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Backfilling history & the 90-day window

When you connect a fresh Amazon account, TrueBooks only picks up settlements going forward by default. Backfill lets you reach back into your account's recent history — and there are separate paths for anything Amazon's API no longer serves.

Why there's a 90-day boundary

Amazon generates a settlement report at the end of every ~14-day disbursement cycle and keeps it accessible through the Selling Partner API for roughly 90 days. After that, the file is removed from the API surface — Amazon archives it internally, and third-party apps can no longer retrieve it programmatically. Equally important: SP-API doesn't allow apps to request a settlement report for an arbitrary past date — only reports Amazon has already produced are retrievable. So the ceiling on automatic backfill is what Amazon currently has on file, typically the last six or seven settlements.

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The settlements themselves aren't lost — Amazon's records are permanent. Only the downloadable report file expires from the API surface. The older-than-90-days workflow below explains how to bring those back in.

Running a backfill

  1. Open Settings → Settlement Settings → Automation.
  2. In the Backfill recent settlements card, choose a start and end date. The default is the last 30 days — widen the range as needed, up to 90 days for cleanest results.
  3. Alternatively, switch on All Available and TrueBooks ignores the date pickers and asks Amazon for every report it currently has on file for that connection.
  4. Click Start backfill. The card switches to a queued state and updates as each settlement lands.
  5. Settlements appear on your Settlements list as they're imported — you don't need to keep refreshing. You can start reviewing and posting them while the rest are still arriving.

When the job finishes, TrueBooks shows a summary: how many settlements were imported and the date of the earliest one retrieved. If Amazon had nothing on file for the date range you requested, the summary says so explicitly — the backfill ran cleanly, there just wasn't anything to fetch.

Settlements outside the 90-day window

How TrueBooks shows older settlements

TrueBooks can cross-reference your historical Amazon payment records even when the actual report files are no longer available through SP-API. Settlements beyond the 90-day window appear in your Settlements list with a Needs Requesting status, showing:

These rows are read-only — you can't post them to Xero or add them to a backfill until Amazon regenerates the report file. They exist so you have a clear picture of what's missing and what needs actioning, without having to compare TrueBooks against Seller Central manually.

Requesting older reports from Seller Central

Once you've identified which settlements you need, here's how to get them:

  1. Open Reports → Payments → All Statements in Seller Central (for UK accounts: sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/payments/past-settlements).
  2. Scroll to the period you need. If the report is still available for download, you'll see a Download Flat File V2 button. If not, you'll see Request Report instead.
  3. Click Request Report for each settlement you want. Amazon queues the regeneration — the button changes to In Progress.
  4. Wait 5–10 minutes for Amazon to finish generating the files. This step matters — triggering a TrueBooks backfill before Amazon has finished means SP-API won't have the fresh reports yet and TrueBooks will come back empty.
  5. Return to TrueBooks and run a backfill over the same date range (or use All Available). The newly-regenerated reports are now visible to SP-API and TrueBooks imports them automatically. The settlement row's status changes from Needs Requesting to Not Posted once the import completes.
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If you've already downloaded a Flat File V2 to your computer — either as an archive or because you were using a different tool previously — you can upload it directly without going through the request-and-backfill flow. See Manually importing a Flat File V2.

Is it safe to re-run a backfill that overlaps existing settlements?

Yes. TrueBooks identifies each settlement by its unique Amazon settlement ID. If a backfill retrieves a settlement you already have, TrueBooks treats it as a refresh of the existing row — the line data is updated with the freshly-fetched copy, but the settlement's status and any Xero posting links stay intact. Re-running a backfill won't duplicate settlements or reset Posted ones to Not Posted.

Multiple Amazon accounts

If your workspace has more than one Amazon account connected (for example, a European account and a North American one), the backfill card shows a connection picker so you choose which account to backfill. Running each account separately is recommended — the sync log then clearly shows which account each batch came from, and a transient failure on one connection doesn't interrupt the other.

How long does a backfill take?

Roughly five seconds per settlement, plus a small constant overhead per connection. A typical 90-day backfill covering six or seven settlements finishes in under a minute. An "All Available" run on a freshly-requested batch of older settlements from Seller Central may take a couple of minutes if Amazon has many reports in the queue.

If a backfill stays in the "queued" state for more than five minutes without any settlements appearing, the background worker most likely needs a nudge — email support with your workspace and we'll take a look.