Amazon Payment Reconciliation: Match Orders, Settlements and Bank Payouts

Amazon pays you in settlements, not order by order. A single bank credit can contain hundreds of orders, refunds, fees, advertising charges and reimbursements. Payment reconciliation means proving that every order you shipped was paid, and that every settlement reached your bank.

The reports you need

• All Orders report — every order and its status. Reconcile only orders that are actually Shipped.
• Date Range payment report (also called the transaction report) — every money movement with its order ID, type, amount and settlement ID.
• Your bank statement — to confirm each transfer.

Step 1 — Total the payment report per order

One order can have many rows: the order payment, a refund, a fee adjustment, a reimbursement. Add up the total column for each order ID. That sum is what the order really earned you.

Rows without an order ID — advertising, subscription fees, other charges — belong to the business as a whole. Keep them separate and deduct them in your monthly profit. Our profit per SKU guide explains how.

Step 2 — Find orders with no payment

Compare shipped orders with the payment totals. An order with no payment rows after a reasonable time needs attention. An order with a payment far below similar orders may have a fee problem.

Step 3 — Understand Released and Deferred

Many payment reports include a status for each row:

• Released — the money is part of a settlement that is being paid to you.
• Deferred — the money is held back for now and will be released later.

A deferred row normally becomes released in a later report — sometimes under a different settlement ID. If you add up every report naively, you count the same order twice. Read more in Amazon deferred payments explained.

Step 4 — Match settlements to your bank

The released total of a settlement is what Amazon transfers. The transfer itself usually appears as a line in the next settlement, mentioning the last digits of your bank account. Match that amount to your bank statement. If a settlement ended negative, its balance is carried forward and the next transfer is the combined amount.

Doing it automatically

Our free Amazon payment reconciliation tool does all four steps:

• totals every order and stores advertising separately,
• lists orders with no payment,
• counts Released as received and Deferred as pending — and when a deferred row is released later, it updates the same row instead of counting it twice,
• matches each settlement to its bank transfer and flags anything deferred for too long.