Quick answer. Amazon’s invoice standard assumes a supplier who still exists. The invoice must be issued by the supplier, show its name, phone number, address and website, be dated within the past 365 days before the performance notification, and cover the units you sold and hold for each cited ASIN. Amazon also says it might contact the supplier to verify. When that supplier has closed or refuses to help, you cannot replace the invoice with one you make yourself. You can submit the genuine invoices you already hold and corroborate them with bank and payment records showing you paid that supplier, the state business registry record showing it existed and when it closed, invoices from the supplier’s own source, and a letter from the brand where one can honestly be obtained. If nothing genuine exists, remove the affected listings and rebuild on documented supply. Do not create paperwork.

Most authenticity appeals rest on an unstated assumption that the supplier will pick up the phone. Amazon’s invoice page says it might reach out to the supplier to verify the information on your documents. That works when the distributor is still trading. It fails when the company dissolved last spring, when the owner retired and the website redirects to a parked domain, or when a supplier who was friendly while you were buying stops answering once you need a copy of last year’s paperwork.

Sellers in that position tend to make one of two mistakes. Some give up on a workable case, assuming a closed supplier means a dead appeal. Others reach for the fastest fix, such as a “replacement” invoice from a new supplier, a document rebuilt from order emails or a date quietly moved forward. The first loses accounts that could have been saved. The second turns a sourcing question into a document-integrity problem, which is far harder to recover from. Below is what Amazon asks for, what still counts when the supplier is gone, which official records corroborate a genuine purchase, and what to do when the paperwork does not exist.

This article is educational information, not legal advice. Questions about a supplier’s dissolution, contract rights or records you are owed turn on your facts and your state’s law, so confirm them with a qualified attorney.

What Amazon asks for, and why a missing supplier hurts

Amazon publishes the standard you are measured against on its Invoice requirements for appealing a policy violation page. Every part of it matters when the supplier is no longer around.

The invoice standard, piece by piece

Amazon defines an invoice as a document that records the final transaction of goods between a buyer and a supplier, issued directly by the supplier, showing an itemized list of goods received and the terms of sale for a completed transaction. It requires invoices to verify that sellers source from legitimate suppliers. The page lists what the invoice must include.

Supplier information. The supplier’s contact information, including a name, phone number, address and website. Amazon says it will not share this with its retail team or other sellers.
Transaction details. A clearly displayed issue date within the past 365 days before receipt of the performance notification, and a quantity sufficient to cover your sales volumes and in-stock inventory for each cited ASIN over the past 365 days, plus sales records for each ASIN tied to the violation.
Product information. Clear identifiers such as product names, model numbers or UPC, EAN or ISBN, variation details that match your listing, and every component for bundles.
Document standards. PDF or image files (.jpg, .png or .gif), no larger than 10MB, documenting a completed and fulfilled transaction, authentic and unaltered. You may remove pricing. Everything else must stay visible and clear.

Where the missing supplier collides with that standard

Read the list again with a closed supplier in mind. The supplier’s phone number and website appear on the invoice, and Amazon says it might use them to verify. If the number is disconnected, that verification may fail, and the page does not say how Amazon treats the outcome. Nobody outside Amazon can tell you with certainty. A reviewer who cannot reach a supplier is left with only the paper in front of them, so the rest of your file has to carry more weight.

The 365-day window is the second collision. If your supplier closed eighteen months ago, every invoice it issued falls outside the window, and Amazon’s page offers no exception for suppliers that no longer exist. Those older invoices still show where your goods came from, but they may not satisfy the dated requirement on their own.

The third collision is quantity. The invoices must cover sales and in-stock inventory for the cited ASINs over the past 365 days. If you have kept selling old stock from a closed supplier, the numbers may still work. If you switched to a new source partway through the year, you need that source’s invoices too.

What Amazon says it will not accept

The same page lists documents that will not be accepted for review, and a seller without a supplier is tempted by every one of them.

Invoices sent by email or third-party sharing instead of submitted through Seller Central.
Sales quotes, pro forma invoices or anything sent before a finalized invoice or completed transaction.
Self-issued invoices, or invoices where the supplier appears to be the same business entity as the buyer.
Invoices that have been digitally manipulated, or that come in an editable format such as .xlsx or .docx.
Invoices that are illegible, low resolution, inconsistent or missing required details.

Amazon also warns that it may reject invoices it evaluates as inauthentic or inaccurate. Its Anti-Counterfeiting policy goes further. You may remove pricing from authenticity documents, but providing documents that have been edited in any other way or that are misleading is a violation of the policy and will lead to enforcement against your account. Everything in this article stays inside that line. For the full invoice standard, see our guide to keeping pace with Amazon’s invoice requirements, and for why a store receipt rarely substitutes, read why Amazon does not accept receipts.

First, work out which situation you are in

“My supplier will not help” covers different cases, and three facts decide the next step. Do you hold genuine invoices at all? Does the supplier still exist as a legal entity? Can anyone above the supplier in the chain, such as the brand or the supplier’s own distributor, still be reached? Answer those before you write a word of the appeal, because they decide whether you are building a documentation case, a corroboration case or an honest exit.

Answer one question privately first. Were these goods genuine, bought from a real business in the quantities you sold? If yes, the work is proving something true with the records that survive. If the goods came from a channel you could never document, no corroboration will turn that into a sourcing case, and it is better to know that now than after a rejected appeal.

The chain behind your goods, station by station. Tap each one to see what record it holds, who you ask and what it can and cannot prove.

What still counts when the supplier has closed

A supplier closing does not erase the transactions it completed. An invoice it issued to your business, for goods it delivered, is still an invoice issued directly by the supplier and still records a completed transaction. The company’s closure does not make the document self-issued or fake. What changes is how much a reviewer can confirm independently, so the document has to be believable without a phone call.

Your original invoices, exactly as issued

Pull the invoices from wherever the supplier sent them, whether that is the PDF attached to the original email, the supplier’s portal download if you saved it, or the paper copy that came with the shipment. Use the file as you received it. Do not re-type it, re-save it into Word, crop out a header or “tidy up” a scan. If your only copy is on paper, scan it clean and whole at readable resolution and keep the original.

Then check each invoice against your account the way a reviewer would. Does the buyer name match your legal business name and the address on your seller account? Does the product description match the ASIN, including variation details? Do the quantities, added across invoices, cover what you sold and hold? Is anything inconsistent, such as a total that does not add up, a date format that changes mid-document or two different supplier addresses? A problem you find is information about your case, not something to fix in an editor. A genuine document with an honest flaw, explained, is far safer than a perfect-looking document the supplier never sent.

Amazon’s own sourcing guidance helps you

Amazon’s page on selecting reliable suppliers with due diligence lists how it expects sellers to vet a supplier. Verify business registration, licenses and permits through Secretary of State websites and state business lookup tools, check how long the supplier has been in business from its registration date, review its online presence, and confirm whether it can provide a letter of authorization from the brand or invoices from its own supplier to show provenance. The invoice page’s FAQ adds verifying physical business presence and checking web presence through government resources and business directories.

Those are the same checks you now use to corroborate a supplier that cannot answer for itself. Amazon told sellers to run them before buying. If you did, the records you saved are evidence now. If you did not, many of the same official records can still be pulled today, as the next sections show.

The supplier invoice, the wire confirmation and the registry record read side by side. Open each tab to see the fields that must agree.

Bank and payment records as supporting evidence

Payment records are the strongest corroboration most sellers already have, and the most misunderstood. A bank statement is not an invoice. A bank line shows none of the product information Amazon’s invoice page requires, and Amazon does not list bank statements as a substitute anywhere on that page. Use payment records to prove the transaction on the invoice happened, never to replace the invoice.

What a payment record proves, and what it cannot

Record	What it can show	What it cannot show
Wire or ACH confirmation from your bank	You paid a named payee a set amount on a set date	Which products, how many, or that they were genuine
Business bank or card statement	A pattern of payments to the same supplier over time	Item detail, but it also shows unrelated activity
Payment platform receipt	Payer, payee and reference number for a transfer	That the payee was the legal entity on the invoice
Supplier’s paid stamp or remittance record	The supplier recorded the invoice as settled	Anything if the supplier cannot confirm it today

How to make payment records line up

A payment record is only as useful as its match to the invoice. Lay each invoice beside the payment that settled it and check four points. The payee name matches the supplier’s legal name on the invoice. The amount matches the invoice total or a stated deposit and balance. The date falls sensibly after the invoice date. The paying account belongs to the business on your seller account. A payment from a personal account, a relative’s card or a different company breaks the chain and needs an honest explanation.

If your statement shows unrelated transactions, do not black them out yourself. Ask your bank for a transaction confirmation or a letter covering the specific payments. A document the bank issues for that purpose is cleaner than a statement you edited, and it keeps you clear of Amazon’s rule against edited documents. Amazon only says you may remove pricing from invoices. Do not assume the same allowance applies to other records.

Proving the supplier existed. State business registries via NASS

When a supplier closes, the first question a reviewer would ask is whether it was ever a real business. A US supplier that was a corporation or LLC had to register with a state, and that record does not vanish when the company does. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) keeps a corporate registration page where you pick a state and go straight to its business registration pages and corporate name databases. NASS notes that member offices handle filings that include incorporations, partnerships, mergers and dissolutions, and that fees vary from state to state.

A hypothetical supplier on a timeline. Registration, invoices, dissolution and the notice. Open each stage to see which invoice still counts.

Suppliers outside the United States

NASS covers US states and territories only. For an overseas supplier, use that country’s official government company registry. Note the registration number and status it shows, and say in your file where you found it. If you cannot locate an official registry record, say so plainly. Do not rely on a third-party directory listing.

Shipping and import records

If you imported the goods yourself, your customs entry records tie a specific shipment to a specific seller and date. Under 19 CFR 163.4, records generally must be kept for five years from the date of entry, so your customs broker or your own files should still hold them. Freight documents and carrier tracking do the same job for domestic deliveries. Amazon’s letter of authorization page notes that commercial or customs invoices and bills of lading are not letters of authorization. They are not supplier invoices either. Use them only to show that the goods on the invoice moved to you.

Going up the chain. The supplier’s source and the brand

If your supplier was a distributor, someone above it sold it the goods. Amazon’s due diligence page names invoices from a supplier’s own supplier as a way to show the provenance of inventory. Those records belong to the upstream company, so the request has to be polite, specific and honest about why you are asking.

Asking an upstream distributor for help

Tell the upstream company which business you bought from, the approximate dates and products, and that you need to show Amazon the goods came from an authorized channel. Ask only for genuine records that already exist, such as confirmation that it sold that product to your former supplier during that period. Never ask it to invoice you directly for goods it did not sell you. That document would describe a transaction that did not happen, which is exactly the misleading document Amazon prohibits.

Letters from the brand

A brand can sometimes help when the supplier cannot, but know what a brand letter does. Amazon’s Letter of authorization page describes a license agreement in which the rights owner authorizes a licensee to use its intellectual property, and lists five terms it expects. They are licensor, licensee, grant, geographic scope and term. Amazon accepts the document on the rights holder’s letterhead with an authorized signature or stamp, or as an email from the rights holder’s own domain, and says it may validate the letter by contacting the IP owner.

Two limits matter. The same page lists invoices and inventory documents among things that are not letters of authorization, and the reverse holds. A brand letter does not show which units you bought or how many. Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting page says appeals typically require invoices or letters of authorization, and the Account Health dashboard shows what each violation will accept, so read that screen before assuming a letter fills the gap. Before asking any brand for anything, confirm who owns the mark in the USPTO Trademark Search system and the TSDR status record. A letter from someone who does not own the rights is worthless. Our guide to the Amazon letter of authorization covers the request and verification steps.

When the supplier exists but will not cooperate

A supplier that still trades but will not help is a different problem from one that closed. The documents you hold are still genuine. What you lose is the supplier’s confirmation if Amazon calls. The response depends on why it is refusing.

The sourcing inbox after a supplier stops cooperating. Open each message to see what it means and what belongs in the file.

Things sellers believe that get accounts closed

Amazon’s seller code of conduct requires sellers to provide accurate information to Amazon at all times. Most of the damage in these cases comes from a few beliefs that quietly break that rule. Each card below shows one belief and the reality.

Five papers sellers put on the desk, with the shortcut belief beside what each one is actually worth. Compare the columns before you build the file.

If a document in your file was ever altered, or you are not sure, stop and read our guide to forged or manipulated documentation suspensions before you submit anything else.

Supplier gone and a notice open?

Send us the case. We will tell you plainly what your genuine records can support.

Submit Case →Book a call

What to do when nothing genuine can be obtained

Sometimes no genuine invoice exists and none ever will. The goods came from a liquidation lot with no paperwork, a cash purchase, or a seller who never issued invoices. There is nothing to corroborate. Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting policy says it may suspend accounts, withhold payments and dispose of inauthentic inventory, so a long fight over unprovable sourcing risks more than one listing.

The honest exit

Remove or close the offers you cannot document. Decide what happens to that inventory under Amazon’s process instead of relisting it elsewhere on the account. Then write the appeal around what is true. The root cause is that you bought from a source without verifiable records and did not vet it. The corrective actions are what you already did, with dates, such as listings closed, stock removed and remaining suppliers re-checked. The preventive controls name an owner and a date, for example no purchase without a registry check, a completed invoice and a payment from the business account. For structure, see our guide to a plan of action that will not be ignored.

A file strength check for an authenticity case with no supplier to confirm it. Toggle the records you hold to see which path fits.

Building the file a reviewer can believe

Gather and verify the evidence first, then write. Each sentence in the appeal should point to a document, and each document should answer one question.

How corroborating records stack around a genuine invoice when the supplier cannot be reached.

Question	Where to check	What to look for
Which ASINs and what violation	Account Health dashboard	The cited ASINs and the appeal options shown
Do invoices cover the volume	Your sales and inventory reports	Units sold and in stock over the past 365 days
Was the supplier real	State registry via nass.org	Legal name, status, formation and dissolution dates
Who owns the brand	USPTO Trademark Search and TSDR	Registrant name and live status
Was the purchase paid	Your bank	Payee, amount and date matching each invoice
Did the goods move to you	Customs broker or carrier records	Entry or tracking tied to the purchase

A routine so a closed supplier never sinks you

All of this is harder after the fact. At onboarding, save the supplier’s state registry record and website. File every invoice as received, in PDF, with the payment confirmation beside it. Pay only from the business account. Keep import records for the five years customs requires, and keep tax records at least as long as the IRS periods that apply to you, which the IRS says is three years in many cases and longer in others. Each quarter, check that your main suppliers still show as active and request copies before anyone closes. If a supplier announces it is winding down, download everything that week.

If your case also involves a complaint about the goods themselves, read what an inauthentic suspension is. If you want the file reviewed before it goes in, our Amazon suspension team can look at it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still use invoices from a supplier that has closed?

Yes, if they are genuine and unaltered, because they were still issued by the supplier. Add corroboration, since Amazon may not be able to reach the supplier.

Does Amazon accept bank statements instead of invoices?

Amazon’s invoice page does not list bank statements as a substitute. Use payment records to corroborate genuine invoices.

How old can my invoices be?

Amazon asks for an issue date within the past 365 days before you received the performance notification, with quantities covering sales and in-stock inventory for that period.

Can a new supplier invoice me for stock I bought elsewhere?

No. That describes a transaction that did not happen, and Amazon treats misleading documents as a policy violation.

Where do I find my supplier’s state registration?

Start at the NASS corporate registration page, choose the state, and search the supplier’s exact legal name.

Will a letter from the brand replace my invoices?

Not by itself. A letter of authorization shows permission, not which units you bought. Check what your Account Health appeal accepts.

Can I black out other transactions on my bank statement?

Ask your bank for a confirmation of the specific payments instead. Amazon only allows removing pricing from invoices.

What if no genuine documents exist at all?

Do not create any. Close the affected listings, handle the inventory through Amazon’s process, and write an honest plan of action.

Get Help With Supplier and Invoice Gaps

If your supplier has closed or stopped answering and an authenticity notice is open, submit your case for review, or book a consultation to walk through what your records can honestly support.

This article is general educational information, not legal advice. Amazon’s policies change. Check the live Seller Central pages and your own notices before acting. Results depend on each account’s facts, and no outcome or timeline is guaranteed.

For the IP and rights owner side of the case, see our rights owner complaint service. You can also see all our marketplace suspension services.

Supplier Closed or Won’t Send Invoices? How to Prove Authenticity to Amazon Without Your Original Supplier