASIN. If you do, note that Amazon duplicates traffic for each SKU, because they cannot attribute page views to a specific SKU.
  2. Snapshot inventory reports. Amazon provides the following reports as a snapshot, meaning no history is available. We store the snapshot from Amazon every time it changes, so that you build history over time.

4C. Amazon Advertising

Rolling attribution windows. All advertising tables contain 7- or 14-day attribution (depending on if you are a Seller or Vendor). This means that Amazon will attribute 7-14 days of units, revenue, and orders to advertising activity on the date of the record. Reason Automation's daily updates include a 14-day lookback in order to capture these attribution changes.

5. Sample Analyses

5A. Vendor Central Sample Analyses

Profitability: monitor ASIN-level net profitability via Amazon’s Net PPM data, while calculating the gross margin of customer shipments with revenue and COGS data.

  • You will need net_ppm from Retail Analytics Net PPM, and shipped_cogs and shipped_revenue from Retail Analytics Sales
  • Since Net PPM is a percentage, it can be difficult to aggregate accurately. To help, we provide Net PPM data at the DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, and QUARTERLY grain.
  • More info about this table in our Help Center: Retail Analytics Net PPM

Conversion: although Amazon deprecated conversion rate information from Retail Analytics, you can approximate it using ordered units & glance view data.

Weeks of Cover: how many weeks of customer demand you can satisfy with Amazon's current inventory? ASIN-level weeks of cover can be an important input to your advertising spend strategy.

  • You will need sellable_on_hand_units from Retail Analytics Inventory and shipped_units from Retail Analytics Sales.
  • Note that inventory data is available at the WEEKLY grain, while sales data is available at the DAILY grain.
  • More info about these tables in our Help Center: Retail Analytics Sales, Retail Analytics Inventory

Invoicing & Remittance: manage your CoOp invoices and payments. We provide your invoices, payments, and invoice details to enable detailed analysis and reconciliation.

  • Use invoice_id to connect invoice summaries, invoice details, and payment information across tables.
  • More info about these tables in our Help Center: Vendor Data and Analytics

Paid vs Organic Sales: track your ASIN-attributable advertising contribution to total sales.

5B. Seller Central Sample Analyses

Weeks of Cover: how many weeks of customer demand you can satisfy with Amazon's current inventory? ASIN-level weeks of cover can be an important input to your advertising spend strategy.

Profitability: bring your COGS data and calculate item-level profitability using individual transactions from Amazon.

  • You will need product_sales and various fee columns all found in the Transactions tables.
  • Since Amazon doesn’t know your product costs, you will need to add your own COGS data to get a complete profitability analysis.
  • More info about these tables in our Help Center: Transactions Standard Orders, Transactions Invoiced

Paid vs Organic Sales: track your ASIN-attributable advertising contribution to total sales.

  • You will need units_ordered from a Sales and Traffic table, and the total units columns from each Sponsored Ads Advertised Product report.

More info about these tables in our Help Center: Sales and Traffic by SKU, Sales and Traffic by Child ASIN, Sponsored Products Advertised Products, etc.

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