Your Amazon dashboard says you did $25,000 last month. Then Amazon deposits $14,200 into your bank account. And somewhere in between, $10,800 quietly disappeared.
That’s not a glitch. That’s Amazon FBA bookkeeping — and if you’re not tracking the full picture, you don’t know what your business is making.
FBA sellers face a bookkeeping challenge that most small business owners never deal with. You’re not invoicing clients. You’re not waiting on checks. You have a platform collecting your money, deducting its fees, holding reserves, and paying you on a schedule — all before a dollar lands in your account.
If you’re recording that bank deposit as your revenue, you’re starting with the wrong number. And everything downstream — your profit, your taxes, your inventory decisions — gets built on a shaky foundation.
This guide walks you through what to track, how to track it, and how to build a system that tells you exactly where your business stands.
Why FBA Bookkeeping Is Different from Regular Business Bookkeeping
Most small businesses track what they earn when they get paid. A plumber sends an invoice, gets a check, records the income. Simple.
Amazon FBA doesn’t work like that.
When a customer buys your product for $30, Amazon doesn’t send you $30. Amazon collects the sale, deducts a referral fee, deducts a fulfillment fee, sets aside a reserve — and then, every two weeks, deposits whatever’s left.
By the time you see that deposit, it represents dozens or hundreds of transactions, refunds, adjustments, and fees all netted together into one number.
If you record that number as your income, you’re understating your real revenue and hiding your real expenses. That means your profit margins look wrong, your cost-per-unit is off, and when tax season comes, you’re working from a broken set of books.
The right approach: Record your gross sales as income, then record every Amazon fee as a separate expense. That way you can see exactly how much the platform is costing you — and where you have room to improve.
The Income Side: What Counts as Revenue
Your revenue is your total gross sales — the full price customers paid for your product before Amazon touches it.
Take a seller moving 833 units of a kitchen organizer at $30 each. That’s $25,000 in gross revenue — not the deposit, not the deposit minus returns. The full $25,000 before any deductions.
Here’s why these matters: if you record only the bank deposit, you hide $10,000+ in platform fees that you’re paying. Those fees need to show up as business expenses — because they are — and the only way to capture them correctly is to start with gross revenue.
What to record on the income side:
- Gross product sales
- Any reimbursements Amazon sends you (for lost or damaged inventory)
- Any promotions or coupons Amazon funds on your behalf
What to keep separate (not income):
- Amazon’s reserve balance — this is still your money, but it’s held back until Amazon’s conditions are met (see the reserve section below)
The Expense Side: Every Dollar Amazon Takes
This is where most FBA sellers’ books fall apart. Amazon charges a lot of fees, and they’re all deducted silently before you ever see your payout.
Referral fees — Amazon charges a percentage of each sale as a referral fee. For most product categories, that’s 15%. On a $30 product, that’s $4.50 per unit — $3,749 for the month on 833 units.
FBA fulfillment fees — This is what Amazon charges to pick, pack, and ship your order. For a small, lightweight item, that’s roughly $3.50 per unit, or $2,916 for the month.
Monthly storage fees — Amazon charges for the space your inventory takes up in their warehouses. The rate shifts by season and climbs significantly in Q4. Budget around $200/month for moderate inventory levels.
Long-term storage fees — If inventory sits in Amazon’s warehouse for more than 365 days, Amazon adds an extra monthly charge. This one quietly adds up for sellers who over-order.
Returns and refunds — When a customer returns a product, Amazon refunds the customer and typically charges a restocking fee. Track these as contra-revenue — they reduce your net sales figure.
Sponsored Products (PPC) — If you’re running Amazon ads, those costs come out of a separate budget but are still a real expense. A mid-sized seller might spend $1,500/month on Sponsored Products.
Here’s how that all adds up for a seller doing $25,000 in gross revenue:
| Expense | Amount |
| Cost of Goods (833 units × $8) | $6,664 |
| Amazon Referral Fees (15%) | $3,749 |
| FBA Fulfillment Fees | $2,916 |
| Storage Fees | $200 |
| Shipping to Amazon (freight + prep) | $400 |
| Sponsored Products (PPC) | $1,500 |
| Total Expenses | $15,429 |
| Net Profit | $9,571 |
| Net Margin | ~38% |
That’s a real business. But you only know it if you’re tracking all of it — not just the deposit.
Inventory: The Number Most Sellers Get Wrong
Inventory is your biggest asset and your biggest blind spot.
When you buy inventory, you’re not spending money — you’re converting cash into a product that sits on your balance sheet as an asset. The expense doesn’t show up until that product sells. This is called your cost of goods sold, or COGS, and it’s the foundation of understanding real profitability per unit.
At $8 per unit, selling 833 units means $6,664 hits your books as COGS — not when you placed the purchase order, but when those units sold.
What to track:
- Units purchased and landed cost (product cost + shipping from supplier + duties/tariffs)
- Units sent to Amazon FBA
- Units sold (triggers COGS recognition)
- Units damaged, lost, or returned (inventory adjustments)
If you’re ordering from overseas, your landed cost matters more than your supplier price. A product that costs $6 from a manufacturer might cost you $9.50 per unit by the time it clears customs and lands in Amazon’s warehouse. That’s your real COGS.
Amazon’s Reserve System: What’s Holding Your Cash
This is one of the most misunderstood parts of selling on Amazon — and it changed significantly in 2026.
Amazon operates two reserve mechanisms that stack on top of each other, and both affect when you see your money.
DD+7 (Delivery Date Based Reserve)
As of March 12, 2026, Amazon rolled out its DD+7 policy across all North American seller accounts. Under this policy, funds from a completed order are held for seven calendar days after confirmed delivery — not after shipment. Once that window clears, the balance becomes eligible for release in your next disbursement cycle.
Combined with Amazon’s standard 14-day disbursement cycle, FBA sellers should now expect 14 to 27 days from order placement to bank deposit — and potentially longer if delivery is delayed.
Important: DD+7 applies to both FBA and FBM orders. There is no opt-out. If a package is delayed in transit, the seven-day clock doesn’t start until confirmed delivery — so carrier delays directly extend your cash hold.
Account Level Reserve
On top of DD+7, Amazon holds a rolling percentage of your balance as an Account Level Reserve. This is calculated based on your account health, return rate, sales velocity, and claims history. It isn’t a one-time hold — it’s permanent and grows in line with your sales volume.
At $50,000 in monthly sales with a 10% reserve, Amazon perpetually holds $5,000. You never get that back as a lump sum — it simply rolls forward as your baseline unavailable balance.
Combined with Deferred Transactions under DD+7, many sellers now have 20–40% of gross sales tied up at any given time.
What this means for your books:
- Reserve balances are still your money — do not record them as income when received
- Track deferred transactions separately so your available balance reflects reality
- Build the full 14–27 day window (or longer) into your cash flow projections
- New sellers face the highest reserve percentages — often 15–20% — with no track record to compress it
Sales Tax: The Issue FBA Sellers Can’t Ignore
This one surprises a lot of sellers.
When you use FBA, Amazon stores your inventory in warehouses across the country — in states you may have never set foot in. In most states, storing inventory there creates what’s called a ‘nexus’ — which means you may be required to collect and remit sales tax in that state.
The good news: Amazon collects and remits sales tax on your behalf in states where marketplace facilitator laws apply, which now covers 45+ states.
The issue: you still need to know what’s happening, track your nexus states, and make sure your books reflect sales tax correctly. Sales tax you collect is not your income — it’s a liability you’re holding until it gets remitted.
What to do:
- Know which states Amazon is storing your inventory
- Confirm which states Amazon is remitting tax on your behalf
- Keep sales tax out of your revenue figures
- If you sell on other platforms (Shopify, Walmart, eBay), those may require separate sales tax compliance
This is an area where getting advice specific to your situation is worth the conversation.
The Cash Flow Timing Problem
Amazon pays out every 14 days. You buy inventory weeks or months before those sales happen. And between the purchase order, the freight, the DD+7 delivery hold, the Account Level Reserve, and the disbursement cycle, your cash is constantly tied up in transit — for longer than most sellers plan for.
Here’s what that cycle looks like in practice: a $10,000 inventory order placed in Week 1 takes six weeks to produce and ship to Amazon. Sales start in Week 7. Under DD+7, funds don’t release until seven days after confirmed delivery. Add the standard disbursement window, and that cash might not land in your account until 12–14 weeks after you spent it — or more if delivery is delayed.
If you’re growing — ordering more inventory every cycle — you can be profitable on paper while regularly running low on operating cash. The DD+7 policy makes this more acute than it used to be.
The fix isn’t to spend less. It’s to forecast. Know your inventory cycles, know your payout dates, and build a cash flow projection that accounts for the full DD+7 + disbursement window. Even a simple spreadsheet mapping inventory buys against expected payout dates can help you avoid the cash crunch that catches sellers off guard.
Tools to Build Your FBA Bookkeeping System
You don’t need to do this manually. The right stack makes it manageable.
A2X — The tool most Amazon sellers’ accountants recommend. A2X pulls your Amazon settlement reports and automatically maps them into your accounting software — breaking out gross sales, fees, refunds, and adjustments into the right categories. It turns your settlement file into a clean set of journal entries.
QuickBooks Online or Xero — Either works well for FBA sellers. Pair with A2X and you get a real-time picture of your P&L without manually entering anything from Amazon.
While software helps automate data collection, many sellers still rely on eCommerce bookkeeping services to reconcile Amazon settlements, track inventory movements, and maintain accurate financial reports.
Inventory tracking — For significant inventory volume, look at tools like Inventory Lab, Seller board, or Cin7. These track your COGS and inventory value in a way that integrates with your bookkeeping software.
The mistake to avoid: Recording Amazon deposits directly in QuickBooks as ‘income’ — no fee breakdown, no COGS, no returns. This is how you end up with books that look fine until someone who knows bookkeeping looks at them.
When to Bring In a Pro
DIY bookkeeping works at the start. But there are specific points where getting a professional involved pays for itself quickly.
You’re scaling past $10K/month in revenue. At this level, the complexity of fees, inventory, and sales tax starts to create real risk if things are tracked wrong.
You’re planning to raise capital or sell your business. Buyers and lenders want clean, auditable financials. Reconstructing two years of books from deposit records is painful and expensive.
You got a notice from a state tax authority. Sales tax compliance for FBA sellers is complicated. Don’t navigate it alone.
You’re not confident in your COGS. If you don’t know your true cost per unit — including landed cost — you can’t make smart decisions about pricing, promotions, or which products to scale.
A provider of professional bookkeeping services for e-commerce sellers doesn’t just keep records. They help you understand the numbers well enough to use them.
The Bottom Line
Amazon FBA can be a great business. But the platform makes it easy to feel like things are going well when you don’t know your margins, your real COGS, or how your cash is flowing — especially now that DD+7 and the Account Level Reserve can lock up 20–40% of gross sales at any given time.
Set up your books to track gross revenue, break out every Amazon fee, account for inventory correctly, and know your sales tax obligations. Do that, and you’ll have a clear picture of what your business is worth — and where it can go.
If you’re not sure whether your current setup is capturing all of this correctly, reach out to Datastub. We’ll review what you have and give you a clear, honest assessment of what’s working and where the gaps are.
This content is for general information only and does not constitute tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.