Amazon does not pay you for orders. It pays you for settlements: a net amount covering sales, fees, refunds, reimbursements, reserves and adjustments over a period that rarely lines up with your calendar month. If your NetSuite books record Amazon revenue as a single deposit, you lose visibility into margin, and your bank reconciliation turns into guesswork.
This playbook walks through a structure that finance teams can run every settlement and every month-end without rebuilding spreadsheets.
Understand the source data
There are two main ways to get Amazon financial data, and they serve slightly different purposes.
Settlement report (V2 flat file)
The settlement report (GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_FLAT_FILE_V2) is generated when a settlement period closes. Its first data row contains the header: settlement ID, start and end dates, deposit date and the total amount. Every row after that is a line item with fields such as transaction-type, order-id, amount-type, amount-description, amount, sku and posted-date.
Because the report ties to a single disbursement, it is the best source for bank reconciliation. Its limitation is timing: you only get it after the period closes.
SP-API Finances
The Finances API exposes financial event groups (which map to settlement periods) and the individual events inside them: shipment events, refund events, service fee events, adjustment events and more. Events appear as they post, often days before the settlement closes.
That makes the API useful for accruals and daily visibility. Many teams use API events for intra-period reporting and the settlement report as the final source of truth for the deposit.
Map transaction and fee types
The most important design decision is how you map Amazon’s amount-type and amount-description combinations to NetSuite accounts. Keep the mapping in a maintained table, not hardcoded logic, because Amazon introduces new descriptions over time.
| Amazon line item (typical) | What it represents | Suggested NetSuite treatment |
|---|---|---|
| ItemPrice: Principal | Product sales | Gross revenue (or clear against invoices/cash sales) |
| ItemPrice: Shipping, GiftWrap | Shipping and gift wrap charged to buyer | Shipping revenue |
| ItemPrice: Tax, ShippingTax | Sales tax charged | Sales tax clearing |
| ItemWithheldTax: MarketplaceFacilitatorTax | Tax Amazon collected and remits | Offsets tax clearing (not your liability) |
| ItemFees: Commission | Referral fee | Marketplace fees expense |
| ItemFees: FBAPerUnitFulfillmentFee | FBA pick, pack and ship | Fulfillment expense |
| Promotion: Principal / Shipping | Seller-funded discounts | Contra revenue (discounts) |
| Refund lines (Principal, Commission, RefundCommission) | Customer refunds and fee reversals | Returns contra revenue; fee expense adjustments |
| Other-transaction: storage fees, subscription fee | Account-level charges | Storage expense, software/subscription expense |
| Cost of Advertising | Sponsored Ads charges deducted from payout | Advertising expense |
| Reimbursements (e.g., WAREHOUSE_DAMAGE, WAREHOUSE_LOST, REVERSAL_REIMBURSEMENT) | Amazon compensation for lost or damaged units | Other income or inventory loss recovery |
| Previous/Current Reserve Amount Balance | Funds held or released | Amazon reserve (asset) account |
Two points trip up many teams:
- Marketplace facilitator tax. In most US states Amazon collects and remits sales tax. The tax charged and the withheld tax should net to zero. If they do not, your mapping is wrong, not your tax position.
- Advertising. If ad spend is deducted from proceeds, it will appear in the settlement. If it is charged to a card, it will not. Decide on one method and document it.
Deposits versus sales
A settlement deposit is a net number. Recording it as revenue overstates nothing on the bottom line but hides every component of margin and makes fees invisible in reporting.
The better model separates two flows:
- Sales flow. Orders become sales transactions in NetSuite (cash sales or invoices), either per order or as daily summaries by SKU and channel. They post against an Amazon clearing account rather than your bank.
- Settlement flow. When the settlement closes, a journal entry records fees, refunds, reimbursements and reserves, and the net deposit moves from the clearing account to the bank.
After both flows post, the clearing account balance for a closed settlement should be zero. Anything left over is your reconciliation work queue.
Clearing accounts and journal structure
A practical chart of accounts setup uses a small set of dedicated accounts:
- Amazon Clearing (other current asset): receives sales and settlement activity.
- Amazon Reserve (other current asset): tracks funds Amazon holds, such as delivery-date-based reserves.
- Marketplace Fees, FBA Fulfillment Fees, FBA Storage Fees, Advertising (expense).
- Sales Returns and Allowances (contra revenue).
- Amazon Reimbursements (other income, or a contra to inventory shrink).
Settlement journal pattern
A typical settlement journal, summarized by account rather than by line, looks like this:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Operating bank account | Net deposit | |
| Marketplace fees expense | Referral fees | |
| FBA fulfillment and storage expense | FBA fees | |
| Sales returns and allowances | Refunded principal | |
| Amazon reserve | Current reserve held | Previous reserve released |
| Amazon reimbursements | Reimbursements | |
| Amazon clearing | Order proceeds settled |
Carry the settlement ID in the journal’s memo or a custom field, and consider attaching the source file. Auditors ask for this, and it makes drill-down from the bank line trivial.
If a settlement closes with a negative balance and Amazon charges your card on file, record the charge against the clearing account instead of the bank so the settlement still nets to zero.
Summary or detail?
Posting every line item as a separate journal line is rarely needed. Summarize by account, and optionally by marketplace, subsidiary, department or class. Keep the line-level detail in your data warehouse or a custom record where analysts can query it by SKU.
Common causes of mismatches
When the clearing account does not zero out, the cause is usually one of these:
- Period cut-off. A settlement spanning June 25 to July 9 includes sales from two months. Orders post in June; fees and deposit post in July. Accrue fees from API events at month-end or use the posted date to split lines.
- Timing of order sync. Orders shipped late in the period may not have synced to NetSuite yet, while the settlement already includes them.
- Reserves. Funds held under Amazon’s delivery-date-based reserve policy move between settlements. Treat reserve lines as balance sheet movements, not revenue or expense.
- Unmapped descriptions. A new fee or adjustment type arrives and falls into a default account, or is skipped entirely.
- Multi-marketplace and currency. Separate settlements exist per marketplace and currency. Mixing CA or MX settlements into a USD clearing account creates FX noise.
- Order ID mismatches. Sales created with a merchant order ID but settlements matched on the Amazon order ID.
- Duplicate imports. Re-downloading a report and importing it twice. Enforce uniqueness on settlement ID.
- Refunds without original orders. Refunds for orders placed before your integration went live have nothing to clear against.
Month-end checklist
Run this in order each close:
- Confirm every settlement with a deposit date in the month has been imported exactly once.
- Match each settlement journal’s bank line to the actual bank deposit amount and date.
- Confirm all orders shipped in the month exist in NetSuite, comparing order counts and gross sales by marketplace.
- Review the unmapped line item log and assign accounts for any new descriptions.
- Accrue fees, refunds and reimbursements for the open settlement period using posted financial events.
- Reconcile the Amazon Clearing account balance to open settlement activity plus accruals.
- Reconcile the Amazon Reserve account to the reserve balance shown in Seller Central.
- Confirm marketplace facilitator tax nets to zero, and investigate any residual.
- Review reimbursements against inventory adjustments so recovered units are not double counted.
- Reverse prior month accruals and document variances above your materiality threshold.
Controls that keep it clean
- Lock the account mapping table behind a change log so edits are reviewed.
- Alert when a settlement fails to import within a set number of days of its end date.
- Report clearing account aging by settlement ID, so old unresolved balances are visible.
- Reconcile a sample of SKUs from settlement detail to item-level margin reports every quarter.
How Audaxim AI helps
Audaxim AI builds automated pipelines that pull Amazon settlement reports and SP-API financial events, apply a maintained fee mapping and post summarized journals into NetSuite against clearing accounts. We also surface unmapped items, reserve movements and clearing balances in reporting so your team can close with fewer manual steps. If you want to review your current setup, reach us at Info@Audaxim.com.