The best way to get information to complete a VAT return from Amazon?

#1

Could someone explain simply what information to download from Amazon in order to compete a VAT return? I find this one of the most frustrating parts of selling on Amazon.

I have tried to generate a number of reports. The obvious option is to go the top menu on seller and Reports>Payments>Date range reports tab

Then insert the dates for the VAT quarter and generate. Open resulting file in a spreadsheet.

So far so good.

Product sales is in one column. Great I can just add those up.

However fees are split into a number of confusing columns

promotional rebates / postage credits / selling fees / fba fees /other transaction fees

There is no simple total fees column I can use. It would be good if Amazon could provide us with a simple total.

Do I have to add together selling fees / fba fees /other transaction fees to get a total?

If I do this, then the fees come out as very high - around 30% of the total selling price.

This seems higher than expected in the “fee preview” in dashboard.

Firstly, is this the best way to get the information required for a VAT return?

I also get monthly fee invoices but these do not seem to match.

Secondly, what are “other transaction fees”? Usually 75p per item in this case

Edited by: Microscience on Jan 16, 2018 6:18 PM

Edited by: Microscience on Jan 16, 2018 6:20 PM

#2

OK - what we do rightly or wrongly is (and it is ok with our accountant for VAT):
Payments/Transaction View/custom date range
Download this & open in a spreadsheet, run a sort using Payment Detail. This sorts all the various charges & receipts into sections. Insert a row at the end of each type & take a total.
Seems long winded but is relatively quick in practice.
Amazon for some reason seem to work on a 15th - 15th invoice cycle.
Hope this helps, but others may have alternative ways of dealing with this.

#3

That’s exactly how I do it too, but doing each month as a custom date range in transaction view. I change it show 50 transactions a page. Then copy and paste each page into a spreadsheet for that month. Add rows E and H together for total income (in a new column J). Then row G is my outgoings and row J is income. Easier than it sounds!

#4

Thank you very much for your comments and help.

It would be nice if Amazon provided us with an easier way to do this. A one-click vat download (or even better - scheduled).

#5

Isn’t the “Amazon VAT Transactions report” any good to you?

#6

I find that the resulting txt file download for Amazon VAT Transactions Report is un-formatted and thereby pretty much useless!!! - even if i open it in excel, it provides two cells - one containing all the column names as a concatenated text string - the other with all the values for those columns, again as a concatenated string - unless i’m going to run through the entire string and manually split the information, it is unuseable

  • unless anyone has a way of opening this file in a formatted and sensible way?..
#7

I never a problem opening the report in Excel, you best review how you are opening yours. I think tab delimited is best.

#8

Thanks - that sounds good to me … how do i go about telling excel that it should open the txt file as a tab delimited file? - i’ve tried opening and re-saving as tab delimited - makes no difference when i re-open it though… I think i’ll try another spreadsheet prog and see if its a(nother) excel issue…

#9

I know this is an old thread but hopefully this will help someone.

In excel open a new spreadsheet, go to the data tab at the top of the screen and select the “import text/file” button.
Just clicking on the file in explorer doesn’t always open the file properly.

I’m not at my computer so the name of the tab/button is most likely different but hopefully you can work this out.

#10

I continue to get myself into a pickle with Amazon fees / VAT.

To get the total Amazon fees for a VAT return, do I add together all of the following fees?

gift wrap credits+promotional rebates+selling fees+fba fees+other transaction fees

And total sales (what we need to pay VAT on) are made of

product sales + postage credits

Thanks for your help.

#11

Have you tried using Reports>Payments>Date range reports> and selecting summary report for the dates you need rather than transactions. This gives you an overview of income and all fees on one page for the dates you enter, rather than a spreadsheet of all transactions

#12

Thank you Jemima, that’s really helpful :slight_smile:

I hadn’t spotted that option and it looks much easier to understand (it generates a pdf rather than a spreadsheet but that shouldn’t be a problem).

#13

No problem. I have just got an accountant and they were happy for me to use this monthly and input the bold figures at the top for income and expenses and not worry about the breakdown.

closed #14

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