Key concepts
These are the words and ideas you’ll see again and again across Hilal Software. Once you know them, the rest of the app is easy to navigate.
Organization
An organization is the top-level container that owns everything you see in Hilal — your Amazon connections, your inventory, your campaigns, your team, your subscription. Most users have one organization. Agencies and operators with multiple brands have several and switch between them with the org switcher in the sidebar.
When you sign up, an organization is created for you automatically. You can rename it, add a logo, and set the billing address from Settings → Organization.
Member
A member is a person you’ve invited into your organization. Each member has an email address, a name, and a role.
Role
A role determines what a member can do. Hilal uses three roles:
- Owner — the person who created (or now owns) the organization. Can do anything, including delete the organization or transfer ownership. There must always be exactly one Owner.
- Admin — can do everything except destroy the organization. Manages members, billing, integrations, and all data.
- Member — invited team members start with no special permissions by default. Owner or Admin must explicitly assign feature-level permissions (e.g., Inventory, Advertising, Product Research, Finances) to grant access. Individual permissions can be toggled per member for very specific cases (e.g., “this VA shouldn’t see the Finances section”).
See Team & permissions.
Permissions: server-side and client-side
Hilal uses a two-layer permission model:
- Server-side is the source of truth. Every API call and Server Action checks the caller’s role and permissions before doing anything. You can’t bypass it from the browser.
- Client-side is for UI gating. The browser fetches a flat list of the current user’s permissions and uses it to hide or show menu items, buttons, and pages. It’s a usability layer — never the security boundary.
What this means for you: if a member doesn’t have permission to do something, the button disappears. If they somehow trigger the API anyway, the server still rejects it.
Marketplace
A marketplace is one of Amazon’s 15+ regional storefronts (US, CA, MX, BR, UK, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, JP, AU, SG, etc.). You select which marketplaces your organization sells in from Settings → Amazon Accounts, and the entire app — dashboard, inventory, ads, finances — scopes its data to those marketplaces.
Marketplaces are grouped into three regions:
- North America (NA) — US, CA, MX, BR
- Europe (EU) — UK, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, etc.
- Far East (FE) — JP, AU, SG, etc.
Region grouping matters for the Ads API: each region is a separate Ads connection.
Amazon Seller Partner API connection (SP-API)
The SP-API connection is the OAuth grant that lets Hilal read your Seller account — orders, inventory, fees, returns, and reports. One connection covers your entire seller account across regions.
If the connection expires or is revoked, every section that depends on Seller data shows a “reconnect Amazon” banner. See Connection status & troubleshooting.
Amazon Advertising API connection (Ads API)
The Ads API connection is the OAuth grant that lets Hilal read and write your Amazon Ads campaigns. Unlike SP-API, Ads is per-region: a North American ads connection and a European ads connection are independent. You can have any combination — only NA, only EU, NA + EU, all three, or none.
Subscription
Your subscription is the Hilal plan you’re on: Free Forever, Professional, Business+, or Enterprise. Each plan unlocks a different feature set, marketplace count, member count, and credit allowance.
On top of the base plan you can buy add-ons — for example, additional AI usage, extra members, or a higher campaign limit. Add-ons stack on top of your base plan and renew on the same cycle.
See Plans, usage & pricing for the breakdown.
Feature gating
Most features in Hilal are gated by subscription tier. The middleware checks your tier on every request and either lets the page render, redirects to an upgrade prompt, or returns a 403 from the API. The dashboard surfaces an “upgrade required” banner whenever you click into a feature your plan doesn’t include.
Sidebar groups
The app’s left sidebar is organised into groups, and the Guide uses the same names when it says “Go to X → Y”: INVENTORY (Inventory, Forecasting, Master Data), SUPPLY CHAIN (Vendors, Lead Times, Orders, Order Tracking, FBA Shipments, Fee Calculator), Copilot, Product Research (Search, Deep Search, Watchlist, History), Dashboard (Overview, Analytics, Quick Actions), Advertising (Campaign Manager, Optimization, Automation, Insights), Customer Hub (Email Automation, AI Assistant, Reviews Manager), Finance (Expenses) and Settings (Profile Settings, Organization, Team Members, Amazon Accounts, Plans & Billing, Notification Preferences, Bulk Export/Import). A navigation restructure (tabbed Inventory / FBA Shipments / Purchase Order screens, Copilot in the navbar) is in flight — see What’s new.
Credits (Product Research)
Product Research is both plan-gated and credit-metered. Within your plan, searches, catalogue expansions, first product-detail views, exports and Deep Search iterations each consume credits. Your monthly allowance depends on your plan. Failed actions are refunded automatically. Your balance is shown on the Product Research landing page. See Plans, usage & pricing for your plan’s Product Research entitlements.