What Does Amazon Seller Reporting Mean? (Part 2)
Welcome to Amazon seller Reporting Part 2.
In part 1, we have talked about Amazon selling coach and Business Reports. If you haven’t read that please have a look at it before proceeding with this. In part 2, we are gonna see about the rest of the reports.
Payments
The Payment report gives you a detailed breakdown of the transaction during a selected period to understand your activity. Your Payments report provides a separate line for each product in an order, as well as for each product in an order to be refunded, either in full or in part. This report also provides details about events such as Subscription fees or account adjustments.
The top of the payment statement will show you when and how much you will be paid or you need to pay for the next settlement cycle. Amazon will update this automatically. In order for the seller account to be settled, it must have had activity during the settlement period and either a positive or zero balance of the account. If the amount is negative, the seller will pay to Amazon.
A report for the settlement will be posted in the “All Statements” tab after successfully paying your account balance. You can download this report from the All Statement tab.
Return Reports
Like other reports, Return reports are also important for the seller’s business. Everybody wants Return reports but nobody likes them. The sellers need this report to remove the unfulfillable items from the warehouse. Amazon does not provide you the report directly, you need to choose yourself that what are all the details you need in that report and generate it.
For Return reports, you need to select the Reports section and from the drop-down menu, you need to choose Return reports. There you can choose the details you want (i.e. is All return and Prime return) in the report and the time duration and click the Request button. Amazon will take sometime to generate your report.
You can schedule this report generation using the “Schedule report generation” option. There you can choose whether you need these reports Daily, Weekly or Monthly. The scheduled report will sent to the seller email.
Custom Reports
The custom reports provide the business reports in CSV(Comma Separated Values) file. You can download this and view it in Microsoft Excel or any similar tools. You can download the Active Reports by going to the custom report sections. Clicking on the report download button will download the report in CSV format.
You can Archive the report for future reference. The Archived reports are only available up to 45 days. It is better to download the reports which you want for future reference for more than 45 days and save them in your system. Auto Archive and Auto delete period are set by Amazon and sellers can not change this period.
Interested to view how a sample Profit and Loss Report looks and what all it covers?
Tax Document Library
As a seller on the Amazon marketplaces, you are required to show the sales made on the Amazon to the government.
A seller needs to file this
against the respective states from where the order is fulfilled. To facilitate such state-wise filing, Amazon provides you the Merchant Tax Report.
These Merchant Tax reports are available in the first week of the following month. For example, the reports of the transaction for the month of June will be available from July 6. The MTR reports are downloadable in the CSV format. You can view these reports using Microsoft Excel or any similar tools.
Drawbacks
- Amazon will give you the archived custom reports available for up to 45days only. It is a very limited period for the seller to analyse their business.
- A seller needs to download the reports in CSV format and use external tools like excel to view and edit the reports which needs an extra time to view your insights.
- Amazon will not provide you the reports in Graphical representation. The seller needs to download the raw data and use an external tool to view the insights graphical representation.
- As a seller whose schedule is very busy, the reports should be accessible with a few clicks. But in seller central, accessing business insights from the reports is a bit of a lengthy process.
Summary
Reports are the backbone in Amazon business and it helps to understand the business in a better way. A seller should be able to access their reports with a few clicks to take right decisions at right time. Reports are essential for managing your business but managing a report should not be a hard one.
Reports should be simple, visually represented and easy to understand to take your business to the next level. KwickMetrics is such a tool that will give your business reports in Graphical representation for your easy understanding. All the reports are just a few clicks away. For more details about KwickMetrics please visit the below Link.
Happy Selling!
