A single bank line that means nothing on its own
Every couple of weeks, Amazon pays a lump sum into your bank. It is not your sales for the period. It is sales minus refunds, minus referral fees, minus FBA fees, minus storage, minus advertising if it is billed that way, minus or plus a reserve, plus reimbursements, plus or minus adjustments from earlier periods, and in some marketplaces, after currency conversion.
Your bookkeeper downloads the settlement report, opens it in Excel, builds a pivot table, and tries to make it match the bank line. When it does not, they look for the missing amount among several thousand rows. Multiply by each marketplace you sell in, and the month-end close is late every month.
Why it never lines up easily
The settlement report is accurate, but it is built for Amazon's accounting, not yours. Transaction types have similar names, some lines relate to orders from months ago, and the report period does not match your calendar month. Reserves held back in one settlement are released in the next.
- Settlement periods cross month-ends, so one payout belongs to two accounting periods.
- Refunds and reimbursements relate to orders from earlier settlements.
- Reserves are held and released, which moves cash without being income.
- Fees are split into many types that your chart of accounts groups differently.
- Payouts in other currencies arrive after conversion at a rate you did not choose.
So the reconciliation is not really adding up rows. It is mapping Amazon's categories to yours, handling timing and making sure the total agrees with what reached the bank.
The cost of doing it by hand
Time is the obvious one: a bookkeeper's day or more each month, sometimes much more across several marketplaces. But the bigger cost is decisions made on bad numbers. If fees are lumped together, you cannot see which fee type is growing. If refunds are netted off sales, your return rate is hidden. If the payout is posted as a single income line, your accounts show revenue that does not match Amazon's own sales reports, and your accountant spends time untangling it at year end.
Some sellers use a dedicated connector such as A2X or Link My Books, and for many that is the right answer. The trouble starts when your business needs something the connector does not do: per-brand reporting, a custom split for a group of companies, or matching to landed cost for margin reporting.
The reconciliation we build
- Settlement reports read automatically through the Selling Partner API as each one closes, for every marketplace.
- A mapping table from every Amazon transaction and fee type to your chart of accounts, maintained by your bookkeeper, not hard-coded.
- Splitting of each settlement across accounting periods where it crosses a month-end, following the method your accountant chooses.
- A summary journal or invoice per settlement, posted to Xero or QuickBooks as a draft for approval, with the settlement ID in the reference.
- Matching to the bank feed line for the payout, with reserves, currency conversion and any difference shown on one screen.
- An exception list for anything the mapping does not recognise, such as a new fee type Amazon has introduced, rather than guessing.
| Settlement element | How it is treated |
|---|---|
| Product sales and shipping | Income accounts you choose, by marketplace or brand |
| Referral and FBA fees | Separate expense lines per fee type |
| Refunds | Shown separately, not netted off sales |
| Reserves held and released | Balance sheet account, not income |
| Reimbursements | Their own line, linked to the claim log if you have one |
How things are treated for tax and accounts is your accountant's decision. We build the mapping they specify and keep it editable.
What month-end looks like afterwards
Each settlement arrives in your accounts as a draft with the fee types separated and the bank line already matched. Your bookkeeper reviews the exceptions, approves the drafts and moves on. The pivot table goes.
You also get reporting you did not have: fees by type over time, refund values by marketplace, and, if you feed in landed cost, gross margin per settlement. That makes the conversation with your accountant shorter and the one about pricing better informed.
Does your Amazon bookkeeping look like this?
- Amazon payouts are posted as a single income line.
- Reconciling each settlement takes hours in Excel.
- Nobody can say which Amazon fee types have grown this year.
- Your off-the-shelf connector does not handle a split you need.
- Month-end closes late because of Amazon.