🔹 Overview
Amazon payouts are made up of many different components: sales, refunds, fees, taxes, loans, reserves, and adjustments. These amounts hit your account as a single deposit—but under the hood, they need to be split and classified properly.
Mapping each payment type correctly is essential for:
• Clean revenue and COGS reporting
• Accurate fee categorization
• Proper tax handling
• Reconciling to your bank and subledger
💡 Wondering why Amazon fees are recorded on a cash basis and how they interact with your clearing account? See: Understanding Amazon Seller Fees: Cash vs. Accrual Accounting
🔸 Adjustments
These are rare, ad hoc corrections Amazon makes. They could include manual tweaks, retroactive changes, or credits unrelated to regular activity.
Typically mapped to:
• Miscellaneous Adjustments → Use this for catch-all or one-time issues.
• Merchant Fees → Some users prefer to blend minor adjustments into an existing expense category.
✅ Why: Adjustments don't fall into standard categories and aren't usually material. Mapping them to a low-visibility or monitored account lets you review monthly for anomalies without cluttering core financials.
🔸 Chargebacks & Reversals
These are deductions due to customer disputes or refunds forced by Amazon (e.g., credit card disputes).
Typically mapped to:
• COGS or Expense Account → These are losses, not revenue. They should reduce your profit, not your sales.
• Merchant Fees → Some teams include these in their overall fee structure.
⚠️ Important: These will post as negative values. Never map them to a revenue account—doing so could result in inflated revenue and reconciliation errors in NetSuite.
🔸 Sales & Refunds (Clearing)
These lines represent actual customer payments and refunds. They need to go to the account where you track Amazon cash receipts before they hit your bank.
Typically mapped to:
• Undeposited Funds → If you use NetSuite's native customer payment flow.
• Amazon Clearing Account (Bank Type) → If you've set up a clearing account workflow for Amazon or all payment processors.
💡 Why: These amounts represent cash activity from the customer's perspective. If you've already recorded customer transactions, this mapping helps reconcile payouts against those without duplicating revenue.
🧾 Journal Entry Reminder: If you use a clearing account (which acts like a bank account in NetSuite), you'll need to use journal entries—not deposits—when syncing transactions.
🔸 Fees
Amazon deducts a range of fees before issuing payouts. These reduce your net revenue and should be tracked separately to understand unit economics and channel profitability.
Fee Type | Map to | Why |
Advertising Fees | Marketing Expense | Cost of promoting your products on Amazon |
Fulfillment Fees (FBA) | COGS / Fulfillment Expense | Amazon's cost to store, pick, pack, and ship |
Refund Transaction Fees | Refund Expense / COGS | Merchant fees tied to refunded orders |
Sale Transaction Fees | Merchant Processing Fees | Credit card or processing costs per transaction |
Shipping (Net) | COGS or Shipping Revenue | Depending on whether Amazon charged more or less than your customer paid |
Other Processing Fees | Merchant Processing Fees | Anything that doesn't fall into the above buckets |
📘 Pro Tip: These should never be lumped into "Other Expenses." Clear categorization helps with margin analysis and audit traceability.
⚠️ Important: Fees should be mapped to expense accounts, not your clearing account. Routing fees through the clearing account will cause it to grow instead of zeroing out. For a full explanation, see Understanding Amazon Seller Fees: Cash vs. Accrual Accounting.
🔸 Holds, Balances & Reserves
Amazon may hold back part of your payout for a reserve or loan repayment. These aren't income or expense—they impact your balance sheet.
Type | Typically mapped to | Why |
Amazon Capital Loan Payout | Loan Liability | Repayment on an Amazon-issued working capital loan |
Reserve Balance Adjustment | Receivable / Asset | Funds held by Amazon, to be released in a future payout |
📊 Why: These entries change your cash position but don't reflect sales or fees. Mapping them to assets or liabilities ensures you can reconcile your true receivable position and obligations.
🔸 Taxes
Amazon may collect and/or remit taxes for you, depending on your nexus and jurisdiction.
Type | Typically mapped to | Why |
Sales Tax Collected | Sales Tax Liability or Revenue Offset | If it's not included in your invoice, post it here so it nets with remittances |
Sales Tax Remitted | Offsets Sales Tax Collected | Reduces the liability Amazon collected on your behalf |
VAT Remitted | Same as above | Applies to EU/UK/EU5 sellers with VAT responsibility transferred to Amazon |
🧮 Accounting Logic: If tax is handled on your invoice or cash sale, we'll reconcile it automatically. But if it's not, you'll need to reflect this manually using liability accounts so it doesn't inflate revenue or expenses.
🧠 NetSuite Best Practices
• Undeposited Funds: Use this if customer payments are recorded before cash hits your bank.
• Clearing Accounts: These require journal entries only, since they behave like bank accounts in NetSuite.
• Revenue Mapping: Never map negative values (like chargebacks or fees) to revenue—it will cause GL misalignment.
💬 Need Help?
Our ASE team is here to help you configure your mapping rules and answer any edge-case questions. Start a chat or contact your onboarding specialist.