Amazon Settlement Report Explained: Where Your Money Actually Goes

Sales minus fees rarely equals your bank credit — the settlement (payment) report explains why. Learn to read every section: fees, refunds, reserves, TCS/TDS, and how to reconcile it in minutes.

By Autobac Team — Editorial Team · August 3, 2026

Every two weeks, Amazon transfers money to your bank — and almost never the number you expected. The gap between "what I sold" and "what I received" is fully explained in one document sellers rarely open: the settlement report. Learning to read it takes twenty minutes and permanently changes how you price, which SKUs you push, and how quickly you catch billing mistakes.

What the Settlement Report Actually Is

Amazon does not pay you per order. It accumulates everything — order payments, refunds, fees, adjustments, service charges — into a settlement cycle (typically 14 days for Indian sellers) and pays the net. The settlement report, also downloadable as the Unified Transaction report (Seller Central → Reports → Payments), lists every line that built that net amount.

The Five Sections That Matter

1. Order payments. Your gross sales — item price plus any shipping the buyer paid. This is the big positive number everything else eats into.

2. Marketplace fees. The deductions per order:

• Referral fee — Amazon's commission, a % of sale price by category
• Closing fee — flat fee per item, tiered by price band and fulfilment channel
• Shipping / FBA fees — Easy Ship weight-based charges or FBA pick-pack-ship fees
• GST on fees — 18% on all the above (input credit claimable if GST-registered)

3. Refunds. When a customer returns an order, the sale amount reverses. Amazon refunds most of the referral fee but keeps part as a processing charge — and on COD returns you still lose the forward shipping. This section is where high-return SKUs bleed.

4. Tax deductions. TCS (tax collected at source, 0.5% of taxable sales) and TDS — both claimable when you file GST and income tax returns, so track them; this is your money.

5. Reserves. Amazon holds part of your balance against open return windows and releases it in later cycles ("deferred" transactions). Not a fee — a delay.

A Real-World Shape of the Math

For a typical Indian seller in a mid-commission category, gross sales of ₹1,00,000 in a cycle often settle like this: roughly ₹12,000-18,000 in referral, closing, and shipping fees, ₹2,000-3,000 GST on those fees, ₹8,000-15,000 reversed as refunds depending on return rate, ₹500-1,000 in TCS/TDS, and some amount deferred to the next cycle. Bank credit: somewhere between ₹60,000 and ₹78,000. If you have not done this math for *your* account, you are pricing blind.

Reconcile It in Minutes, Not Hours

Opening the report in Excel means wrestling with dozens of transaction types and thousands of rows. There is a faster way: upload your Payment/Unified Transaction report to our free Amazon report analyzer — it runs entirely in your browser (the file never leaves your computer) and instantly shows:

• Where every rupee went — fees, refunds, taxes, reserves, net payout
• SKU-wise profitability, so you see which products actually make money
• Day-wise and period-wise trends across the cycle
• A clean Excel export for your accountant

Sell on Flipkart too? The same kind of analyzer exists for the Flipkart settlement report.

Three Habits That Pay for Themselves

1. Open every settlement. Five minutes per cycle catches fee errors, unexpected charge-backs, and rising return rates while they are still small.
2. Price from net, not gross. Before listing anything, run the price through the Amazon fee calculator and decide margins on the settled amount.
3. Watch SKU-level returns. One high-return SKU can silently consume the profit of five good ones. The report has the evidence; use it.

If your payouts still do not add up, or you want a second pair of eyes on your marketplace numbers, talk to Autobac — helping Indian sellers keep more of what they earn is literally what our tools are built for.

_Updated August 2026._