Amazon India · Methodology
Why your Amazon payout differs from your order profit
Short answer: your order report and your settlement report answer different questions. The order report says what customers paid. The settlement report says what Amazon actually deposited — after fees, GST on those fees, TCS, TDS and any refunds or reimbursements that happened to post in that cycle, even for orders placed weeks earlier. Reconciling the two means matching every line, not just comparing two totals.
What's actually in a settlement file
Amazon's settlement flat file doesn't hand you one profit number per order — it hands you rows, each tagged with an amount-type. The four that matter most:
ItemPrice
What the customer paid for the item — before any deduction.
ItemFees
Referral fee, FBA/Easy Ship fulfilment, closing fee and similar Amazon charges.
ItemTCS
Tax Collected at Source — 0.5% of taxable value, withheld and deposited to your GSTIN.
ItemWithheldTax
TDS withheld under Section 194-O — reclaimable, but not cash in hand this cycle.
A single order can generate several rows across several of these types, sometimes across more than one settlement period. True per-order profit means grouping every row back to its order — which is the actual reconciliation step, not a subtraction.
The GST-on-fees step most calculators skip
Amazon's fee line already includes 18% GST — it isn't added afterward. To find the GST portion:GST = fee × 18 ÷ 118On a ₹100 referral fee, that's ₹15.25 of GST and ₹84.75 of actual fee. If you're GST-registered, the ₹15.25 is claimable as input tax credit — which only matters if it's broken out, not buried inside one lump "fees" number.
Where the mismatch usually comes from
- A refund or A-to-z claim from an order placed weeks ago posting in this settlement.
- A weight-slab jump on Easy Ship shipping that wasn't in the original estimate.
- TCS and TDS reducing cash today even though both are reclaimable later.
- Promotions and coupon funding netted against
ItemPricerather than shown as a separate deduction.
This is the exact reconciliation SellerBlaze runs on every settlement file for Amazon India — it's the one marketplace where this method is validated against real seller data rather than desk-built from Amazon's published fee schedule. See the fee & profit calculator for the pre-settlement estimate, or profit analytics for how it looks once your account is connected.
Source: Amazon India — Fees and pricing for Amazon.in sellers. Last verified 26 Aug 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my Amazon settlement not match my order total?+
Your order report shows what the customer paid. Your settlement report shows what actually moved: the order amount, minus fees, TCS and withheld tax, plus or minus any refunds and reimbursements that settled in the same period — often for orders placed weeks earlier. The two numbers describe different things, which is why they never match.
What is an amount-type in Amazon's settlement report?+
Amazon's settlement flat file tags every line with an amount-type: ItemPrice (what the customer paid), ItemFees (referral, FBA, closing and similar charges), ItemTCS (Tax Collected at Source), and ItemWithheldTax (TDS). Reconciliation means grouping every amount-type row for one order into a single true per-order number — not just summing the file top to bottom.
How is GST on Amazon fees calculated?+
Amazon charges 18% GST on its fees, and the fee amount on your invoice already includes it. So GST is extracted from the fee rather than added on top: GST = fee × 18 ÷ 118. On a ₹100 referral fee, ₹15.25 is GST and ₹84.75 is the fee itself — the ₹15.25 is claimable as input tax credit if you are GST-registered.
What is TCS and why does it reduce my payout?+
Tax Collected at Source is 0.5% of the taxable value of your sale, withheld by Amazon and deposited against your GSTIN. It is not a fee you lose — you claim it back in your GST return — but it does reduce the cash that reaches your bank in that settlement cycle, which is why it needs its own line rather than being folded into "fees."
Why does a refund from an old order show up in this settlement?+
Refunds, A-to-z claims and reimbursements post whenever Amazon processes them, not when the original order shipped. A settlement covering this week can carry a refund for an order from a month ago. That timing gap is the single biggest reason a settlement total surprises sellers who are only looking at recent orders.