Amazon FBA Settlement Report Explained: A Seller's Complete Guide (2026)

Key Takeaways

• An Amazon FBA settlement report is the detailed breakdown of every transaction — sales, refunds, fees, and adjustments — that makes up your biweekly deposit.
• Recording the net deposit as "revenue" is the most common FBA accounting mistake. You need to book gross sales, fees, and refunds separately.
• Settlement reports are deposit-based (what went into a specific payout), while Date Range reports are calendar-based. Use settlement reports for bank reconciliation.
• Amazon charges more than a dozen fee types per settlement. Tracking each category separately gives you visibility into your true margins.
• Tools like MerchantLedger pull settlement data automatically, categorize every line item, and post journal entries to QuickBooks, Xero, or Wave — no spreadsheets required.

What Is an Amazon FBA Settlement Report?

An Amazon FBA settlement report is a detailed financial statement that Amazon generates approximately every 14 days for every active seller account. It lists every transaction — product sales, refunds, fees, reimbursements, and adjustments — that affected the seller's account balance during that settlement period. The bottom line of the report equals the deposit Amazon sends to your bank account.

Think of it as your FBA "pay stub." Just like an employee's pay stub shows gross wages, taxes, deductions, and net pay, your settlement report shows gross sales, Amazon's fee deductions, refunds, and the net amount deposited. Without reading the stub, you only know what hit your bank account — not how Amazon calculated it.

Every FBA seller receives these reports automatically inside Seller Central. They cover a rolling window from the close of one settlement to the close of the next, and they are the single most important document for accurate Amazon accounting.

Why Settlement Reports Matter for Accounting

The number-one bookkeeping mistake Amazon sellers make is recording the net bank deposit as "revenue." If Amazon deposits $8,400 into your account, that is not $8,400 in sales. It is gross sales minus referral fees, FBA fulfillment fees, storage charges, advertising spend, refunds, and other deductions — all bundled into a single bank transfer.

When you break the settlement report apart correctly, you get:

• Correct revenue recognition — your income statement reflects gross product sales, not a net number that hides thousands of dollars in fees.
• Fee visibility — FBA fulfillment, referral, storage, and advertising fees are tracked in separate expense accounts so you can see which costs are growing.
• Refund tracking — customer refunds are matched to original orders and recorded as contra-revenue, keeping your sales figures honest.
• COGS accuracy — cost of goods sold is calculated against actual units shipped in the period, giving you a true gross margin.

Without this breakdown, your profit-and-loss statement is unreliable, tax deductions get missed, and you have no way to answer the question every seller should be asking: "Which SKUs are actually profitable after all Amazon fees?"

How to Download Your Settlement Report

You can download settlement reports manually from Seller Central in a few steps:

1. Log in to Amazon Seller Central.
2. Navigate to Reports in the top menu bar.
3. Select Payments, then click the Settlement tab (not "Date Range").
4. Find the settlement period you want and click Download.
5. Choose the V2 flat file format (tab-delimited TXT). This is the most complete version and the format most accounting tools expect.

The file contains one row per transaction with columns for order ID, SKU, transaction type, amount type, and amount. A single settlement can contain hundreds or thousands of rows depending on your sales volume.

If you use MerchantLedger, you can skip this entirely. MerchantLedger connects to your Seller Central account via Amazon's SP-API and pulls settlement data automatically on your schedule — no manual downloads, no CSV wrangling.

Settlement Report vs. Date Range Report

Amazon offers two financial report types in Seller Central, and sellers frequently confuse them.

A settlement report is deposit-based. It answers: "What transactions make up this specific bank deposit?" The date range corresponds to the settlement window, not necessarily the dates the orders were placed.

A Date Range report is calendar-based. It answers: "What transactions occurred between date A and date B?" It groups by transaction date, regardless of which settlement the transactions belong to.

For bank reconciliation — matching your books to your bank statement — you almost always want the settlement report. Each report maps one-to-one with a deposit, making it straightforward to reconcile. Date Range reports are useful for ad-hoc analysis but do not align cleanly with bank deposits.

Anatomy of a Settlement Report

Every settlement report contains several transaction categories. Understanding each one is the key to accurate bookkeeping.

Product Sales

This is the gross revenue section. Each row represents an item sold and shipped during the settlement period. The columns include:

• Product charges — the base item price the customer paid.
• Shipping charges — amounts collected for shipping, if applicable.
• Gift wrap charges — gift wrap fees collected from the buyer.
• Promotional rebates — discounts you funded through Amazon promotions. These appear as negative amounts because they reduce your payout.

Every row includes the order ID and SKU, so you can trace any individual sale back to the specific product and customer order.

Refunds

When a customer returns an item or receives a refund, it appears here with negative amounts that mirror the original sale structure. Key things to watch for:

• Full refunds return the entire product charge, shipping, and any gift wrap back to the customer — all deducted from your balance.
• Partial refunds only reverse part of the original charge. Amazon may issue these when a customer keeps the item but receives a price adjustment.
• Return shipping credits — Amazon may charge you for the return label cost, which appears as an additional deduction.
• Restocking fees — if applicable to your category, these offset part of the refund amount in your favor.

Track refunds as contra-revenue (a reduction of sales), not as an expense. This keeps your gross sales figure accurate on your income statement.

Amazon Fees

Fees are typically the largest deduction category in any settlement report. Amazon charges more than a dozen fee types, and each one should map to a specific account in your books.

Fee Category	Typical Range	Accounting Treatment
FBA Fulfillment	$2.50–$5.00/unit	Cost of Sale / Fulfillment Expense
Referral Fee	8–15% of sale price	Commission Expense
Monthly Storage	$0.75–$2.40/cu ft	Storage Expense
Long-term Storage	$6.90/cu ft or $0.15/unit	Storage Expense
Advertising (PPC)	Variable	Advertising Expense

FBA fulfillment fees cover picking, packing, and shipping each unit. They vary by product size and weight tier. Referral fees are Amazon's sales commission — a percentage of the total sale price that differs by product category (most categories fall between 8% and 15%). Monthly storage fees are charged per cubic foot of warehouse space your inventory occupies, with higher rates during Q4 (October–December). Long-term storage fees apply to units sitting in Amazon fulfillment centers for 271 days or more, incentivizing you to keep inventory moving. Advertising fees from Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display campaigns are also deducted directly from your settlement.

Each of these should be posted to a separate expense account. Lumping them together into a single "Amazon Fees" line makes it impossible to analyze cost trends or identify margin leaks. For a detailed walkthrough of the correct account mapping in QuickBooks, see How to Post Amazon FBA Fees to QuickBooks.

Other Transactions

This catch-all section covers everything that is not a product sale, refund, or standard fee:

• Reimbursements — when Amazon compensates you for inventory lost or damaged in their fulfillment centers. These are not revenue; record them as Other Income.
• FBA inventory credits — adjustments for mishandled, miscounted, or misplaced stock.
• Service fees — subscription charges (Professional Seller plan at $39.99/month), FBA label service fees, and similar recurring costs.
• Adjustments — prior-period corrections, balance carry-forwards, and other one-time items.
• Currency conversions — if you sell in multiple marketplaces, Amazon converts foreign-currency proceeds and includes the conversion rate and fee here.

These line items are easy to overlook, but they can add up to hundreds of dollars per settlement. Reimbursements alone are worth auditing — Amazon does not always reimburse automatically for lost inventory, and the amounts they do pay may be lower than your actual cost.

How Often Do Settlements Happen?

Most established Amazon seller accounts receive settlements every 14 days. Amazon staggers settlement dates across sellers, so your cycle may not align with calendar month boundaries.

New seller accounts may experience longer settlement holds — sometimes 21 to 28 days — while Amazon establishes account history. Additionally, Amazon may withhold a reserve from your settlement: a percentage of your balance held back to cover potential refunds or chargebacks. The reserve amount is visible in your Payments dashboard and will be released in future settlements.

If your settlement cycle or reserve amount seems unusual, check your Account Health dashboard. Policy violations or high order-defect rates can trigger extended holds.

How MerchantLedger Automates This

Manually downloading CSV files, mapping hundreds of line items to the correct accounts, and building journal entries in a spreadsheet is tedious, error-prone, and does not scale. MerchantLedger replaces that entire workflow:

1. Pulls settlement reports automatically — MerchantLedger connects to your Seller Central account via Amazon's SP-API and imports every new settlement as it becomes available.
2. Categorizes every transaction — product sales, refunds, each fee type, reimbursements, and adjustments are mapped to the correct accounts in your chart of accounts.
3. Calculates COGS using Average Cost — MerchantLedger tracks your inventory costs and computes cost of goods sold per settlement using the Average Cost method, so your gross margin is accurate without manual spreadsheet work.
4. Posts journal entries to your accounting software — balanced, line-item journal entries are posted directly to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or Wave via API. Posting is idempotent — if you re-post a settlement, MerchantLedger detects the duplicate and skips it, so you never get double entries.

No spreadsheets. No manual data entry. No miscategorized fees.

The account mapping is fully customizable from the MerchantLedger dashboard, so your journal entries match your existing chart of accounts exactly. And because everything flows through the API, your books are updated within minutes of Amazon closing a settlement — not days or weeks later when someone gets around to the export.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often does Amazon send settlement reports?

Amazon generates settlement reports approximately every 14 days for most active seller accounts. The exact cycle depends on your account age and standing. New accounts may have settlement holds of 21–28 days. You can check your specific schedule in Seller Central under Reports → Payments → Settlement.

Can I get settlement data via API instead of CSV?

Yes. Amazon's Selling Partner API (SP-API) provides programmatic access to settlement reports. This is how MerchantLedger retrieves your data — it authenticates via OAuth, requests available settlement reports, and downloads them automatically. If you are building a custom integration, look at the SP-API Reports endpoint and request the GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_FLAT_FILE report type.

What's the difference between a settlement report and a payments report?

A settlement report covers a single deposit cycle and shows every transaction included in that specific payout. A payments report (or Date Range report) covers a calendar date range you choose and includes all transactions by their transaction date, regardless of which settlement they belong to. For bank reconciliation, use settlement reports because they match one-to-one with your bank deposits.

Should I use accrual or cash basis for Amazon settlement accounting?

Most Amazon FBA sellers benefit from accrual basis accounting. Under accrual, you recognize revenue when the sale occurs (ship date) and expenses when incurred — not when cash moves. Since Amazon holds your funds for 14 days before depositing, cash basis creates a timing gap where your books do not reflect economic activity. Accrual basis gives you a more accurate picture of profitability in each period. That said, consult with your accountant — some small sellers and sole proprietors use cash basis for simplicity or tax reasons.

Next Steps

Your settlement report contains everything you need for accurate Amazon accounting — but only if you break it apart and post each component to the right accounts.

Start your free MerchantLedger account — automate settlement posting to QuickBooks, Xero, or Wave in minutes. Connect your Amazon Seller Central account, review the default mappings, and post your first settlement today.