Import Amazon Sales Into QuickBooks by Settlement

Quick Answer: Import Amazon sales into QuickBooks by recording each Amazon settlement, not each order. Take the settlement report from Seller Central, post gross sales as income and every fee, refund and reserve as its own line, so the entry nets to the exact amount Amazon deposited. Do that with a journal entry, a bank deposit with negative fee lines, or a connector app, then match it to the deposit in your bank feed.

Amazon does not send you your sales. It sends a settlement: sales minus referral fees, fulfillment fees, refunds, advertising and any reserve it holds back. If QuickBooks only sees the bank deposit, your income is understated and your fees vanish. The fix is to record the settlement's components in QuickBooks and let them add up to the deposit.

Why is the Amazon deposit smaller than your sales?

Each payout is the closing balance of a settlement period. Here is a made-up two-week settlement for a small FBA seller, laid out the way a settlement summary groups it:

Only the last figure shows up on your bank statement. Booking 4,664.80 as "Sales" would understate revenue by nearly $4,000 and erase every Amazon expense from your profit and loss. Amazon's pricing page groups its charges into selling plan fees, referral fees, Fulfillment by Amazon costs and optional costs, and Amazon changes those rates, so always take the amounts from your own report rather than estimating them.

The reserve lines confuse people most. Money Amazon holds back is still yours; it is just not in your bank yet. Treat it as a current asset, "Amazon reserve," that goes up when Amazon holds funds and down when it releases them.

Which way of getting Amazon into QuickBooks fits you?

All three end in the same place: a QuickBooks transaction equal to the deposit, with the gross pieces posted to the right accounts. Order-by-order sales receipts are possible but rarely worth it; a settlement can contain hundreds of orders and QuickBooks does not need them to produce a correct profit and loss.

Accounts to set up first

Before the first entry, add these to your chart of accounts so every settlement posts the same way:

• Income: Amazon sales, Amazon shipping income.
• Contra-income or expense: Amazon refunds, Amazon promotions.
• Expenses: Amazon referral fees, FBA fulfillment fees, FBA storage fees, Amazon advertising.
• Other current asset: Amazon reserve.
• Bank-type account (optional): Amazon clearing, explained below.

Writing the settlement as a journal entry

Debits must equal credits, so the deposit and the expenses sit on one side and the income on the other. For the example settlement:

Put the settlement ID and period in the memo so you can find the source report later. Date the entry on the deposit date if you keep cash-basis books; if your accountant wants sales in the month they happened, discuss splitting settlements that cross month end, which our Amazon FBA bookkeeping guide walks through.

Sales tax deserves a quick look on your own report. Where Amazon collects and remits tax on your behalf, the report shows the tax collected and the same amount withheld, so the two cancel. Ask your accountant whether they want both lines recorded or neither; either way the deposit still ties.

If you post many settlements, build the entry in a spreadsheet and import it rather than typing it. Our guide to importing Excel into QuickBooks Online covers the import options.

Using a bank deposit instead

QuickBooks Online's deposit screen can do the same job. Intuit's bank deposit article gives the path: + Create, then Bank Deposit, and pick the bank account. In the Add funds to this deposit section you add lines, and Intuit says to enter a fee as a negative number against an expense account.

For Amazon, that means one positive line for product sales to Amazon sales, one for shipping credits, and a negative line for each refund, fee, ad charge and the net reserve change. The deposit total equals 4,664.80 when every line is in. Choose this if your team already records other processor payouts as deposits; choose the journal entry if your accountant prefers journals for summarized activity.

Matching the entry to the bank feed

Once the settlement is recorded, the deposit that arrives through your bank feed should be matched, not added. Intuit's matching article describes the flow: go to All apps, Accounting, Bank transactions, review the Categorize or Match column, and Post the match. If QuickBooks suggests the wrong record, Find other match lets you pick the settlement entry yourself. Intuit says suggested matches look for the same amount from 90 days before to 20 days after the bank date, so an entry dated on the settlement end date still shows up.

Two habits prevent duplicates:

1. Never categorize an Amazon deposit as income in the feed. That records the net as sales on top of your settlement entry, counting the money twice.
2. Use a clearing account if timing is messy. Post each settlement entry to a bank-type account called Amazon clearing instead of checking, then record the payout as a transfer from clearing to checking when the deposit lands. The clearing balance should fall back to zero after each payout; anything left over is a settlement you have not recorded or a deposit matched to the wrong one.

If your bank feed has gaps, for example the account was connected recently and older months never came through, download those statements from your bank. QuickBankConvert turns PDF bank statements into QBO files you upload to the same account in QuickBooks; QBO output starts on the Plus plan, listed on the pricing page. The Amazon deposits from those months then have something to match.

What does a connector app change?

Connector apps read your Amazon account and post settlements, or individual orders, into QuickBooks on a schedule. They are listed in the QuickBooks App Store and are built by different developers, so what each records varies. Before connecting one, check:

• whether it posts a settlement summary or every order (summary keeps the books lighter),
• how it maps each fee type, and whether you can change the mapping,
• how it treats reserves and multi-currency marketplaces,
• whether it handles cost of goods and inventory, or only sales and fees,
• how far back it can import and what it costs per month.

A connector is still one more thing to reconcile. After the first month, compare its entries against the settlement report totals for at least one period by hand.

Month-end checks

Run through these before you call Amazon done for the month:

• Every settlement that closed in the month has one entry, with the settlement ID in the memo.
• Each entry's net equals a deposit on the bank statement, to the cent.
• The Amazon reserve balance agrees with the reserve shown in Seller Central.
• The Amazon clearing account, if you use one, is zero or equals a payout still in transit.
• Inventory purchases paid by card are recorded as inventory, not as Amazon fees.
• The checking account reconciles to the bank statement, as the bank statement reconciliation guide describes.

Related guides

• Amazon FBA bookkeeping
• Ecommerce bookkeeping
• Import Excel into QuickBooks Online
• QuickBooks and bank statement files