Anatomy of an Amazon settlement report — every field explained for EDPMS closure
The Amazon settlement report is where every reconciliation begins and where most reconciliations quietly go wrong. Sellers download it, glance at the "Net Total" line at the bottom, and try to make that number tie to their bank credit. It usually doesn't — because half of what's inside a settlement report is not proceeds against the current shipping bills.
This post walks through the settlement report field by field, transaction type by transaction type. When you've finished reading, you'll be able to look at any row in your settlement TXT file and know exactly how it should be treated for EDPMS purposes.
If you haven't read how to reconcile Amazon settlements with your bank credits yet, that post covers the reconciliation flow. This one covers the source data.
Where to download the report
- Seller Central → Reports → Payments → Statement View
- Choose the settlement you want, click "Download flat file V2" (tab-separated TXT)
- The default view (HTML summary) is not enough for reconciliation — always pull the TXT
The flat-file V2 format is a tab-separated text file with one header row and one row per transaction event. For any active FBA seller, a single settlement TXT can be tens of thousands of rows long. Never open it in Excel by default (Excel will drop leading zeros in order IDs and truncate large numeric fields). Open it in a proper text editor or import it as text into your reconciliation tool.
The header row — orientation
The first line of the flat file names 40+ columns. The ones you actually need for EDPMS reconciliation:
settlement-id— Amazon's unique ID for this settlement bundlesettlement-start-date,settlement-end-date— the 14-day windowdeposit-date— when Amazon actually wired the net (this is what matches your bank credit date, ± 2-5 business days)total-amount— the net payable for this settlement in settlement currencycurrency— the settlement currency (USD for amazon.com, GBP for amazon.co.uk, EUR for amazon.de/fr, AUD for amazon.com.au, and so on)transaction-type— the category of each row (Order, Refund, Chargeback, StorageFee, etc.)order-id— the customer-facing Amazon Order ID (for Order and Refund rows)sku— the SKU that generated the transaction (blank for non-order rows)quantity-purchased— number of units in the transactionprice-type,price-amount— the gross line-item components (Principal, Shipping, Tax, GiftWrap)item-related-fee-type,item-related-fee-amount— the per-order deductions (Commission, FBA Fees, VAT)promotion-amount— coupon or promotional discounts (negative)posted-date— the date Amazon recognized the transaction
Every row will have some of these populated and others blank, depending on what kind of transaction it is.
Category 1: Order events (positive proceeds)
Rows with transaction-type = "Order". Every consumer purchase generates multiple rows for the same order-id, one per line-item component:
- Principal — the SKU's list price × quantity
- Shipping — Amazon-charged shipping (kept by Amazon in most cases; passthrough for the seller)
- Tax — VAT/GST/sales tax collected on the sale (passthrough to the tax authority in the destination country)
- GiftWrap — optional gift wrapping charge
- PromotionAmount — negative; discounts and coupons
Each of these can appear as a price-type on a separate row, all sharing the same order-id.
Amazon then deducts per-order fees on additional rows (same order-id):
- Commission — the marketplace referral fee (typically 15% of principal + shipping)
- FBAPerUnitFulfillmentFee — pick, pack, and ship
- VATOfCommission — VAT on Amazon's commission (destination-country tax)
To compute the net order contribution, you sum all positive price-amount rows and subtract all item-related-fee-amount rows for that order-id. That number is what the order actually contributes to your realized proceeds.
For EDPMS attribution: each order row references a specific SKU. Attribute the order's net contribution to whichever shipping bill your SKU-level FIFO says supplied the unit. See how to reconcile Amazon settlements for the FIFO mechanics.
Category 2: Refund and Chargeback events (negative proceeds)
Rows with transaction-type = "Refund" or "Chargeback". These reverse a prior order.
Two important things to know:
- A refund can be in a different settlement from the original order. A June sale can generate a July refund. Your reconciliation must connect them back to the same
order-id. - Not all order fees are refunded. Amazon typically refunds the Principal and Tax but often keeps a portion of the Commission and the FBAFee. Check each refund row's
item-related-fee-amountanditem-related-refund-fee-amountto see what was refunded and what was retained.
For EDPMS attribution: a refund reverses proceeds that were already attributed to a shipping bill in an earlier settlement. Your reconciliation engine has to reach back, find the original attribution, and back it out. This is why SKU-level attribution needs an idempotent recomputation model — a late refund can invalidate downstream attributions across months of settlements.
Category 3: Non-order charges
Rows with a transaction-type that is not tied to a specific order:
- FBAStorageFee — monthly warehouse fee, charged mid-month
- FBALongTermStorageFee — for inventory sitting more than 180 days (or 365 days, depending on the marketplace)
- Subscription — Seller Central Professional plan monthly ($39.99 for amazon.com; equivalent for other marketplaces)
- CouponRedemptionFee — Amazon's platform fee for processing coupons
- AdjustmentItem / AdjustmentTax — Amazon's catch-all for retroactive corrections (SAFE-T reimbursements, lost inventory reimbursements, dispute settlements)
- CS_ErrorItem — customer service concession
- RunLightningDealFee — Lightning Deal participation fees
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display charges are often deducted at the settlement level but can be tied to specific SKUs via the advertising reports (a separate download). If you have the advertising data, you can attribute ads directly; if not, apportion pro-rata.
For EDPMS attribution: none of these link to specific orders, and therefore none link natively to specific shipping bills. Apportion pro-rata by settlement contribution — every shipping bill that had realized proceeds in this settlement takes a share of the non-order charges proportional to its contribution.
Document the apportionment method in your reconciliation packet. Consistency matters more than the specific method chosen.
Category 4: Reserved Amount
Rows with transaction-type = "current-reserve-amount" or "previous-reserve-amount-balance":
current-reserve-amount— how much of this settlement's positive contributions Amazon is withholding for the reserve period (typically 7-14 days)previous-reserve-amount-balance— the amount that was reserved in the previous settlement and is now being released into this settlement
The two work together across consecutive settlements. Settlement N withholds INR X. Settlement N+1 releases the previously-withheld INR X (from settlement N-1) and withholds a fresh amount for settlement N+1.
For EDPMS attribution: reserved amounts are not realized proceeds until released. Book the current reservation as a suspense credit. When the corresponding release row appears in a later settlement, recognize that row as realized proceeds against the shipping bills whose orders originally contributed to the reservation.
This is where sellers most commonly inflate their reconciliation numbers. Getting this right requires tracking reserved balances across settlements — another reason spreadsheet-based reconciliation struggles at any real trading volume.
Currency handling within the report
Every row's amount is in the settlement currency (USD for amazon.com, GBP for amazon.co.uk, etc.). There is one exception: rows related to VAT and tax-authority remittances may appear in the destination country's currency even if the settlement currency is different (rare, but worth watching for in EU marketplaces where VAT compliance is complex).
If your bank credit is in destination currency, the settlement's total-amount should match your bank credit (± the correspondent bank fee for cross-border wires). If your bank credit is in INR, apply Amazon's implied FX rate (from the corresponding total-amount-inr fields if present, or from a separate Amazon FX report) to derive the expected INR value — then reconcile the actual bank credit against that value, booking the difference as FX gain/loss.
Related supporting reports
The settlement TXT covers what money moved. Two adjacent reports give you the context to make attribution work:
- Transaction report — Seller Central → Reports → Payments → Transaction View → download date-range CSV. Order-level detail with per-order fee breakdowns. Cross-reference against the settlement report when you need to explain a specific order.
- Advertising report — Seller Central → Advertising → Reports. Campaign-level ad spend, tied to specific ASINs. Use for direct-attribution of ads to shipping bills when the settlement's ad charge is high enough to matter.
Together, these three reports (settlement TXT, transaction CSV, advertising CSV) contain everything you need to reconcile Amazon FBA proceeds to EDPMS with defensible attribution.
The short version
- Always use the flat-file TXT (V2), not the HTML summary
- Rows fall into four categories: Order events, Refund/Chargeback events, Non-order charges, Reserved Amount
- Order events attribute directly to SKUs (and then to shipping bills via FIFO)
- Refunds can span settlements — track back to original
order-id - Non-order charges apportion pro-rata (or by direct-attribution for ads)
- Reserved Amount is not realized until released — book as suspense
- Currency handling depends on whether you receive INR or destination currency
Where XPortKnock automates this
XPortKnock parses Amazon settlement TXTs natively — every row, every event type, every fee subtype. It reconciles across settlements (so refunds attributed to prior settlements are handled correctly), tracks reserved-amount balances across time, and generates the SKU-level FIFO attribution automatically. The output is a reconciliation packet that satisfies every rejection pattern covered in why banks reject FBA EDPMS closures.
Bring one recent settlement TXT to a 14-day trial and see the parsed output the same day.