Amazon Settlement Report Explained for Indian Sellers
Every deposit Amazon makes to your bank account is backed by a settlement report that explains, line by line, how the amount was computed. Most sellers never open it — and then wonder why the payout is smaller than their sales. This article walks through the settlement flat file's structure, decodes the common amount descriptions, and shows how each row type should land in your Tally books.
How the settlement flat file is structured
The settlement report is a tab-separated flat file downloaded from the Payments section of Seller Central. Its important columns are settlement-id (one ID per payout cycle), transaction-type (Order, Refund, and various adjustment types), order-id, amount-type, amount-description, amount, and posted-date. The first row summarises the settlement period and total deposit; every following row is one component of that total. A single customer order typically explodes into several rows: ItemPrice rows for what the buyer paid and ItemFees rows for what Amazon charged you.
Decoding amount-type and amount-description
The amount-type column tells you the family; amount-description tells you the exact component:
| amount-type | amount-description | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| ItemPrice | Principal | Gross item price collected from the buyer |
| ItemPrice | Shipping | Shipping charge collected from the buyer, where applicable |
| ItemFees | Commission | Amazon referral fee, posted as a negative amount |
| ItemFees | FixedClosingFee | Per-unit closing fee |
| ItemFees | Shipping chargeback | Recovery of shipping cost from the seller |
| other-transaction | TCS-IGST / TCS-CGST / TCS-SGST | GST tax collected at source under section 52 |
Fee rows carry negative signs because they reduce your payout. GST charged by Amazon on its own fees is also embedded in fee lines, which matters when you claim input credit — the fee invoices Amazon issues are the documentary backup.
Why the deposit never equals your sales
The settlement total is Principal and other collections, minus referral commission and closing fees, minus shipping cost recoveries, minus refunds processed in the window, minus GST TCS at 0.5% and income-tax TDS at 0.1% under section 194-O, plus or minus opening balances carried from the previous settlement. Because the file is organised by posted-date — not invoice date — a settlement window almost never lines up with a calendar month, and orders invoiced late in a month settle in the next one. We unpack the gap-by-gap analysis in why Amazon payouts don't match your sales.
Booking settlement rows in Tally
A clean approach uses the settlement file as the source for everything that is not a sale:
- Receipt voucher for the net deposit, against the Amazon party or a marketplace control ledger.
- Expense vouchers for Commission, FixedClosingFee, and shipping-related fees, grouped under marketplace selling expenses, with GST input where eligible.
- Asset ledgers for TCS receivable and TDS receivable, since both are recoverable — TCS as GST cash-ledger credit after acceptance on the portal, TDS against income tax. Have your CA confirm the presentation for your entity.
- Refund adjustments matched against the credit notes already imported from the MTR, so refunds are not double-counted.
Sales themselves should come from the MTR, which is invoice-accurate for GST; the settlement file is cash-accurate for money movement. The two reports answer different questions, which is why serious sellers import both — see MTR vs settlement report for the full comparison.
Automating the split
Parsing a tab-separated file with a dozen amount descriptions into correctly signed Tally vouchers is exactly the kind of mechanical work software should do. TallySutra's Amazon to Tally workflow ingests the uploaded settlement file, classifies each amount-description to a ledger, nets the payout to a receipt entry, and reconciles the whole settlement against imported sales — flagging any order that appears in the payout but not in your books. Unmatched or ambiguous rows go to an exception queue instead of being force-posted, and the resulting vouchers export as standard Tally XML.
A five-minute self-audit for your last settlement
If you have never dissected a settlement file, run this exercise once on your most recent payout and the report will stop being opaque forever. First, sum the signed amount column for the settlement-id and confirm it equals the bank credit to the paise — if it does not, look for a carried-forward balance in the header rows before suspecting anything else. Second, subtotal by amount-type: the ItemPrice total is what buyers paid, the ItemFees total is what Amazon kept, and the ratio between them is your effective marketplace cost for the cycle. Third, isolate the TCS and TDS rows and check they are sitting in receivable ledgers in your books rather than lost inside a net figure. Fourth, list the distinct order-ids and match a sample of five against your sales register. Any order in the payout that is missing from your books means a sales import gap — the settlement file just found it for you, which is precisely the kind of catch that makes importing both reports worth the effort.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find the settlement report in Seller Central?
Go to the Payments dashboard and open the reports repository, where each closed settlement period offers a downloadable flat file (choose the flat file version, which is tab-separated). Reports are generated per settlement cycle, so a calendar month usually spans two or three files. Download every file that overlaps the month you are closing.
Is the settlement report enough for GST filing?
No. The settlement file is organised by posted-date and payout components, not by invoice, so it lacks invoice-level taxable values, tax-rate splits, and place of supply. GST workings should come from the MTR, while the settlement file covers fees, TCS, TDS, and the bank deposit. Using settlement data for GSTR-1 is a common and costly mistake.
Why are some rows in the file negative?
Negative amounts reduce your payout: referral commission, fixed closing fees, shipping chargebacks, and refunded principal all post as negatives. Positive rows are collections such as Principal and buyer-paid shipping. Summing every signed amount in a settlement-id reproduces the exact bank deposit, which is the quickest sanity check that you have the complete file.
TallySutra turns Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho reports into reconciled, reviewed TallyPrime vouchers — duplicate-safe, with every rupee traceable to its source row.
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