I admit the topic of “end of year reports” is not all that exciting, but it’s very necessary… in fact, if you don’t do this right it could have some negative impacts on your business.
No matter if you sell on Amazon as a serious income stream or as an occasional hobby, you’re still required to report your income to the IRS. It’s important to know that there are several reports you should be sure to send to your CPA (or whoever is doing your taxes).
Before we go any further I want you to know that I am not a tax specialist or giving you any tax advice. I highly recommend hiring a local CPA who is knowledgable of online sales and all the tax implications for your state. Today, I’m only showing you how to get the reports that you need to add to all of your other 2018 tax documents.
Download your Inventory on Hand report
Ok, there is one report that you MUST run after December 31st. The easiest day to run this report is on December 31st (or early in the day on January 1st). This report will let you know how much inventory you have still stored at Amazon at the end of the year. The reason you need to run this report on December 31st is because it’s the easiest time to to find out what inventory you had in FBA warehouses on specific dates in the past. There is another way to run this report if you were not able to run it on December 31st/January 1st, and I’ll show you how to do that later in this blog post.
To pull this report, follow these simple steps:
- Log in to Seller Central.
- Hover your pointer over “Reports,” and then select “Fulfillment.”
- Under Inventory, click on “Amazon Fulfilled Inventory” on the left side of your screen. you might have to click “Show more” to find it.
- Click on the “Request Download” button.
- The report status column will state that this report is “In Progress” until it’s completed.
- Once the report is completed (usually a minute later), a “Download” button will appear next to the most recent time the report was requested. Press the “Download” button.
- Your report is now downloaded to your computer as a .txt file. Open up the file.
Some computers will open this file into a spreadsheet program; if this is the case for you, simply skip to step 11.- For other computers, the report will open in a notepad type program with a lot of hard to read (and hard to organize) text. If this is the case for you, simply select all the text (Control-A for PC users or Command-A for Mac users).
- Open up an Excel type spreadsheet and paste the text you just copied. The data will now be more organized in a spreadsheet format.
- Save the file with a name like “2018 Amazon Year End Inventory.”
Note: Do not print this document out. If I would have printed my document out, it would have used 784 pages. That’s because the document also contains all of the items in your inventory that are sold out and are at zero quantity. If you rarely (or never) delete any of your MSKUs that you no longer use (because you’re sold out and don’t plan on selling again), then you may have a file even longer than mine. So don’t print the file, but do save it and email it to your CPA (or whoever is doing your taxes).
An additional step (that might make your CPA’s life easier) is to take the spreadsheet information and sort the “Quantity Available” column from largest to smallest, and the scrolling down and deleting all of the lines that include a quantity of zero. Since you are sold out of these items (hence the quantity of zero), you and your CPA don’t need that information for a report about inventory on hand.
Other reports on the same Reports/Fulfillment page that your CPA would probably like to see are the following:
– Monthly Inventory History – Found under Reports, then Fulfillment, then on the left sidebar click the Show More link in the Inventory section, then Monthly Inventory History. Click on the Download tab and run this report for the full year (choose “exact months” and January to December of the current year for the report time period) and it will show you a monthly breakdown of what you sold each month.
NOTE: If you didn’t run the main report above on December 31st or January 1st, then you can use the Monthly Inventory History report in its place. It has the same information as the Inventory On Hand report, but it’s a lot harder to read, organize, and understand because it’s broken down into the months of the year and includes different lines for each item per individual fulfillment center.
– Received Inventory – Found under Reports, then Fulfillment, then Show More, then Received Inventory. Click on the Download tab and run this report choosing “last 12 months” as your time period. This shows what inventory items Amazon received from you this year.
Note: As with the “Year End Inventory” report, be sure to move the report over to a spreadsheet program (like Excel or Google Sheets) so that it’s easier for you or your CPA to read.
When you run these reports, don’t forget to choose “last 365 days” or “last 12 months” 0r “exact dates” (with January 1st being the start and December 31st being the end) for your report dates. You want the reports for the whole year, not just the current month.
Your CPA would also like to see a report of your sales, fees, and income from Amazon. The way to find and run this report is a little different than above, so here is how you do it:
- Log in to Seller Central.
- Hover your mouse over “Reports,” and then select “Payment.”
- Click on the “Date Range Reports” tab.
- Click on the “Generate Report” button.
- Select Report Type: Summary
- Select Date Range: Custom
- Enter in this date range: “01/01/2018 – 12/31/2018”
- Click “Generate” to get the report started.
- Once the reports are ready, they will be available to download.
Note: If you are running the “01/01/2018 – 12/31/18” report before December 31st, then the report will not be ready to download until after January 1st. Set a reminder somewhere to come back and download the report on January 2nd. If you are running this report after January 2nd, then it should be ready to download in a few minutes.
Get all of these reports to your CPA ASAP. You really don’t want to be late on getting the tax process started. Again, if you don’t have a CPA, I highly recommend getting one as soon as possible. It might seem costly, but you want to be sure your numbers are right, and you want a professional to do the work that would eat up way too much of your time if you did it yourself.
Of course, these aren’t the only numbers you’ll need to give to your CPA. They will also need to know your cost of goods (you logged your receipts, right?) and any other business-related expenses you will deduct from your sales numbers. I recommend using InventoryLab to keep track of all your business expenses like cost of goods, mileage, supplies, etc. If you don’t have all of your expenses’ data stored in one place, I highly recommend using InventoryLab – especially at the start of a new year so you can have all of your financial data in one place from the start of the year. Get a free month of InventoryLab by clicking here.
If you are an InventoryLab user, then here is a video on how to use InventoryLab to make sure you’re ready for year-end tax reports and what you need to do before and after December 31st.
Make 2019 your Best Amazon Sales Year Ever!
Imagine knowing exactly what to expect in your Amazon FBA business every month of the year.
Imagine what it would feel like knowing you were not missing out on any of the opportunities that will come your way in 2019.
Imagine working on your Amazon business knowing exactly what your priorities are, what you need to avoid, and what you need to accomplish during each month to make progress toward making 2019 your best sales year ever.
Find out more about The Reseller’s Guide to a Year in FBA: A Month by Month Guide to a Profitable Amazon Business today. The package includes a 220+ page ebook, interactive training webinars throughout the year, 12+ hours of video training, and 4 special bonuses.
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Ok, 2018 is almost over. What other things are you doing during the last week of the year in order to prepare for 2019? I’d love to hear what you’re up to this week!
This is awesome information especially for a noob and my first Q4! Thank you!
In order to get the absolutely most accurate data for the Amazon Fulfilled Inventory Report, keep in mind that Amazon closes things out at midnight PACIFIC time. So, if you are in Eastern Time zone, that would be 3:00 AM, Central: 2:00 AM, and 1:00 AM Mountain Time.
Sellers from other countries and time zones should also take this timing into consideration. While many won’t want to actually stay up for the event, it’s nice to know in case you really want to, what time to actually download the report.
Good comment, Georgene! I’m pretty sure the IRS is ok with submitting numbers that are a hair off (and not 100% accurate to the minute), but it’s nice to know that there is a way to get the exact number, in case we wanted to. Thanks for the comment.
Woohooo. 2 am?
I’ll be snoozing at 2am!
Thanks Stephen! As always very helpful!
Stephen,
You’ve just made my CPA very happy, me too!!
Thank you so much for this organizational plan.
First year for FBA, this information helps so much.
Thank you for all you do.
All the best for a wonder-filled holiday season!
Yes, just to be clear, I wouldn’t be doing this for anyone but myself. Just because I’m a numbers geek. I KNOW your CPA wouldn’t expect it, hahaha!
Thank you very much!
This will be my first year dealing with Amazon and taxes.
Your information is right on time.
Taking your advice and working with a CPA.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours….
Thank you! And Merry Christmas to you too!
Stephen, this information was just what I was looking for. You’ve saved me a lot of time and much grief trying to navigate Amazon looking for this information. Your blog is a treasure trove of helpful tips and time-savers. Thank you so much!
This is a fantastic article and will actually help me answer the non-sales tax questions I sometimes see in our Sales Tax for eCommerce Sellers group. Thanks for this resource!
You’re welcome, Jenn. And I love TaxJar! Great site!
Thank you so much. I am new to Amazon, but I know I will need this information eventually.
Thank you. Very timely indeed. I almost forgot I needed to find out what reports I needed to run. I just happened across this on FB. I so appreciate it.
When I try to generate my Monthly Inventory History report, I get “No Data Available”, no matter the dates I select.
Are you choosing the download tab? It should work just fine on the download tab.
Hello Stephen
This information is right on time!
Thank you very much.
The free gift on Taxes is appreciated too.
Will have to see if my CPA can help me with that.
Not quite understanding how that works.
Happy New Year to You and Yours….
Your CPA (if they are a good one) will be able walk you through everything you need to know to do your taxes right.
Thank you so much Stephen! I hope you have a very Happy New Year!!!
First the Board Games book and now this help with FBA end of year accounting!
Stephen rocks!
Thanks for another great post. Can you do one that calculates sales tax? I have only run through tax jar’s system and have not looked at it on my own, but for those of us who do… that report is a little daunting to look at. Happy new year!
I rely on Taxjar for all my sales tax information, so that’s the only thing I can recommend to you. But don’t worry, after you take care of it, it gets easier every year. Happy new year to you as well!
Thanks Stephen. I see how to download the FBA inventory, but is there a report that shows my current list of MF inventory?
Stacy, the only way I can think of showing a list of your Merchant Fulfilled inventory is to go to Seller Central, click on Inventory, then Manage Inventory. Click to show active listings (on the left), and then click on “Fulfilled by” on the far right. Then you can see all of the MF together.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for taking the time to blog this Stephen!
I am sure it has been helpful to many Amazon sellers. 🙂
Thank you for the information and, especially, for the reminder Stephen (as I almost forgot!) Have a great New Year!
Thanks for this article! I couldn’t remember which of those reports I needed but I knew it was time! The names all sound the same to me…
I know what you mean… it can get confusing at times. I just hope to bring some clarity to everyone.
Thank you SO much. I just followed step by step to print out all my reports. I just have one question, if you know. I forgot to do this in the morning, and only downloaded this reports close to 11 PM on 1/1. I did make some sales today – if I wanted to go back and reconstruct the report as it should have been this morning, do you know if the inventory report includes items that are in reserve status or not? Thanks so much for your help!!
Martha, don’t worry about needing to get the report “perfect.” The report will not include any items in reserve as you are not officially paid for these items yet. Just use what you have and your CPA will be able to take care of everything for you the right way.
Mom recommended this to me, and I am so glad she reminded me, because I never would have remembered. Thanks for writing this!
Hey guys,
Great information! I’ve been running FBA part time for almost 4 years now and made the leap to full time in the beginning of 2014. I stumbled across your blog today and it’s great to see some like minded individuals having success in the program.
One point to add to this post is that you can get a snapshot of your inventory on 12/31 after the fact. It’s a little different but you can make it work. Go to Reports -> Fulfillment -> Daily Inventory History. From here select download and input the date range of 12/31-12/31 (or 1/1-1/1 I’m not sure which would be more accurate). You can then paste the information from the text file straight into an excel file. I personally like this report better as it shows the title of the items and only those items with units to be counted. You can have excel add up the units from different warehouses for each item to get usable totals by creating a quick pivot table (Click insert -> Pivot table -> Then select product-name OR sku, quantity, and fulfillment-center-id in that specific order in the box to the right).
Phillip
Thanks for the additional info, Phillip!
Ditto what Phillip said, I use the Daily Inventory History report after the fact, with the date range set 12/31 to 12/31. I just ran ours in April.
Thank you so much Stephen and Phillip K! I am new to Amazon FBA (since December) and hadn’t thought about getting this information until today when I found this post. I have my report being generated as I write this. Again thanks for all your help with this very fun and exciting business we all are fortunate to have found!
Hello,
Great article about downloading all these obscure reports! My CPA is not well versed in ecommerce businesses so I would like to know what I should do with these reports (calculate COGs?) to further along the tax necessities. I don’t know which report I need to use to multiply how many units I had in stock for the year 2014 vs. how many units were actually sold (another report)? I would like to crunch some numbers myself as I have not done this before and would love to learn!
Thanks a lot, Stephen!
TJ
TJ, The stats above are all I need to do my taxes. If your CPA is not well versed in e- commerce, it might be time to consider a new CPA. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but you need someone to do things the right way, so that you, your business, and your finances are protected.
Lulu, you can still try and request the info with the dates 1/1-12/31 and see if that works for you. Hope this helps!
Stephen, great post and very helpful to new people like me. Do you know what the IRS is interested most in? For example if I made $100 sales but I spent $50 to purchase those items, are they going to tax me for the $100 or for the $50 profit that I made? Thanks for your help!
I’m not 100% sure, as I’m not a tax professional, and I pay my CPA to take are of all of this for me. I would only be able to guess and I don’t want to give out any advice on a guess.
Stephen – Thanks very much for taking time out over the holidays to share this info! This year is the first year that my biz will need to know these details, the first year I will be using a CPA, and I had no idea where to find all this. It’s super helpful. Have a great New Year!
Great article, very helpful. Do you have any idea what those of us who live outside the US but trade on Amazon.com should do regarding taxes?
I have to say it all seems very complicated to me and I have to admit to being very confused by it all.
Any ideas?
Taxes are usually the most complicated thing to understand. I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you need to do in order to take care of taxes from outside of the states. Maybe open up a ticket with Amazon and see what they say… or contact an accountant in your area and ask them. I wish you nothing but success.
Thank you so much for such great info!!!
How do you find out the total inventory and sales from the different warehouses you sent your merchandise to? I also included my sales tax in my total cost. Where would I figure out how to get the sales tax amount?
What are your thoughts on Sales Tax Nexus for FBA? I was MF for the majority of this year, but jumped in to FBA in November. Sales tax was easy when I was MF, but not quite sure how to handle it for FBA items, without purchasing something like Tax Jar.
I get all my info about nexus from TaxJar. Apart from them, I don’t know how to answer your question. Hope this helps!
Great article and so helpful. You took the pain out of doing these reports for tax purposes especially on the last day of the year. Maybe this year my accountant will be impressed with me being more organized. Thanks Stephen.
I used these instructions last year and now again this year. Thanks so much, Stephen, for sharing these.
Thank you thank you!!!! So informative and you made it so simple!! I would have been struggling like crazy. I appreciate it so much. Happy New Year!
Stacy
Just the info I needed – thank you! Love step by step instructions, and these were so easy to follow. Question: for cost of goods, do you include the cost of even those items you ended up not sending in? For example items I bought because they looked good when I scanned them at the yard sale / book sale but once I got home and took a closer look on Amazon, I realized that for various reasons it wasn’t, so I put it in my “yard sale” bin instead.
I do include these in my cost of goods that I give to my CPA.
It might be because you had sales, but they have not shipped yet so they are not showing up as completed sales.
Keep in mind folks that the account activity sheet you down load wont include pay per click advertising costs. It has a line item for it but mine was blank. These are fees that are not taken from my Amazon account like other fees, but charges seperately for some reason.
Wow, this information was very helpful, and much needed. Thank you!!
This report does not include RESERVED or IN-TRANSIT inventory, which is very important as RESERVED includes items that are: 1) Quantity reserved for orders, but not paid. This quantity is considered inventory, but does not tally in into the AVAILABLE INVENTORY column. 2) Quantity that is being transferred between FBA warehouses. Depending on the volume that you do, this make a big difference and impact on your real inventory numbers. The only way to do it is to manually go through each time and add the RESERVED quantity to your total inventory number for each item. IN-TRANSIT items are also considered inventory and should be added to your final inventory figure.
Reserved inventory does not count for pending orders because they can always be cancelled due to various reasons. What counts are items shipped which is after payment is processed and credited to your balance.
I think the Manage FBA inventory report has everything. let me know if im wrong.
Thanks Stephen for the detailed step-by-step instructions on running our end-of-year reports. Very timely for me as I am looking to improve my inventory and sales reporting to my CPA this year. Also thanks for the reminder to make sure to run the reports on 12/31 or early 1/1, I didn’t do that last year and had a hard time getting my inventory numbers for my CPA. You never fail to provide us with good, accurate, timely and extremely helpful information always.
Thank you! This was a huge help. You have great content!!
Thank you so much for all the great information. I do have a question. It seems when I ran the monthly inventory history it doesn’t show sales each month but inventory. Am I missing something?
Thank you kindly
Katie
Stephen or anyone else,
What do you guys do with inventory that you purchased and shipped in, but has yet to hit the FC? Or inventory that is still at your house that you have not sent in yet? Shouldn’t that be included in your ending inventory number?
I’m wondering the same thing, actually. I’m assuming you submit a “sitting-at-home” inventory list. Any tips/tricks?
Happy New Year by the way!
I am not an accountant but as long as that inventory belongs to you, it must be reported. This guide was intended to show sellers the necessary steps to pull reports for inventory located at FBA specifically.
Everything on my report says sellable. There is nothing that says anything was sold per month.
Katie
Thank you so much!
Thank you Stephen!!! I needed that info!
Awesome info, thanks so much! When I went to get the year end inventory report, it had several reports for each day of the year. I just used the Dec. 31 one instead of requesting one on Jan. 1. I guess Amazon just does this for us?
Are you talking about monthly inventory report or received inventory report? Be noted that monthly report at the moment does not have data for December since there is some delay in reporting.
thanks again for this helpful article- you help so many! Thanks for taking the time.
Is there a way to find out your sales by State?
Laura,
Hope you were able to solve this already, but if you weren’t, I was able to run the “Amazon Fulfilled Shipments” report under the “Sales” category. In that report, it gives you the recipient along with the “ship-state.” You can open the file in Excel and create a Pivot Table to sum each state.
So thankful for your sharing with us.
This was a really helpful article thanks!
I’m looking at the pdf of the sales/fees/income report and not totally understanding how to look at it. Can I look at this and see how profitable I was for the year? Obviously I know COGS affects my profitability but just within this report what exactly is it telling me? Thank you!
is there any way to run this report after 12/31?
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! soooo much for this valuable and timely post Stephen.
Thank you! You’re always SO helpful! I’ve been doing MF for several years and always kept my inventory reports on what I had in stock. This is my first year FBA… but I am curious about something… last year was the first time I used a CPA…. and she threw out my inventory report and said that I didn’t need to report my inventory since I use the Cash basis accounting….. does that sound right to you? It worries me a bit… and more so now with these reports…. Open to your thoughts. Thanks!
Hi Margie,
I’m not an accountant. But I do think you need to know what your inventory is so that you can determine a value. I file using the cash basis also. With that method you can only deduct the cost of inventory as an expense if it sold.
Therefore, you need to know what your beginning and ending inventory value is because the difference is what you get to use as a deduction on your taxes.
If I’m all wet with my understanding, I’d like someone more knowledgeable to set me straight!
Thank you Ree! That’s always how I’ve always done it too…. I wasn’t very happy with the CPA I used last year, and I was shocked when she threw out my inventory. I appreciate the back up and I think I’ll be looking for a new CPA this year. 🙂
Thank you once again for providing great information! It really helps us run our part time AMZ business.
Happy New Year!
Dale’s Bookcase
I have an annual Google calendar reminder with Stephen’s link to this post. Thanks for updating it as well. It’s critical information, good luck getting it anywhere else. Can’t thank you enough. Will say I’m really disappointed that Amazon no longers allows a full year PDF download of the Summary Report. Mentioned above, you need to do it in portions. 3 months increments are stated above, but the Amazon report page does allow 180 day increments. I did 4 month increments which reduced the reports to 3 total.
Thank you for the step by step way to get different reports. It is very helpful to a beginner like me. Kuddos!
Thanks! You are a life saver each year.
This has been a blessing for you to publish this. Thank you soooooo much!
Hi Stephen! So…what if you’ve made a noob mistake and you’re just now printing your year end inventory in February? What kinds of adjustments do I need to make from this report pulled in Feb – is it as simple as “subtract anything you’ve sold after Dec 31?” Help! 🙂 ((I’m too small of a fish at the start here to go full CPA/Tax Jar/Inventory Lab (will ramp up next year), so the good news it will only be a short list of sales for Jan/Feb to subtract.)) But when taxes want to know “Beginning Inventory” = zero, and “Ending Inventory”, will this report be enough to extract that? Thanks!
Another year and another thank you!
Another “you’re welcome!” 🙂
For Sales for the year, noticed that Amazon only allows download for the last 30 days. Anyone know where/what to download to get sales for the whole year in order to track by state?
You can change the time period for the report.
When I run this report it doesn’t show the “product title,” but rather the ASIN. This would take a long time to then figure out the total cost value of my inventory left over as I’d have to type in each ASIN in Amazon to figure out which product it was. I then tried the monthly report like you mentioned, it does show product title but it mentions the items in almost every month which is not what I’m looking for. Is there a way I can get the final report but with product titles?
Hello Guys.
I want to take a look of my last month’s report but I’m not sure if the report has the inbound items that I ship during the month..
How can I find the complete report with inbound also.