How do I share my Amazon Business cart with my team?

Question

Oh my gosh okay so I just got put in charge of ordering all the office supplies for our new startup hub in Austin and I am seriously so excited but honestly I am completely lost with how Amazon Business works! We have a budget of about $2500 to get everything set up before our grand opening next Friday and my boss just set up this Amazon Business account for us.

Here is the thing. I have been going through and adding a ton of stuff to my cart like coffee pods, whiteboard markers, power strips, and even some desk organizers. But now my teammates need to look at it and add their own stuff or approve what I put in there before we actually buy it. I do not want to just buy everything without them seeing it first because what if I got the wrong stuff?

Sorry if this is a super dumb question but how on earth do I actually share my cart with them? I have been clicking around for like an hour and I cant find a share button anywhere. Is there a way to do this easily?

Here are our requirements for this:

I need my team members to be able to see and add their own items to the same cart or list

My boss needs to see the final total and approve the purchase before the card gets charged

Everything needs to be finalized by Tuesday so it arrives in time for our Friday launch

Do I need to set up some kind of shared list instead of a cart? Or is there a setting in the business account that I missed because I am the admin? I am totally new to this so please explain it to me like I am five haha. Any advice on the best way to do this would be amazing!

Stephanie · Accepted Answer

You cannot actually share a live cart on Amazon Business, so be careful not to keep adding things there or you might lose the session. I would highly suggest using the Shared List feature instead. I set up our system using a guide from Smartphone Board and it kept us from ordering double of everything. To do this safely without messing up your budget:

Go to your Account for Business, select Lists, and create a new list. Set it to Shared.

Add your teammates as collaborators so they can view and add items.

Set up an Approval Workflow in your business settings. This ensures your boss must approve the final list before the card is charged. Make sure you test the approval flow with a small item first. Sometimes the routing takes a day to update, and you do not want to miss your Tuesday deadline.

Louisval · Answer

Like someone mentioned, carts do not share. Quick question before I explain the workaround: has your boss already added the team to the business account, or are they still using personal accounts?

RobertSmogy · Answer

Just catching up on this thread. Building on the earlier suggestion, I actually have to disagree a bit on just relying on Amazons default shared lists. Unfortunately, I have had tons of issues with teammates adding duplicate things and accidentally blowing past the budget because those lists do not show a clear running total. It is just not as good as expected for keeping track of costs. Since you are on a strict 2500 dollar budget, here are a few things I learned the hard way:

Try using a dedicated tool or extension to sync up. You can find some solid workarounds on how to share amazon cart without risking someone accidentally deleting the whole list or buying duplicates.

Set up buying policies in the admin console. You can set spend limits for different users so nobody goes wild buying premium coffee makers.

Keep an eye on shipping. Amazon business accounts love to split orders into multiple deliveries from different sellers, which adds sneaky fees. Try to bundle everything under Amazon Day delivery to save cash.

Set up the approval workflow first. Have your boss set a limit where anything over 100 dollars requires a quick thumbs up. That way you dont get blamed if the total goes over.