Some Amazon sellers are experiencing a delay in the payout of transactions after items have been delivered, which is likely due to Amazon’s delivery date-based payment policy. Funds may be ‘deferred’ for a set period before they are paid out to you, the seller. At this time, A2X does not include deferred transactions, as Amazon’s API does not provide this deferred transaction data. Transactions become available in A2X once they have been released.

What is the deferred period?

Policies may vary by account; however the standard reserve period is 7 days after delivery date. However, this may be extended based on an assessment of your overall risk and historical performance.

Amazon provides financial data based on the posted date, which A2X’s transactional data is based on. Due to the deferred period, this date is now later, affecting when orders are included in your A2X settlements.

How does this impact my data?

Because A2X data is based on posted date, there may now be a delay in when your sales are captured in your A2X Settlements.

Here is a simplistic overview of the Amazon payout timeline without deferred transactions:

Here is a simplistic overview of the Amazon payout timeline for accounts with transactions deferred by the delivery-date-based payment policy:

Your sales could now be delayed and captured in a later period, which doesn’t truly represent when they should be accounted for.

Understanding ‘deferred’ in this context

For accounting, deferred revenue usually refers to payments received in advance of goods or services. These payments are considered a liability until the service or product is provided. Once delivered, the revenue is recognized.

In this case, however, the goods or services have already been delivered, so income should ideally be recognized upon fulfillment. This policy change is possibly better described as 'funds withheld' rather than typical deferred revenue.

What does this mean for my A2X data?

At this time, A2X cannot identify which orders have been deferred, as Amazon’s API does not provide this information. Therefore, A2X will only see transactions once they are posted to Settlements.

It may not be obvious as part of your usual accounting processes to identify if orders have been deferred, as your A2X Settlements will still match to what you’ve been paid by Amazon. However, you might notice a decrease in your Amazon sales, since some of the usual orders won’t have been included in your Settlement.

Amazon has created a new way to view your deferred transactions in Seller Central, under Payments > Transaction View. To export this data, click on ‘Reports Repository,’ and under ‘Report type’ you will be able to select ‘Deferred transaction’. This will export a list of all orders that have been deferred.

Why can’t A2X include these orders before the delay in my Settlement?

Our developers have thoroughly investigated this change. Unfortunately, the specific data identifying deferred orders is not accessible via Amazon’s API. We’ve also explored other API options and raised this with Amazon, but currently, deferred transactions are 'Unsupported at this time.'

Why do I need to do?

A2X is looking into ways we can capture and automate these deferred transactions. However for the time being, because this data is not supported via the Amazon API, there is no quick fix.

We have a workaround you can use to manually capture these deferred orders in the correct period, click here to find out more.

We understand this is a frustrating issue and appreciate your patience. We’re actively working with Amazon on this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available.

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