Do Transparency Codes Apply to Non-Amazon Orders?

By Todd Welch, founder of T-Code Manager. Published October 13, 2026.

If your brand uses Amazon-issued Transparency codes, one of Amazon's enrollment requirements is being able to put a code on every unit you make, not only the units you sell on Amazon. That covers units you sell on Walmart, Shopify, eBay, your own website, to wholesale buyers and in retail stores.

Amazon doesn't publish how, or whether, it checks units sold somewhere else. For most brands, though, coding every unit is the simplest way to meet that requirement and run one process. What changes off Amazon is the reporting. There's no Seller Central order to confirm, so there's nowhere to enter the code.

What Amazon says

As of October 2026, one of the enrollment requirements on Amazon's Transparency page is the ability to add Amazon-issued codes to every unit you manufacture, regardless of where it's sold.

Amazon's checks happen in two places:

FBA: codes are scanned when units arrive at an Amazon fulfillment center.
Self-fulfilled Amazon orders: you provide codes when you confirm the order in Seller Central.

A Walmart or Shopify order goes through neither one. You don't confirm it in Seller Central, so you don't report its codes to Amazon. The requirement is about being able to code every unit you make, and Amazon's pages don't say more than that about other channels. If you need a firm answer for a specific channel, ask your Transparency contact.

If you connect your own existing serial codes instead of using Amazon-issued ones, Amazon lists different requirements. Ask your Transparency contact how they apply to your other channels.

Why it's worth coding every unit

Even setting the requirement aside, coding everything is usually the simpler way to run a warehouse.

One process instead of two

If only Amazon units get codes, your team has to know which units are going where before they label. That means separate stock, separate bins and a lot of room for mistakes. When every unit is coded, inventory is interchangeable. A unit can go to an Amazon order, a Shopify order or a wholesale pallet without anyone stopping to think.

Units move between channels

A unit you sell on your own site or to a wholesale buyer can end up for sale on Amazon later. If it carries a valid code, it can pass Amazon's check. If it doesn't, it can't. That protects legitimate resale of your product and makes life harder for anyone mixing counterfeits in.

Customers can verify it anywhere

Customers can scan an Amazon-issued Transparency code with the Amazon Shopping app or the Transparency app to check that the product is genuine. Amazon's Australian page says customers can verify products regardless of where they bought them. A buyer who found you at a retail store gets the same check as an Amazon buyer.

How each channel works

Amazon FBA and Amazon MCF

FBA units are coded before they arrive, because Amazon scans them at receiving. Multi-Channel Fulfillment orders ship from that same FBA inventory, so those units already carry their codes. Amazon's public Transparency pages don't cover MCF specifically, so if you rely on it heavily, confirm with Transparency support that there's nothing extra to do at order time.

Amazon FBM and Seller Fulfilled Prime

Every unit carries a code, and you report the codes when you confirm the order. See the FBM labeling guide and the Seller Fulfilled Prime guide.

Walmart, Shopify, eBay and your own website

If you code every unit, these carry codes too. There's no place to report them to Amazon, so record them yourself: which code went on which order. You'll want that record when a customer emails a photo of a code and asks if their product is real, or when a return comes back and you want to check it's the unit you sent.

Wholesale and retail

Units going to a distributor or a store are usually shipped by the case. The easiest answer is codes applied at the factory or at receiving, before units are split up by channel. If you label in your warehouse, log codes by shipment so you can tell a buyer what went on their pallet. See applying codes at the factory.

Where to put the labeling step

The best place to apply codes is before you know which channel a unit is going to:

At the factory or co-packer, if your volume justifies it.
At receiving, when units come into your warehouse.
At prep, if you have a prep step before units go on the shelf.

Labeling at pack-out works for FBM-heavy sellers, but it's the hardest to run across several channels, because the packer has to handle codes on every order no matter where it came from.

Budget for every unit

If you code every unit, your code budget follows your total unit sales, not just your Amazon sales. At $0.05 per code for the first 1,000,000 codes in an account year, as of October 2026, 20,000 units sold off Amazon is another $1,000 in codes. See what Transparency codes cost.

Keep one record for every channel

The question you'll eventually get is "where did this code go?" It might come from Amazon, from the brand, from a customer or from your own returns team. A record that only covers Amazon orders can't answer it for the rest.

At minimum, log the code, the product, the channel, the order or shipment and the date. Reconcile it monthly so codes received always equal codes used plus codes left. Here's how to reconcile Transparency codes.

How T-Code Manager fits multi-channel selling

T-Code Manager doesn't care where a unit is headed. Your team scans the product, enters a quantity and prints labels, and the codes are marked used as soon as the label file is created. Every print job is logged with who ran it, when, the product and the shipment or order reference you enter, so non-Amazon orders and wholesale pallets have a record too.

For Amazon FBM orders, the dispensing flow hands you the next unused codes for an order and logs them with the order ID. Low-stock emails warn you before any product runs out, whichever channel is using up its codes.

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