Glossary
This document defines the terms used across the API Reference, as an integrator meets them in endpoints, payloads, and program documents.
Access tier: the level of API access issued to an account, governing which endpoints its key may use. Set by the Company under the API Access Tiers (see Authentication Endpoints).
Acknowledgement: a seller's confirmation, through POST /orders/{id}/acknowledge, that an order has been received into its fulfillment process (Orders Endpoints).
API key: the per-account credential sent as Authorization: Bearer <api-key> on every request. Issued by the Company, shown once, treated as a secret.
Authorization (brand): the documented permission for a named seller to list a gated brand, with evidence and a validity period (see Brand and Manufacturer Endpoints).
Buyer: the customer who places an order on the marketplace.
Charge: a payment taken from a buyer for an order. A charge's state is read through Payments Endpoints.
Chargeback: a buyer-initiated reversal of a charge through the buyer's card issuer, later resolved for or against the seller. Chargebacks reduce payouts and are visible as adjustments on statements.
Compare-at price: a variant's reference price, shown struck through when higher than the selling price. It must be a genuine former or list price (Pricing Endpoints).
Cursor: the opaque value a collection response returns as next_cursor and the client passes back to fetch the next page (Pagination and Filtering (Pagination & Filtering)).
Idempotency key: a client-generated string sent in the Idempotency-Key header so a retried write is applied once (Idempotency Keys).
Import entitlement: the permission, held by manufacturer and supplier accounts, to create and update catalog, inventory, and pricing data through the API.
Listing: a product offered for sale on the marketplace, with its content, price, and stock (Catalog Endpoints).
Merchant of record: the party named as seller in the transaction record for tax and consumer-law purposes. For a marketplace sale, the statement in the Selling Terms of Service governs who stands as merchant of record for each element of the sale.
Order number: the human-facing identifier of an order, for example AAP-2026-104821, quoted in buyer and support correspondence. API calls use the order id (Orders Endpoints).
Payout: the net amount sent to a seller's bank for a payout period: cleared charges minus refunds, chargebacks, and agreed fees (Payments Endpoints).
Platform: All About Pawz and its marketplace, as operated by the Company.
Prescription: a veterinarian's direction for a medication, transmitted to a pharmacy partner for dispensing (Veterinary and Pharmacy Endpoints).
Product: a sellable item family; its purchasable forms are its variants.
Rate limit: the number of requests a key may make in a window, reported through the headers in Rate Limit Headers.
Referral (veterinary): a consented request for a partner veterinarian to contact a pet owner about a stated concern (Veterinary and Pharmacy Endpoints).
Refund: money returned to a buyer for a charge, in whole or in part, issued through the returns flow (Returns Endpoints).
Return: a buyer's return of goods, tracked from request through inspection to refund, exchange, or rejection. Its identifier for people is the return number (RMA-2026-00319).
Seller: an account that offers products for sale on the marketplace.
Seller SKU: the seller's own stock-keeping unit for a product or variant, unique within the seller's account and used to match re-imported data to existing listings.
Shipment: one package sent against an order, with a carrier and a tracking number (Fulfillment Endpoints).
Signing secret: the secret issued when a webhook endpoint is registered, used to verify that a delivery came from the Platform (Webhook Event Schemas).
Statement: the period summary of sales, refunds, fees, and net that the Company issues per payout period (payments), or per franchise location and period (franchise fees and royalties).
Store credit: value issued to a buyer, in place of a cash refund, spendable on the marketplace.
Variant: one purchasable form of a product: a size, flavor, or count: with its own SKU, price, and stock.
VCPR (veterinarian-client-patient relationship): the professional relationship, recognized under the law of the patient's state, that must be in place before a veterinarian may prescribe (Veterinary and Pharmacy Endpoints).
Webhook: an HTTPS POST the Platform sends to an endpoint you register when an event occurs, carrying a signed JSON payload (Webhook Event Schemas).