Reconciliation of Amazon sales in Business Central

Reconcile Amazon sales directly in Business Central

Amazon has sold goods for DKK 100,000.

That does not necessarily mean the finance department should expect a bank transfer of DKK 100,000.

Between the sale and the payout there can be fees, refunds, other financial events and various transactions.

That is precisely why Amazon reconciliation in Business Central can quickly develop into a time-consuming process.

Amazon makes financial information available through its Finances API, where financial events can be retrieved for orders or time periods, among other things. Amazon Developer Docs

But just as with the order integration, access to data is not in itself the solution.

The data has to be usable from a financial point of view.

Sales and payout are two different things

An Amazon order tells you what the customer has bought.

An Amazon payout tells you what Amazon actually pays out.

Those two figures have to be connected.

If the finance department only posts the bank amount, it can become difficult to get insight into:

• gross revenue
• Amazon fees
• refunds
• fulfilment costs
• differences and adjustments

That is why the Amazon flow should be designed with reconciliation in mind from the beginning.

Should every Amazon order be posted individually?

Not necessarily.

Some companies want full order detail in Business Central.

Others need a more aggregated financial model.

The right choice depends on, among other things:

• reporting needs
• the number of transactions
• VAT and accounting setup
• the need for order traceability
• how bank payouts are to be applied

That is why it is important to involve the finance department before the integration is decided.

Refunds make the reconciliation more interesting

A refund can mean that a previous sale is reversed wholly or partly.

At the same time there may be a physical returned item, but that does not always have to be the same process.

That is why it is important to distinguish between:

financial event and physical goods movement.

That is also the reason why we recommend a separate process for [Amazon returns and refunds in Business Central](/amazon-returvarer-business-central/).

FBA adds more cost types

With FBA there can be fulfilment- and inventory-related costs on top of the standard Amazon selling fees. Amazon describes, among other things, fulfilment costs, storage costs and other potential FBA costs such as aged inventory, returns processing and inbound placement. Sell on Amazon

That makes it even more important to be able to link Amazon data together with cost prices and product data in the ERP system.

Read also: Amazon FBA integration for Business Central

How the reconciliation flow should be thought through

A robust setup should be able to answer three questions:

What did we sell?

Which costs and adjustments were attached to the sale?

What did we actually receive in the bank account?

When those three parts can be connected, Amazon becomes significantly easier to control financially.

Automation should not remove control

The goal of integration is not that the finance department never sees the figures.

The goal is that they should not have to spend their time gathering them manually.

Deviations should still be visible and open to investigation.

Automation should make the exceptions clear, not hide them.

From an Excel process to a controlled data flow

A classic manual process can involve exporting reports, pivot tables, bank checks and manual postings.

An integrated setup can instead retrieve the relevant data, categorise it and make it available for the chosen posting and reconciliation model.

Connectify’s existing Amazon page already describes the settlement and payment flow as part of the integration between Amazon and Business Central.

The most important takeaway

If Amazon is taking up more of your revenue, Amazon reconciliation should not be a person-dependent Excel process.

It should be a defined data flow.

That provides better opportunities for control, scaling and understanding what the Amazon business actually earns.

Is finance spending too much time on Amazon settlements, fees and refunds?

Get your Amazon reconciliation flow reviewed