Amazon Summary Template Retirement
Bookkeep is retiring the Amazon Summary journal entry template. Its replacement, the Deferred and Released Sales Summary, is the standard sales entry for Amazon Seller connections. New connections use it, and existing connections on the Amazon Summary will be moved to it.
This page explains why, how the two templates differ, and what to do.
Why the Amazon Summary is being retired
Amazon now defers most sales at the time of the order and releases them for payout later, typically about a week after delivery. Amazon's own reporting, including the Date Range Summary Report, now reports sales on the deferral date. See Amazon Date Range Summary Report Update.
The Amazon Summary books a sale only when Amazon releases it. That was correct when Amazon reported the same way. Today it means:
- Revenue is booked late. Every deferred sale lands in the books on its release date, roughly a week after the order.
- Month-end shifts. Orders placed in the last week of a month are recognized in the following month, every month.
- The deferred balance is invisible. Money Amazon is holding for undelivered orders is not in the books, in revenue or on the balance sheet, until Amazon releases it.
- Sales-by-date reconciliation fails. Compared with Amazon's updated reports for a month, the entry is low by the sales still deferred and high by the prior month's releases.
The Deferred and Released Sales Summary books each sale on the day it is deferred, tracks it in a Deferred Balance account, and moves it to Amazon Balance on release. Revenue is recognized once, on the date Amazon reports it.
Is the Amazon Summary missing revenue?
No. Amazon posts a released row for every deferred sale when it matures, with the full item and fee detail, and the Amazon Summary books that row. Nothing is dropped and nothing is counted twice. The revenue is late, not missing. Because payouts are made only from released funds, the Amazon Summary still reconciles to deposits.
The two templates side by side
| Amazon Summary (retiring) | Deferred and Released Sales Summary | |
|---|---|---|
| A sale is booked | On the day Amazon releases it | On the day Amazon defers it (the order) |
| Sale released later | Nothing further; it was booked at release | Moves from Deferred Balance to Amazon Balance, no new revenue |
| Balance sheet accounts | Amazon Balance | Amazon Balance and Deferred Balance |
| Month-end | Last week of orders lands in the next month | Orders recognized in the month they occur |
| Matches Amazon's Date Range Summary Report | No, since Amazon moved it to deferral dates | Yes, on the revenue lines |
| Matches All Statements (payout periods) | Yes | Yes, on the Released lines, which the deposit reconciliation report checks |
| Reconciles to deposits | Yes | Yes |
| Managed COGS option | Released transactions only | Deferred + released transactions |
Both templates report the same lifetime revenue. The difference is when each sale is recognized and whether the deferred amount is visible in the books.
Matching Amazon's reports
Amazon has two families of reports, and each template matches one of them.
All Statements (Payments, All Statements tab) is organized by payout period. Its Sales, Refunds and Expenses columns are the released transactions posted in that period, because a payout is made only from released funds. The Amazon Summary entries for the days in a statement period, with the Pre and Post split on the boundary days, sum to these columns. The Deferred and Released Sales Summary matches them too, through its Released lines; the reconciliation report attached to every Amazon Deposit entry does this check for you. See Matching your Amazon Seller Payouts to Amazon Reporting.
Date Range Summary Report (Reports Repository) is organized by transaction date and, since Amazon's update, includes deferred sales on the day they occur. Only the Deferred and Released Sales Summary matches it. See Matching your Amazon Seller Sales Entry to Amazon's Reporting.
If your bookkeeper reconciles sales by date against Amazon, the Amazon Summary will look wrong every month. It is the same revenue in a later period.
What to do
- Turn on the Deferred and Released Sales Summary and map it. Map both Amazon Balance and Deferred Balance; the template always uses both accounts. See Amazon Deferred Transactions.
- Turn off the Amazon Summary on the same day. Running both books every sale twice.
- Set your revenue recognition start date to the first day the new template runs. Bookkeep then posts a one-time Opening Deferred Balance entry, dated the day before, for the sales that were deferred before the switch and still unreleased. Without it those sales would fall between the two templates. See Switching from the Amazon Summary Template.
- If you use Managed COGS, choose the Deferred + released transactions option so cost of goods follows the same dates as revenue. See Amazon COGS Automation.
- Check the first deposit after the switch. Its attached reconciliation reports confirm the daily entries and the balance accounts tie to Amazon.
What happens to your history
Nothing already posted by the Amazon Summary is changed. Sales released before the switch stay where the Amazon Summary booked them. The opening entry covers only the sales that were still deferred on the start date, so the two templates meet with no gap and no overlap.
If you switched templates before the revenue recognition start date existed, set the date to the day the new template first ran and re-run that day. The opening entry posts and your Deferred Balance account stops carrying a negative for the pre-switch sales.
Questions
Write to us at support@bookkeep.com.