Firstly, matching the Amazon sales between the two types of reports from Amazon (Settlements and Business Reports) is never an exact match.
The reason for this is that the Amazon settlement reports are in UTC time zone and the business reports are in the timezone of the marketplace which they are generated for. This can give anything from a 1-10 hour window at the start and end of a month where the two reports don't line up.
💡Good to know
If you connected your Amazon account to Link My Books after 1st June 2023 then we now automatically account for this by adjusting our settlement summaries to match the business report timezones.
Comparing Amazon settlement data to Amazon business reports
Link My Books uses the Amazon settlement reports to accurately break down each payout you receive from Amazon.
Whilst it is possible to compare the figures contained in the settlement reports to those in the business reports it can be tricky.
If we take a look at an Amazon date range summary report below, the lines highlighted in red would be the ones you'd need to sum up to compare against your gross figures from Link My Books:
How can I trust the data coming out of Link My Books then?
Rest assured that since we are using Amazon's own settlement reports and those are a full breakdown of all the transactions that make up each payout you receive from Amazon - you can trust that the data is 100% accurate.
The invoices we post to Xero and the sales journals we post to QuickBooks are simply a summarised aggregated version of the settlement reports from Amazon which will always match exactly the payout you received from Amazon.
We also attach a file in Xero and QuickBooks to each entry we post, with a full audit trail showing all the transaction level data and how we categorised it.
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].