Amazon deposit not matching QuickBooks? Why it happens and how to fix it

An Amazon deposit not matching QuickBooks is one of the most common bookkeeping complaints from marketplace sellers. You open the bank feed in QuickBooks Online, see a deposit from Amazon, and nothing lines up with it. The sales you recorded add up to one number, the deposit is a different, smaller number, and the "Match" tab offers nothing useful. It almost always comes from the same root cause: QuickBooks is looking at orders, while Amazon pays out settlements.

Amazon deposit not matching QuickBooks: why it happens

Amazon does not send you money for each order. It groups activity into a settlement period, usually about two weeks, and sends one disbursement for the net result. That net amount is what you see in the bank. Inside it are several different kinds of activity:

• Product sales and related income, such as shipping credits and gift wrap credits.
• Refunds for orders returned during the period, which may relate to sales from an earlier period.
• Selling fees, including referral fees and, if you use FBA, fulfillment fees.
• Other charges, such as advertising billed against your balance, storage fees, subscription fees and service fees.
• Reserves and adjustments, where Amazon holds part of the balance back or releases a previously held amount, plus reimbursements for lost or damaged inventory.

If your QuickBooks file only contains the sales side, either because an app pushed orders in as sales receipts or because someone entered monthly sales totals, the books overstate what you were actually paid. The deposit is correct; the books are incomplete. Trying to force a match by editing the deposit, or by creating an "Amazon fees" expense for whatever the difference happens to be, hides the problem and makes next month harder.

There are three other causes worth ruling out early, because they look identical at first glance:

1. Timing. A settlement that closes on the last day of the month may not reach your bank until a few days into the next month.
2. Split or failed disbursements. Occasionally a settlement is paid in more than one transfer, or a transfer fails and is re-sent.
3. The wrong account. Sellers with more than one bank account or more than one marketplace sometimes have the deposit landing somewhere they are not looking.

Find the exact gap for one payout

Work on one payout at a time. Trying to reconcile a whole month of Amazon activity in one go is where most people get lost.

Get the settlement, not the order report

In Seller Central, go to Payments and open the statement view or date range reports, then pick the settlement period that corresponds to the bank deposit. Note three things: the settlement ID, the settlement start and end dates, and the total paid. The total paid should equal the bank deposit to the cent. If it does not, stop here and look at the timing, split and account causes above, because no journal entry will fix a deposit that belongs to a different settlement.

Summarize the settlement by type

Download the detailed report for that settlement and summarize it into a handful of buckets. A spreadsheet pivot table on the transaction type and amount description columns works well. You want totals for sales, refunds, selling fees, FBA fees, advertising, other fees, reimbursements and reserve movements. When you add every bucket together, the result must equal the total paid. If it does not, a row is missing from your filter.

The following is an illustrative example only, with round numbers to show the arithmetic:

In this example QuickBooks had 10,000 of sales and the bank showed 4,700. The 5,300 difference is not a mystery; it is the five charge lines above.

Steps to record it so the deposit matches

Once you have the summary, record it as one entry that mirrors the settlement. This is the same method described in our step-by-step settlement reconciliation guide, applied to a deposit that has already landed.

1. 1

   Create or confirm a clearing account

   Add an asset account such as "Amazon Clearing" if you do not have one. Every settlement will pass through it.
2. 2

   Remove duplicate sales

   If an app or a person already recorded the same orders as sales receipts or invoices, decide with your accountant whether to keep those or the summarized entry. Keeping both double-counts income.
3. 3

   Post one journal entry for the settlement

   Credit sales income, debit refunds, debit each fee and advertising account, debit a reserve or receivable account for amounts held, and debit Amazon Clearing for the total paid. The entry must balance.
4. 4

   Reference the settlement ID

   Put the settlement ID and period in the memo so the entry can be found again during review.
5. 5

   Match the bank deposit to clearing

   In the bank feed, categorize or match the Amazon deposit against Amazon Clearing for the same amount. Clearing for that settlement should now be zero.
6. 6

   Check the reserve next time

   When a later settlement releases the reserve, it appears as a positive line; post it against the same reserve account so that account also returns to zero over time.

In journal-entry form, the example above looks like this:

Account names are examples; use the chart of accounts your accountant has set up.

When the numbers still don't tie

If you have followed the steps and something is still off, it is usually one of these:

• The deposit belongs to a different settlement. Compare the settlement end date with the deposit date. Amazon deposits commonly arrive a few days after the period closes.
• A reimbursement is missing from your summary. Inventory reimbursements often sit under a separate transaction type and are easy to filter out by accident.
• Currency or marketplace mix-ups. If you sell in more than one Amazon marketplace, each one settles separately, sometimes in different currencies. Reconcile each marketplace to its own deposit.
• Previously recorded fees. If someone already entered Amazon fees from a monthly invoice or credit card statement, posting them again in the settlement entry double-counts the expense.

Resist the urge to post a "plug" line for the unexplained remainder. A small rounding difference is one thing, but an unexplained amount of any size means one of the causes above is still in play, and it will show up again next period.

Keeping it from happening again

The method above is reliable, but it is repetitive. Each payout takes a download, a pivot, an entry and a match, and a seller with two payouts a month on one marketplace is already doing this twenty-four times a year. Add Walmart or eBay and the count multiplies.

That repetition is the part ClearPayout automates. It reads each Amazon settlement, maps the buckets to your QuickBooks accounts once, and posts one balanced entry per settlement with the settlement ID in the memo, so the deposit matches the clearing account without a spreadsheet in between. You can see exactly what gets posted on the Amazon to QuickBooks integration page, and plans with a 14-day trial are on the pricing page. If you are already using another settlement tool and weighing a switch, the A2X comparison covers how the approaches differ.

Whether you automate it or keep doing it by hand, the principle is the same: reconcile the settlement, not the orders, and the deposit will match.