Sales Dashboards, Profit And Loss … What’s The Difference?
And Why Are The Numbers Not Identical For Both Sources?
The Sales Dashboard(s) report on Product Sales only – They reflect your Sales Performance
Consistent with the way that Amazon shows you the sales figures on their dashboard and business reports (and also consistent with the way all our competitors show sales dashboards), the Dashboards only consider sales related fees, such as FBA Per Order Fees and FBA, Per Unit Fees and Commission.
Dashboards do not include service fees, like, for example, storage fees, inbound transportation fees, disposal fees, Pro Seller account subscriptions, etc.
Important: The Sales Dashboards show data by Order Date and Time, i.e. in the chronological sequence the orders have been placed. So the Dashboard should be comparable to the Amazon Business Reports.
The Profit And Loss Statement reports on everything, whether it is Product Sales related or Business Operations related
As such, you will find two sections of interest in P&L
Amazon Order Fees
These are the sales related fees which are included in the Dashboards
They are typically
Commission,
FBA Per Order Fulfillment Fee,
FBA Per Unit Fulfillment Fee,
FBA Weight Based Fee and others
Other Amazon Fees
These are the services and operations fees charged to you by Amazon
Some of these, as an example, are
FBA Inbound Transportation Fee
FBA Long-Term Storage Fee
Labeling Fee
Run Lightning Deal Fee
FBA Inbound Convenience Fee, and many, many others
Important: The Profit and Loss report is organized by Settlement Date, which is the date and time where the order was shipped and therefore the revenue was available to you. So, the P&L report should be comparable to the Amazon Payments Report
Some very important distinctions:
The Dashboard(s) are reporting on alldaily product sales
As such, they will contain all types of order statuses, including Pending, Partially Shipped, as well as Shipped
The Profit And Loss only reports on Settled sales
These are sales for which Amazon has either paid you already or has earmarked revenue due to be paid to you in the next settlement
As such, P&L only contains shipped orders, for which revenue has been materialized by Amazon
The Dashboards are reporting on Daily Calculated PPC Charges per product
Therefore PPC charges on the dashboard are reflected for every day and include up to (in best cases) yesterday’s costs
Daily PPC charges are subject to adjustment up to 7 days after they are first shown
This is because Amazon adjusts your costs for potential click fraud, adverse effect of Amazon’s own PPC testing on your clicks and billing, and numerous other reasons
SellerLegend automatically corrects for these variations as they are communicated to us by Amazon
The Profit And Loss reports on the Billed PPC Charges (under the Ads Payment line in Other Amazon Fees)
PPC Billing does not happen daily, it happens at set periods or when you have exceeded a credit limit specific to your account
So, depending on the period you have set the P&L to show data for, you may miss some PPC billings as they may be outside of the time period you have set.
As far as the Returns and Refunds are concerned, the Profit and Loss report shows the exact same data that we get from amazon and on whatever date amazon sends us the refund/return event. we show it on that day and we make no changes to it.
Why is there a Difference of COGs in my P&L vs my Dashboard(s)?
The Dashboards and the P&L work on totally different data sets. The Dashboard handles orders in the sequence they are placed by the buyers. On the contrary, the P&L handles orders in the sequence they are settled by Amazon (i.e. the order sales proceeds paid by Amazon to the seller).
If you set ANY identical date range in the Dashboard and the P&L, there will be a different number of orders in either data set because the order arrival sequence is different.
Let’s say you set a date range of 1 Jan to 30 Jan in P&L, you will find orders placed on say Dec 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 because while these were placed the end of December, they were settled in January. Likewise, orders which were placed on Jan 29, 30, 31 are unlikely to be in the P&L for January because these have not yet been settled, and they will, therefore, appear in the February’s P&L.
Second, the P&L orders data set will not follow the same sequence as those on the Dashboard data set. Take for example 4 successive orders placed respectively Jan 1, Jan 2, Jan 3, Jan 4. In the Dashboard, they will appear on these specific dates. On the P&L, they will appear in the order they are settled, so maybe the order placed on Jan 2 will appear on Jan 5 in the P&L, followed by order 4 placed on Jan 4 and settled in P&L on Jan 5 too, followed by order placed on Jan 1 and settled on Jan 6.
So, both COGS amounts are correct, but they answer a different equation. The question is, which COGS are you interested in, the COGS of orders placed or the COGS of orders settled.
And By The Way …
SellerCentral shows you the two views of your business as well.
Ever noticed that the Business Reports and the Payments Report show different numbers for the same date?
The Business Report is the equivalent to our Sales Dashboard
