It’s almost the start of income tax season, and if you have an Amazon FBA business like I do, you’ll need to collect the documents necessary to file your income taxes. Income taxes aren’t the most exciting topic, but it’s something you have to deal with every year, and collecting the necessary information is something you should know how to handle.
Today, I’m going to show you how to generate a one-page summary of your Amazon FBA sales, expenses, and deposits. This is an important document for filing your income taxes, so you’ll need it whether you have an accountant file taxes for you or you file them yourself.
This report is also an interesting summary of information that you don’t regularly see in your Amazon Seller Central account, so even if you sold very little in the last year, this is a set of numbers you’ll want to see.
Let’s go through the steps of generating the summary now.
Steps to Generate a Year-End Summary
Starting on the Amazon Seller Central account page, hover over the “Reports” drop-down, and then click on “Payments”:
This will bring up a page with a menu like this at the top. Click on “Date Range Reports”:
The report you need doesn’t exist yet, so you need to click on the button “Generate Report”:
When you click on “Generate Report”, it brings up a small box asking you to input the parameters of your report. Choose the “Summary” radio button, and input your custom date range like I did in the example below, with the start date being January 1st of the tax year, and the end date being the 31st of December of the tax year:
When you’ve finished entering the custom date, click on the “Generate” button. This will take you back to the previous screen, and there will be a new line just below “Document Name” as shown below:
Under the “Action” heading will be a button to click on to download your report. When you first generate your report, the button will say “In Progress” because Amazon is actively generating the report. After a minute or two, the button label will change to “Download” as shown above. Click this to download your report.
The box that pops up next asks if you want to open or save your report; choose whichever you prefer:
The report looks like the document below, although I’ve blocked out the numbers because this is my actual year-end summary, and I don’t want to share my numbers with the world:
Looking at the report, here is what each section is showing you:
- Income: this shows your Amazon FBA sales for the year, with appropriate adjustments made for returns, rebates, etc.
- Expenses: this lists the fees you pay as an FBA seller, with the three largest typically being “FBA selling fees”, “FBA transaction fees”, and “FBA inventory and inbound service fees”.
- Transfers: this shows the total amount Amazon deposits into your bank account for the year.
- Sales Tax: this summarizes the sales tax you and/or Amazon collected for the year.
With this report, you’ve got one of the documents needed to file your income taxes. Also, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, taxes can be a complex topic, and you should definitely seek the advice of a professional tax advisor to tell you how you should handle income, sales, or other taxes for your business.
Good luck with your Amazon FBA business in the year ahead!
Want to read about how my own Amazon business has evolved over the years? Read about it here. Wondering if you’re missing any tools that may make your business more efficient? Check this list here.