What’s in My Amazon Monthly Report?

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Why I Make My Own Reports

On the first of each and every month for the past few years have been my online business reporting days. It’s a chance to go through every single detail of all of my revenue-driven endeavours to see where I’m at, compare it to past months, years and where I want to be.

It’s one of the most valuable things I do, as it means that I’m never guessing how things are going; I’ve got specifics, real data dating right back to the beginning of pretty much every online project I’ve been involved in. 

My Amazon FBA report is no different. Since I created it in 2016, it’s remained largely the same. It covers all of the same fundamentals to tell me at a glance if things are going well, and to act as a reference point for future reviews of my performance. While Amazon has a lot of very in-depth information about seller accounts, Seller Central only show sells information that goes back 24 months. This being the case, it makes it impossible to track back through your seller history without keeping your own log.

There may be times when you want to see a 2016 vs 2017 vs 2018 vs 2019 breakdown, about this would be the only way to achieve it.

These spreadsheets have kept me focused and disciplined with all of my online businesses, but especially so with my Amazon FBA one. Each one is contained in a four-sheet spreadsheet.

Executive Summary

This is the top line view for the most fundamental details about the business in the past month, and ways I can advance it in the immediate future.

Key Details

I tend to drop about 3 or 4 lines about the state of the business, adding notes about whether there were any problems like staffing, clearing shipments, getting inventory in, etc. if it’s been a particularly good month for sales, I’ll be sure to mention it.

Key Actions

Here I add details about what I need to concentrate on for the upcoming month with the business. It may be to diversify the inventory, hire more people to source, or simply spend more hours on the business. Usually it will only consist of a couple of lines, until lots of prep is required for a private label launch or a seasonal sales surge.

3-Month Objectives

These objectives span a longer time period. Unlike the previous one, which concentrates on actions I can take, this one is a lot more aspirational. It looks towards where I’d realistically like to be in three months, based on where the business is at in the current report.

Inventory

Amazon’s Business Reports used to be a lot more helpful than they currently are. It wasn’t that long ago that they broke down your sales by category, presenting some very revealing information about the state of the business. There’s no point in complaining about things that we can’t change. We have the information we have and it’s still very valuable.

Inventory Breakdown

Most of this is manual, but it’s extremely helpful to see. I keep a log of the following things, true as of the first of the month:

• Active Inventory
• Inactive Inventory
• Excess Inventory
• Shipments Sent
• Units Sent
• Value Sent
• Profit Potential

Tracking these gives me a strong understanding of month-on-month growth, and allows me to track whether I’m meeting annual targets.

Ungating

I don’t need to stress the importance of ungating with Amazon FBA selling. It’s 100% vital that you have as much opportunity to sell as many things as possible on the site, and getting ungated in as many categories as you can will give you the best chance to do this. I have a small log of recent ungating breakthroughs and future ungating prospects.

Sales

Show me the money. This is the tasty bit. This is where I cover all of the important stuff and actually make an effort with some Excel rules.

These are the things I cover (separated by country):

• Revenue
• Units
• AOV
• Disbursements
• Total Disbursements

It’s all pretty standard stuff, but this is the best way to track performance over time, and figure out seasonality with my inventory.

Account

And finally. This section could probably be condensed into another, but just gives closure about the state that the seller account is currently in.

Reviews

Just a log of the number of reviews I have. As it’s the first number potential customers sell, I only log the number of reviews for the past 12 months.

Rating

This is simply the rating given based on my reviews over the past year. Most Amazon FBA sellers selling new stock should have a 5 (or maybe 4.7+ since Amazon sometimes don’t listen when we ask them to remove unreasonable feedback).

SellingRatings.com Ranking

Seller Ratings is an underrated gem of a website, keeping track of how each Amazon account compares to the rest in terms of reviews (which typical correlates well with sales). I like to know where my account stands compared to the rest throughout the UK.