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Why are some of my settlements being sent as bills instead of invoices to Xero?

Dealing with negative total settlement invoices

Daniel Little avatar
Written by Daniel Little
Updated over a week ago

When Link My Books sends your settlements to Xero, we do so in the form of an invoice (almost always). 

However, you may have noticed that we sometimes send your settlement as a bill instead of an invoice. This article will explain why we do that.

Since Xero does not allow negative total invoices, if you have a settlement which is for a negative amount then we have no choice but to send it as a bill instead.

Why would I have a negative settlement?

This can occur if your sales channels fees and advertising costs are larger than your sales amount, or if the sales channel has reserved a large balance of your payout for future disbursement and it has made the balance of the payout negative.

In this case Amazon will actually charge your card on file with the settlement amount and produce a negative total settlement report.

How do I reconcile a settlement if it has been sent to Xero as a bill?

To reconcile the bill against its corresponding charge to your card on file you will need to have the card you have on file with Amazon linked to Xero.

Then you match the payment on the card with the bill just as you would match a deposit from Amazon into your bank account against an invoice:

If you have any questions around reconciling your settlements then please get in touch with support and we'll be happy to help.

Small balance negative settlements

Lastly, if the settlement is negative and has a total of less than around £20 $ or € then sometimes Amazon chooses to roll their balance forward into your next settlement payout. The article linked below will explain more about this:

If you have any questions about this article or feedback on how we could make it better please reach out to the support team via the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the page or via email to [email protected].

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