Amazon Reconciliation
The Amazon Settlement Reports is designed to track the fees and payment status of every Amazon order placed on each of your Amazon sales channels.
Through Amazon’s Marketplace Web Services (MWS) API, MarginDriver has captured the actual Amazon fees and used this information to calculate the net amount Amazon owes the user for each order. The amount due for each order is then matched against the payments reported by Amazon in its biweekly Settlement Reports.
This process allows MD to establish a running balance of unpaid orders and an accurate accounts receivable balance due from Amazon on a daily basis as well as at the end of each month.
Amazon’s actual end of month accounts receivable balance established in this feature is compared in the Accounting Task feature to the seller’s general ledger Amazon accounts receivable balance. And the general ledger balance is then adjusted to agree with this actual Amazon accounts receivable balance at the end of each month.
Comparing Amazon’s actual end of month accounts receivable balance to the seller’s general ledger balance assures the user of the continuous accuracy of all of MarginDriver’s monthly financial and analytical reports.
Tracking Amazon Accounts Receivable and Settlement Reports
At the top of the page, you will find four dashboard cards with up to date information on the status of your Amazon accounts receivable and settlement reports.
AR Current
The current accounts receivable balance as calculated by MarginDriver using data from the most recently hour data pull from Amazon.
AR End of Last Month
The Amazon accounts receivable balance as of the end of the previous calendar month. This card, and the AR Current card above, includes a line for Amazon Reserve, the amount of the user's funds that Amazon is holding currently or at the end of the previous month. This reserve amount in included in the AR Balance.
Last Settlement
The amount and date of issue of the user's last Amazon Settlement Report.
Next Settlement Date
The projected date of issue of the user's next Amazon Settlement Report.
Accounts Receivable Order Tracking
The Accounts Receivable Order Tracking feature is designed to track and display the payment status of every Amazon order.
The user has several options for displaying the payment status of orders on this screen. One can elect to show the orders that make up either the current accounts receivable balance (Current Balance) or the accounts receivable balance at the end of a selected month (End of Month). Within each of these options the user can opt to Include or Exclude the orders that have already been paid.
The feature opens to a default display of a summary of unpaid orders by month that constitutes the current accounts receivable balance. The boxes shaded in gray represent the active filters being displayed on the screen. The screen will open to the default display of current (Current Balance) and unpaid (Exclude) orders.
If the user selects the accounts receivable balance as of the End of Month and also selects Include, all of the orders for the month will be displayed – the paid as well as the unpaid orders.
The content of the various columns on the screen is easily identified by the column’s title but the following columns may need further explanation:
Third Party Order Number
The Amazon order number.Fees & Allowances
The amount Amazon has charged the seller for each sale, including the Amazon sales commission, FBA Per Unit Fulfillment Fee all and other applicable fees. This amount is a reduction of what Amazon owes the seller.Currency Timing
For sales channels that do business in a foreign currency and thus the seller's proceeds need to converted to the seller's home currency, there will often be a difference between the applicable exchange rate on the day the order was placed and the exchange rate used by Amazon when processing the payout. The value in this column represents the adjustment made to account for this currency exchange rate timing difference.
Est. Due from Amazon
The estimated accounts receivable amount due from Amazon for orders that have been fulfilled but Amazon has not yet paid by Amazon. Orders that have been Paid or that are Unfulfilled will have a zero amount is this column.Settlement Date Paid
If Amazon has paid the seller for an order in a Settlement Report, the date of that Settlement Report is displayed in this column. If the order is shipped but not yet paid by Amazon, Unpaid will appear in this column for such orders. If the order is yet to be fulfilled, Unfulfilled will be displayed in this column.
The user can go back and bring up the accounts receivable balance and individual orders supporting that balance for any prior month. Note that if the user selects the option to bring up the End of Month balance for a month other than the most recent previous month, the amount in the four boxes at the top of this page will not change as they will always contain the accounts receivable balance at the end of the last month as well as the current accounts receivable balance and information related to the most recent Settlement Report.
Breaking Down Amazon Settlement Reports
The Breaking Down Settlement Reports section allows the user to simply the process of understanding Amazon Settlement Reports by providing advanced grouping and filtering functionality.
If the user has more than one Amazon sales channel, the desired channel can be selected from the Site Name drop down. All Settlement Reports for that channel will then appear in reverse chronological order in the adjacent drop down. If no individual channel is selected, the adjacent drop down will show all Settlement Reports for all Amazon channels in reverse chronological orders.
The chosen Settlement Report can then be grouped by Transaction Type, Order ID or None (full listing of all transactions as displayed in the original Settlement Report format).
Transaction Type
Transaction Type has five different filtering options to choose from:
- A-to-Z Guaranteed Refund
- Chargeback Refund
- Order
- other-transaction
- Refund
As an example, if one wants to just see the information pertaining to Refunds, click on Deselect All and select Refund and then click on “Apply Filters”. The resulting information on refunds is then displayed below.
Order ID
Order ID lists all transactions by order. The user can click on the down arrow for each order to view each individual transaction associated with that order.
The list of orders can be filtered by selecting the available options under Transaction Type, Amount Type or Amount Description as described above.
Actual Settlement Deposit Amount
At the bottom of the Breaking Down Settlement Reports section, there is a user-populated field titled Actual Settlement Deposit Amount.
As MarginDriver does not have access to the user's bank account and cannot automatically determine the exact settlement deposit amount converted to your account's currency. The user can enter the exact deposit amount here so MarginDriver can display the correct converted amount in the Settlement Reports page.