If your Amazon settlement's ending balance isn't $0 even though every payout hit your bank on schedule, that's not an error — it's the reserve Amazon holds back, and it needs its own line in your books.
Convert your amazon file - done-for-you from $149
Amazon holds back a rolling reserve based on your account's return rate, customer claim history, and overall account health, to cover future refunds and A-to-Z claims. It isn't a fee and it isn't lost revenue — it's cash Amazon is keeping temporarily, still yours, but not yet disbursed.
If you reconcile expecting every settlement period to zero out, the held reserve will look like missing money every single period. It only resolves when the reserve is booked as a real, distinct balance — money the business is owed but hasn't received — rather than absorbed into the payout total or ignored entirely.
As your account history changes, Amazon can increase, decrease, or release the reserve. A released reserve shows up as an unusually large payout in a later period, which looks like an anomaly unless your books were tracking the reserve balance all along.
FootingKit's Amazon conversion breaks each settlement into gross sales, fees, refunds, and the reserve movement as its own tracked line — so the reserve balance carries forward correctly instead of creating a phantom gap. Every payout is verified to net exactly to its bank deposit, or the conversion is flagged and re-run — free.
Amazon can release reserve funds as your account history improves, typically paying it out as part of a later settlement. FootingKit tracks the running reserve balance so a release shows up correctly as the reserve balance dropping — not as unexplained income.
Convert your amazon file - done-for-you from $149
Get your settlement reconciled - done-for-you from $149
FootingKit converts marketplace settlement reports into QuickBooks- and Xero-ready books, footed to the penny.