InventoryLab Does Not Match Amazon

If you are trying to reconcile numbers from the Sales Dashboard in Seller Central to InventoryLab, you're not going to get numbers that match up. They are not intended to.

This is because InventoryLab uses your payments data rather than sales. To clarify, InventoryLab only considers the order when a transaction posts rather than when the order is placed. As you know, orders can remain in "pending" status for days, but the money does not hit your account balance until shipped. 

Since an order could get canceled at any time or simply left in the cart for many days on end, we only account for the sale once it ships to the buyer. Otherwise, it would leave room for inconsistency in the numbers and inaccurate accounting. 

To match up data from Amazon to InventoryLab, you should always check your Date Range Summary report instead of sales reports or sales dashboard. 

First, visit Seller Central and click the three vertical lines in the top menu.

Next, click Payments, then select Reports Repository from the list.

You will want to request a Summary report for any given month or timeframe where the reports are completely reconciled in InventoryLab. Be sure to select "All" for Account Type to include as you need both Standard and Invoiced orders.

Note: If you need to get a transaction summary, in the case of an audit or as requested by an InventoryLab Customer Champion to help troubleshoot issues, make sure you select "Transaction" instead of "Summary" before clicking "Generate." 

Once you generate the report, you'll need to download the .PDF file and open it.

Your file will be In Progress. Give it a moment and click the Refresh link.

Once available, you'll be able to click Download to download the Date Range Summary report to your computer.

Next, navigate to Stratify and click the Reports tab.

Select Profit & Loss from the dropdown menu.

Select the same exact date range that you did when you ran the Date Range Summary report and click View.

You should then be able to compare the Income and Expenses areas of the Profit & Loss report using the collapsable headers to the same sections on the Date Range Summary report. (You can also save the Profit & Loss report as a .CSV file to your computer by clicking "Export" to compare.)

Areas you can compare:

INCOME

• Sales
• Refunds
• Reimbursements
• Shipping Credits
• Shipping Credit Refunds
• Gift Wrap Credits
• Gift Wrap Credit Refunds
• Promotional Rebates
• Promotional Rebate Refunds

EXPENSES

• Selling Fees
• FBA Transaction Fees
• FBA Transaction Fee Refunds
• FBA Inventory and Inbound Services Fees
• Service (Subscription) Fees
• Refund Administration Fees
• Selling Fee Refunds
• Cost of Advertising *only if deducted from your disbursement

OTHER

• Sales Tax
• Sales Tax Refunds
• Marketplace Facilitator Tax and Tax Refunds

Note: Since InventoryLab allows you to include Cost of Goods Sold and additional expenses for your business that are not tracked by Amazon to get your most accurate Net Profit, you will not include those items when comparing to Amazon.

If the two figures between InventoryLab and Amazon Date Range Summary reports are off significantly, please check to make sure you have the following manually accounted for in InventoryLab (service fees and removal orders became available through the API and were automatically imported by IL beginning in Jan 2015):

• Optional FBA Service Fees that you may have opted into (Inventory Placement Service, FBA Label Service, FBA Prep Service) (must be manually entered prior to 2015)
• Removal Order Fees (must be manually entered prior to 2015)
• Optional Loan Payments/Fees
• Advertising campaign costs —- These will be automatically accounted for from any settlement reports occurring after May 24, 2016 if you have selected to have the costs deducted directly from your Amazon disbursement
• “Other transaction fees” line on your Amazon Date Range Report
• Nothing outside of Amazon FBA only is included (Multichannel sales, other marketplaces, etc.)