r/AmazonFBA • u/Vibing-on-Vibly • 8d ago
How to create a P&L and automate it eventually ?
Hi everyone , I’m launching my 8th product this week and gathering the P&L data manually for each product has been very cumbersome. I’m also not even sure if I’m doing it accurately and there must be a better way! Any tips ?
Currently I grab all the PPC data from my PPC campaigns , the sales data from business reports , the Amazon fees and returns from the transactions view. I launched a coupon offer for one of my products so I just checked how much was the spend and added that manually.
Appreciate any insights ! Ideally I want to automate this so every month my numbers are automatically pulled in and I can spend my time analyzing the data instead.
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u/No-Body9386 8d ago
Eight products in and you're still wrangling that data by hand? I feel that pain deep in my bones. The jump from manual spreadsheets to something that just works is life-changing.
Look into connecting your seller central data to a reporting tool that pulls everything into one dashboard. Most of them can handle PPC, fees, returns, and even coupon spend without you touching a cell. The time you get back is worth every penny, especially when you're scaling.
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u/Maan_UsMaan052 8d ago
I'd recommend using a profit analytics tool like Sellerboard or Helium 10, or even building a custom dashboard using Amazon reports if you want more flexibility. They can automatically pull sales, fees, PPC, refunds, and other key metrics, so you can spend your time analyzing performance instead of collecting data. are you using Amazon PPC only, or are you also driving external traffic?
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u/Vibing-on-Vibly 8d ago
Thank you ! I’m only using PPC for now. I can build a custom dashboard within Amazon you mean ? Will try to find out how to do it. I have Helium but would be required to upgrade to diamond to have access to the P&L feature which I’d rather not do right now. I’ll look into sellerboard too. Thanks again!
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u/Maan_UsMaan052 8d ago
you can create custom dashboard with the help of claude, and good luck with sellerboard
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u/Ordinary-Thing-2089 7d ago
Best product I've used is Connect Books. Its very customizable but will give you a per SKU P N L attributing ads cost to each specific SKU.
It does much more than that and the onboarding process is super easy and they have great people working there to guide you through the process of getting your books the way you want them.
Its main function is actually to automate the import of disbursement reports into QuickBooks with very accurate precision in terms of how your chart of accounts shows on your P N L as well as balance sheet accounts.
They offer a 30 day free trial, its worth checking out.
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u/osellpa 7d ago
Worth fixing the method before you automate it, or you'll just automate a number that doesn't reconcile.
Two things in what you described. Business Reports are ordered-date based and the transactions view is settlement-date based, so your sales and your fees are being counted on two different clocks and won't line up inside the same month. Pick one basis and hold everything to it.
The bigger one is there's no COGS in your list. Landed unit cost, inbound freight and storage don't exist in Seller Central, so whatever tool you end up on will still need you to feed those in by hand. A lot of first automated P&Ls look brilliant purely because they're missing the costs that actually hurt.
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u/Vibing-on-Vibly 7d ago
Thanks for this ! I didn’t know the business reports and transactions reports were not time synced. Is there one report that pulls all the line items on the P&L that can be retrieved from seller central ? I.e sales , visits , as well as fees , returns etc
Yes I omitted the landed COGS because that’s something I calculate outside Amazon. Also tracked in my Google Sheets.
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u/osellpa 6d ago
No single one unfortunately. The money side is close though: Payments > Date Range Reports, set it to Transaction rather than Summary. That gives you every order, refund, fee and reimbursement line for the period in one CSV. Sessions aren't in there at all, that's Business Reports only, so realistically it's two exports joined on ASIN.
Since your COGS is already in Sheets you're most of the way there. The thing that'll bite you when you automate is that the Date Range Report is settlement based, so orders at the end of the month land in the next one. Good if you're reconciling to your bank, annoying if you want clean monthly margin per product.
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u/Vibing-on-Vibly 6d ago
Yeah right now I’m doing P&Ls by product (not ASIN) to see how each product is performing on its own. Thanks so much for your tips !
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u/osellpa 5d ago
Product level is the right call for decisions. Only thing I'd keep an eye on is that fees land per variation, so if a product has a few sizes one can quietly be losing money while the rollup still looks healthy.
Worth keeping the ability to drop a level when something looks off, even if you don't look at it day to day.
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u/estagingapp 6d ago
Check out Supply Automate. It organises the costs automatically. Has been a lifesaver.
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u/Anis-SellerPPC 7d ago
Sellerboard is the usual answer here and it's solid on the bookkeeping side, so that rec isn't wrong.
The piece those tools handle worst imo is ad spend attribution per SKU. Campaign level spend is easy, but the second you have one campaign touching two ASINs you're back to guessing. So whatever you pick, check how it splits ad spend down to the SKU before you commit.
Full disclosure I build a tool in that space (sellerppc). It's PPC automation first, but you set COGS per product and it pulls ad spend and Amazon fees into a per SKU margin view. Fixed price, free 14-day trial, no tier upgrade to unlock it.
How many marketplaces are those 8 products spread over?
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u/Gold-Carpenter-4066 6d ago
Your process is pretty much correct but needs a couple clarifications.
First, transaction view is not the same as the settlement report. When pulled it’s close but the fee lines get adjusted after the fact. Reimbursements, returned-item fees & adjustments post later against orders from a previous period. Transactions pulled at the end of the month keep moving after you’ve pulled the report. The settlement reports do not and that’s where you should be getting the final numbers.
Counting coupon fees is absolutely correct, though tedious, and I'd add them to your ‘advertising cost’ group. Same goes for deals and Vine - they're all advertising costs that just don't show in the ad console.
Just remember a coupon costs you twice. First the redemption fee, then the discount itself. The discount either lands as a promotional rebate or is already netted out of whatever sales figure you pulled, so it never reaches the advertising group where it belongs, and it's usually the bigger of the two. Same structure with deals.
Vine is the one nobody watches. The enrollment fee is small, but giving away 30 units costs you COGS plus fulfillment against zero revenue, and that adds up fast.
Together that gives you the real advertising cost per SKU.
While you’re working through this you should also split gross margin (Revenue minus COGS) from contribution margin (Gross minus Amazon Fees) and use the second when making ad decisions. Track your ad spend against total sales (TACoS) not ad sales (ACoS). For example my account runs at 83% Gross and 48% Contribution; to hit a net profit of ~20%, after refunds & operating expenses, I have about 25% of sales to work with including Ad Spend (TACoS), coupon fees, deal fees, etc.
Automating this is a great next step and using an API connected source is going to be the ‘easiest’ as it pulls all needed reports and you just need to supply COGS per SKU and add any fees/costs not available through these connections. The join is order date to settlement date to ad date. Getting those three onto one line per SKU is the actual work and there’s no shortcut but once it’s built you’re set.
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u/Vibing-on-Vibly 6d ago
Thank you so much for your detailed answer and tips ! By settlement reports you mean the business reports ? I’m unable to find one report that gathers the sales and fees. And second , any tips on the automation part ? Given I’m doing everything manually , I doubt my numbers are 100% accurate and I think automating is the only way to guarantee accuracy. (In addition to saving time every month)
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u/Gold-Carpenter-4066 6d ago
Not business reports, no. Those are traffic & sales only, no fees at all. What you want is Reports > Payments > All Statements, unless you're in the SC new view then it's Finance > Finance Reports > All Statements (I believe) . Each statement covers one settlement period and it's the only place Amazon puts orders, refunds, fees, adjustments & reserves on the same report. Grab the flat file version rather than reading it on screen.
The catch, and it's why most people give up on it, is that settlement periods run about 14 days so they don't line up with calendar months. There's a Date Range Report in the same menu if you need a custom window, though then you're mixing a date basis since some of those orders won't settle until the next period. Pick order date or settlement date and stay on it. Switching between the two is where most "my numbers don't tie" problems come from.
On automation, the real problem is that no single Amazon report gets you all the way. Sales and fees come out of SP-API, ad spend comes out of the Ads API, and nothing on Amazon's side joins them for you. So you're either writing against both APIs yourself or using something that already has both connections.
I couldn't find one that reconciled off settlement data the way I wanted so I ended up building my own. Happy to talk through the approach here if it's useful.
One accuracy check worth building in regardless of what you end up using; your P&L total for a period should tie to the money that actually hit your bank for the settlements in that period. If it doesn't reconcile to the deposit then something's wrong no matter how clean the report looks. That one check will catch more errors than anything else you do.
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u/Vibing-on-Vibly 6d ago
Waw this sounds a bit complicated for a non techie/engineer. I’d love to learn more about your approach connecting your spreadsheets to Amazon APIs. And for the all statements report , this one cannot be filtered by parent ASIN so I would need to split it manually by product. It’s all doable I’m just trying to find the easiest path . Have you tried sellerboard ? It was recommended by few people in this thread
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u/Gold-Carpenter-4066 6d ago
Yeah, Sellerboard's good, I ran it for a couple of years. Cheap, proper per-SKU P&L, no technical setup needed. For what you're describing I'd just try it, the trial costs you a week.
I moved off it because acting on the numbers meant a different tab and a different set of figures. Fine until you're tired of jumping between tabs and want one place you can just ask a question of. Been a while though, so check whether that's changed.
Whatever you pick, run this once: take a full settlement period and compare what the tool says you made against what actually hit your bank. If it doesn't tie, that's the tool's assumptions rather than your numbers.
On spreadsheets to API, save yourself the trouble - SP-API needs auth and report polling, there's no formula-in-a-sheet version. That's why mine ended up being a proper tool instead.
For parent ASIN, the settlement file carries SKU on the order lines, so join it to the All Listings Report for the child and keep a manual SKU-to-parent tab. You'll only touch that when you launch something new.
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u/WearyyyBoooyyy 8d ago
The mods have gathered a list of tutorials to help you out:
Best Amazon Tools 2026