Both are right, for different questions. The Amazon orders report records what customers ordered and when. It is fast and good for trends, but statuses change and it shows no fees. The settlement report records what Amazon actually paid out after promotions, refunds, fees, ad charges and reserves, roughly every 14 days. Use orders for speed and trend, settlement for money and the books.
Both numbers are right, because they answer different questions. The Amazon orders report shows what customers bought and when. The settlement report shows what Amazon actually paid you. Use order data for trend and speed, and use the settlement report for money, the bank and the books.
The settlement figure is lower because Amazon has already taken out promotions, refunds, fees, ad charges and a reserve (money Amazon holds back for a while). Most “which number is right” arguments come from using one report to answer the other’s question. Below: what each report is, how to match one to the other with illustrative numbers, and the traps that make the two drift apart.
What the orders report tells you
The orders report is a line for every order item: the order ID, the product, the quantity, the price on the order, any promotion discount, the order date and the order status. Amazon’s own description of the all-orders report is that it “contains all orders that were placed in the specified period” (SP-API order report types).
Three things to know about it:
- It is fast. An order shows up within hours of being placed. That makes it the right source for “did yesterday’s price change move sales?”
- Status changes after the fact. An order starts as Pending, then becomes Shipped, or Cancelled. A report pulled on Tuesday and the same report pulled the next Monday can disagree about the same day. Amazon offers a separate version of the report based on last update for exactly this reason. Amazon also notes that for orders you ship yourself, the item price is not shown while an order is pending.
- It knows nothing about fees. The price on the order is what the customer was charged at the moment they ordered. No referral fee, no fulfillment fee, no refund that happens three weeks later.
The order screen is a draft. It is the best early read you have, and it keeps changing.
What the settlement report tells you
A settlement report is Amazon’s statement for one payout period. It lists every amount that moved in your seller account during that period. That includes product sales, shipping credits, promotions, refunds and referral fees. It includes FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) fees, storage fees and reimbursements. It also includes advertising charges, if Amazon took them from your balance, and reserve amounts held or released. The last line is the transfer to your bank.
The current version is the flat file V2 settlement report, report type GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_FLAT_FILE_V2. A flat file is a plain table of rows. It puts every charge in one amount column, with an amount type and description saying what kind of charge each line is (SP-API settlement report types). Amazon is removing the older XML and flat file settlement reports for sellers on November 11, 2026 (SP-API changelog). Any spreadsheet or tool still reading the old format needs to move to the new one.
What makes it different:
- It is slow and periodic. Settlement periods usually run about 14 days. You cannot request a settlement report. Amazon generates it on its own schedule.
- It is final once the period closes. A closed settlement report does not restate, meaning its numbers never change later. A refund for an old order shows up in whatever period the refund happens, not back in the original one.
- It ties to cash. Every closed settlement should match one bank deposit to the cent. The order-side reports never do.
Two more numbers people confuse with these
Ordered product sales, in the Business Reports of Seller Central (Amazon’s seller dashboard), is the value of items ordered in a period, by day or by product. Amazon’s sales and traffic report groups it with units ordered, page views and Buy Box percentage. That last one is how often your offer was the main Add to Cart choice (SP-API analytics report types). It is an order-side number, counted when the order is placed. It is fast and good for trend. It includes orders that have not shipped and orders that will later be refunded. It is not revenue and it is not cash.
The Payments dashboard shows your running balance for the settlement period that is still open, plus recent payouts. It is the live view of the settlement before the period closes. It is useful to see how much cash is coming on the next payout. It is not useful for closing a month, because the open balance keeps moving until the period ends.
Side by side
| Orders report | Ordered product sales (Business Reports) | Settlement report | Payments dashboard | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Each order item placed, with status | Value of items ordered, per day or product | Every amount that moved in one payout period | Balance of the open period, recent payouts |
| Timing | Within hours | Within a day or so | About every 14 days | Live, until the period closes |
| Includes fees? | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Includes refunds? | No, though status can show a cancellation | No | Yes, in the period the refund happens | Yes |
| Restates? | Yes, statuses and prices update | Recent days can shift | No, once the period closes | Yes, until the period closes |
| Best used for | Trend, speed, per-product demand | Quick trend with traffic and conversion | Money truth, bank tie-out, bookkeeping | Cash-flow planning |
A worked example: from $100,000 ordered to $44,550 deposited
Illustrative numbers only, for one 14-day settlement period. Business Reports shows $100,000 of ordered product sales for the same 14 days. The deposit that lands in the bank is $44,550. Here is the bridge.
| Step | Amount | Running total | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordered product sales, orders placed in the period | $100,000 | $100,000 | Business Reports |
| Orders cancelled or not yet shipped | -$6,000 | $94,000 | Placed, but not posted to this settlement |
| Orders from the previous period that shipped in this one | +$5,000 | $99,000 | Posted here, counted as ordered last period |
| Promotional discounts | -$3,000 | $96,000 | Coupons and deals |
| Refunds | -$4,000 | $92,000 | Mostly for orders from earlier periods |
| Referral fees | -$14,400 | $77,600 | Amazon’s selling commission |
| FBA fulfillment fees | -$18,500 | $59,100 | Pick, pack and ship |
| Monthly storage fees | -$1,200 | $57,900 | For last month’s storage |
| Multi-channel fulfillment fees | -$900 | $57,000 | Amazon shipping your Shopify orders |
| Advertising charges deducted from balance | -$12,000 | $45,000 | Only if ads are paid from sales, not a card |
| FBA reimbursements | +$350 | $45,350 | Lost or damaged inventory |
| Reserve held this period | -$9,000 | $36,350 | Money Amazon keeps back for now |
| Reserve released from last period | +$8,200 | $44,550 | Last period’s hold, paid out |
| Deposit to bank | $44,550 | Matches the bank statement |
Sales tax is left out to keep it readable. In US states with marketplace facilitator laws, Amazon collects the tax and pays it to the state. So it appears in the settlement and is taken back out, adding up to zero.
Three lessons from the table:
- The gap is a dozen things, not one. Several of them have nothing to do with how profitable this period was: order timing, refunds on old orders and the reserve.
- Some lines belong elsewhere. Storage is last month’s cost. The multi-channel fulfillment (MCF) fee is a Shopify cost.
- The $44,550 deposit is not revenue. For the books, you record sales and fees in full, not netted against each other. That is why the settlement’s line detail matters more than its total.
Where it goes wrong
These are the traps we see most often in real multi-channel data.
Comparing an in-flight month to a closed month
On September 15, September’s orders are half in. Most of September’s refunds have not happened yet. And September’s storage fee will not post until October. Put that next to a closed August and September looks worse on orders and better on margin than it will end up. Compare closed periods to closed periods, and label anything current as “so far.”
Counting pending orders as sales
Order data counts an order the moment it is placed, while it is still pending. Some pending orders will cancel. In the few days after a big deal event, the pending share can be high enough to move a weekly trend. If you pull order data by order date only, you also never see the later status change. Pull by last-update date too, and overwrite old rows when the status flips.
Refunds landing in a later period
A customer who bought in March and returned in April shows up as a March sale and an April refund in the settlement. Your April refund rate goes up for reasons that happened in March. For product-level return rates, tie refunds back to the original order date. For the books, keep them in the period they posted.
One order, two reports, three periods. The orders report counts the sale the day it is placed, the settlement pays it when it posts, and the refund lands wherever it happens.
Shopify orders inflating Amazon’s costs
If you use MCF, Amazon ships orders from your own store or other channels out of your FBA inventory. It charges a fee for this (Amazon MCF pricing). Those fees can come out of your Amazon settlement. Left there, they make Amazon look more expensive and Shopify look cheaper than either really is. Move each MCF fee to the channel whose order it shipped.
Storage fees posted for the prior month
Monthly inventory storage fees are charged after the month they cover, so August’s storage shows up in a September settlement. If you close monthly, book it in the month the inventory was stored. Otherwise every storage cost lands a month late, and the higher October to December rates show up in November to January.
Settlement periods that do not match calendar months
A 14-day period will cross a month end about once a month. Say you add up “the settlements that paid out in August.” You get a number that covers part of July and misses the end of August. Split each settlement by the posted date on every line, which is the date Amazon recorded it. Assign lines to months from that date, not from the payout date.
Losing the history
Amazon generates settlement reports on its own and will not regenerate an old one. Through the API (Amazon’s data connection for software), only reports from roughly the last 90 days can be listed. Sellers have raised this limit with Amazon directly (SP-API issue on settlement backfill). A brand that connects a new tool today can usually recover about three months of settlements and no more. Download and store every report the day it appears, raw, before you change anything.
How to set it up so both numbers work
- Write down which number answers which question. Orders for daily and weekly trend by product. Settlement for revenue, fees, cash and the monthly close. Put it where everyone who reads a dashboard will see it.
- Store every settlement report as it arrives. Keep the raw file untouched, then load it into your data warehouse (a central database) or spreadsheet. Check that the count of stored reports has no 14-day gaps.
- Load orders by last update, not only by order date. When a row comes back with a new status, overwrite the old row. Never only append.
- Map every amount type and description to a P&L (profit and loss) line. Product sales, promotions, refunds, referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage, MCF, advertising, reimbursements, reserve. Anything unmapped should fail loudly, not fall into “other.”
- Move MCF fees to the channel they served. If the fee shipped a Shopify order, it is a Shopify cost.
- Tie every closed settlement to the bank deposit exactly. Then compare closed-period product sales in the settlement with shipped order value from the orders report. We treat a gap above 1% on a closed period as a sign that something is missing on one side.
- Label anything still in flight. The current period, the current month and any week with pending orders get a visible “not final” tag.
On the accounting side, practice varies on where FBA fulfillment fees sit. Some brands put them above gross margin as cost of goods. Others put them below it as selling expense. We recommend keeping fulfillment fees on their own line either way, so contribution margin by channel stays visible. Ask your accountant which way your books already go and match it.
Synthesis labels every Amazon number with its revenue basis: settlement, orders or store gross sales. It also labels its period and caveats. One example is “this month is still in flight”. When two figures for the same metric and period disagree by more than 5%, the answer is flagged instead of one being quietly picked.
Questions people ask
Why doesn't my Amazon settlement match my sales in Seller Central?
Sales screens count orders when they are placed, at the item price. The settlement counts sales when they post, then subtracts promotions, refunds, referral fees, FBA fees, storage, ad charges and reserves. The two also cover different dates, since settlement periods do not follow calendar months.
Which Amazon report should I use for my accounting?
The settlement report, split into months by each line’s posted date. It is the Amazon report that ties to the bank deposit. Record sales as revenue and fees as expenses, each in full. Do not book the net deposit as revenue.
How often does Amazon generate settlement reports?
Usually about every 14 days, on a schedule Amazon sets. You cannot request one on demand through the API. Amazon generates them automatically.
How far back can I download Amazon settlement reports?
Through the API, only reports created in roughly the last 90 days can be listed. You cannot ask Amazon to regenerate older ones. Save every settlement report the day it is generated.
Is ordered product sales the same as revenue?
No. Ordered product sales in Business Reports is the value of items ordered in a period, counted when the order is placed. It includes orders that have not shipped and orders that will later be refunded. It takes no fees out. It is a demand number, not a revenue or cash number.