Reports and Automated Workflows to Manage Amazon Sales, Payouts, Taxes and Fees

How do you make your decisions for the products you sell on Amazon? Are you tired of making decisions based on gut feelings? Do questions like "Where should I invest my marketing budget?" or "Are my discounts cannibalising my profit?" keep you awake at night? If this sounds familiar, it's probably time to upgrade your reporting and analytics stack.

Reporting gaps hide insights needed to optimise promotions, payouts, taxes, and fees. Amazon doesn’t have reports that you need to make better decisions. More sales channels, expanding inventory, cross-border transactions, fluctuating tax laws – keeping up with it all turns into a time-consuming nightmare that can lead to expensive mistakes.

In this article, we’ll talk about the following:

• Gaps that get overlooked
• Templates to increase visibility
• Automations to manage operations
• Levelling up your operations with one-click reports & real-time alerts.

Read on.

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Status Quo

Amazon Seller Partner (ASP) is the platform that sellers use to manage their businesses on Amazon's marketplace. It provides tools for listing products, managing inventory, and processing orders, one area where it falls short is reporting and data analytics.

The stark reality is that ASP does not have any built-in reporting features. There is no way to generate customized reports or dashboards within the platform itself to analyze sales data, advertising performance, inventory levels, and other key metrics.

Instead, sellers have to rely on Amazon's Report API to extract data from their accounts. However, accessing this API is no easy feat, especially for sellers who are not technically savvy or lack development resources.

Amazon's API requires the ability to be able to code to authenticate with Amazon's systems and pull the data needed. There are many challenges but are not limited to the following

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Technical Expertise

Working with Amazon's API requires a significant level of technical expertise and someone with a coding background which will add to costs further.

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Export Nightmares

Getting access to data is just the first step of the puzzle, the next and most daunting step is to make sure the data is useable. It comes in myriad formats and you’ll need multiple tools to get a comprehensive view of what is going on.

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Inability to Integrate Data from Other Tools

What if 30% of revenue comes from Shopify? When you sell on multiple platforms, Amazon’s data exists in a vacuum. The data from 1 platform isn’t compatible with another.

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Inventory Forecasting Accuracy

Forecasting demand is crucial for maintaining optimal inventory. However, many sellers struggle with predicting future sales trends and adjusting their inventory accordingly, leading to either stockouts or excess inventory as their sales data and inventory data is on different platforms and piecing together this data is  – a time-consuming and error-prone process.

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The Power of Reports, Alerts, and Automations

Managing a business can be overwhelming, especially online it comes with the complexities of managing stock levels, data sources, and multiple vendors for similar or diametrically opposite tasks. This is exactly where the potent combination of reports, alerts and automations come into play to make running business a little less daunting.

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Comprehensive Reports

Clean, well-structured reports quickly form the backbone of any business as it takes guessing out of the picture. Consolidating data from various sources like ASP, Shopify, Warehouse Management Systems etc provides a birds eye view of your complete operations. This centralised data will help you make informed decisions, and identify trends faster.

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Insightful Alerts

Reports offer a view of what has happened, and alerts, help you stay on top of things happening to make your business proactive. Setting up alerts for key metrics like inventory levels, pricing fluctuations or multiple failed deliveries allows you to proactively solve issues before they escalate and cause disruptions.

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Streamlined Automations

Automations are the unsung heroes of any efficient business. By automating repetitive tasks such as monitoring inventory levels or order processing, you can save a lot of man-hours and reallocate them to high-value activities. Automations help not just by saving man-hours, but also by reducing human error and improving efficiency.

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Must have reports to improve and track metrics on Amazon Selling Partner

To make truly informed decisions, you need access to robust reporting. Here's a collection of must-have advanced report templates that tackle this head-on:

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Sales Report

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Analyse historical data, seasonality, and possibly external factors to forecast future sales. Manage inventory, production, and cash flow. This can be further optimised based on timelines like Daily Sales Report or Weekly Sales Report or Monthly Sales Report.

Helps With: Historical sales, seasonality trends, market research, promotional plans, making informed stocking decisions, and forecast projections.

Automation & Alerts: Alerts for significant fluctuations in sales volume or revenue. Automated restocking alerts for fast-selling products.

Combine this with: Alerts for significant fluctuations in sales volume or revenue; Automated restocking alerts for fast-selling products.

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Sales by Location Report

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Take the sales report a step further, slice and dice your sales data based on locate. Optimise decisions on which SKUs should be stocked at which warehouse to optimise the delivery times to improve customer experience, and reduce delivery time and costs.

Helps With: Managing inventory better, reducing storage costs, improve customer experience and shipping costs.

Combine this with: Alerts for sales performance disparities across different regions. Automated promotions for underperforming regions.

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Sales by Product Report

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Take the sales report a step further, slice and dice your sales data based on individual SKUs or product categories. Optimise decisions on which SKUs should be stocked at which warehouse to optimise the delivery times to improve customer experience, and reduce delivery time and costs.

Helps With: Managing inventory better, reducing storage costs, improve customer experience and shipping costs.

Combine this with: Alerts for trends in product categories to double down. Automated promotions for underperforming product categories.

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Sales Tax Report

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Summarises sales tax collected on Amazon transactions, including taxable sales, tax rates, and tax jurisdictions. This can be further sliced based on location and product categories.

Helps With: Managing cash flow better, reduces compliance overheads.

Combine this with: Alert for tax discrepancies. Automate filing of tax returns based on data.

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Payments Report

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A summary of payouts or payments received from Amazon, including disbursements, deductions, and currency conversions.

Helps With: Managing cash flow better, reduces compliance overheads.

Combine this with: Alert for payout discrepancies. Automate reconciliation of payments based on sales data.

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What if we told you that you could reclaim hours wasted on manual report creation and updates? Discover a way to automate your inventory insights. Say hello to Locale.ai!

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Reporting doesn’t have to be this hard. Try Locale.ai!

As an Amazon seller, you have two options for advanced financial reporting and workflows:

• The Old Way: Manually create reports, hunt templates, and stitch workflows across multiple tools.
• Try Locale’s One Click Reporting Templates: Access 50+ pre-built, amazon-specific reports. Get real-time sales analytics with one-click integrations with Amazon, Shopify etc. Automate alerts directly to Slack, email, WhatsApp or via webhooks for custom actions.

With Locale, you can:

• Consolidate cross-channel data into a 360-degree command centre - every product, promo, segment
• Flex reporting templates to your workflows, locations, and product lines rather than forcing you into a one-size-fits-all setup.
• Set intelligent alerts and triggers to automate analysis based on trends and KPI thresholds you define. Proactively stay ahead of threats.
• Develop enterprise-grade forecasting leveraging historical data to efficiently plan stock levels, transfers, and payment disputes.

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Conclusion

Locale takes away the pain of fragmentation and everyday manual busywork involved in running a Shopify business. Experience the power of effortless reporting and automation with:

• One-click advanced reporting for immediate insights — No Coding Skills Needed
• Real-time data to react quickly to inventory changes.
• Automated alerts to Slack, email, or custom webhooks, keeping you informed on the go.
• Streamlined workflows for proactive inventory management.

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Getting Started with Locale in <5 mins:

With Locale, you don’t have to settle for one-size-fits-all inventory management. As your strategic direction shifts, our flexible platform shifts with you.

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1. Connect and Consolidate

Link data across over 50 databases and SaaS tools, bringing all your information into one accessible location.

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2. Ready-made or Custom Templates

‍Choose from our ready-made templates or tailor them to your unique needs.‍

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3. Effortless Setup and Tracking

‍Establish reports, alerts, or automation processes, and effortlessly track their status until resolution.

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Take control of your Amazon Seller Partner data today. Sign up now with a free account and discover how Locale revolutionises your operations.