Support › Settlements & posting › What is a settlement?
What is a settlement?
A settlement is the complete financial record of one Amazon disbursement — every sale, every refund, every fee, every tax line, and every adjustment that added up to the net deposit hitting your bank account.
The 14-day disbursement cycle
Amazon doesn't pay out per order. Instead it pools all your activity into settlement periods — typically a rolling 14-day window for FBA accounts in good standing — and transfers a single net amount to your bank at the close of each one. The settlement report produced at the same time covers exactly that window: every transaction Amazon processed on your account during those 14 days is accounted for, to the penny.
The window has a defined start and end timestamp. An order shipped on day 12 of the period, a refund issued on day 9, and an advertising charge deducted on day 4 all appear in the same settlement — provided each falls inside the window's bounds.
New seller accounts often start on daily or weekly disbursement cycles while Amazon evaluates your reserve policy. Once you reach a stable trading history the cadence typically moves to fortnightly. The disbursement schedule itself is set by Amazon and isn't something TrueBooks controls.
What's inside the settlement file
Amazon hands TrueBooks a tab-separated text file for each settlement period. It has two main sections:
- Header section — settlement ID, marketplace, currency, period start and end dates, estimated deposit date, and the total disbursement amount. This is the handful of lines that describes the settlement as a whole.
- Transaction section — one row per event. Each row carries a
transaction-type,amount-type,amount-description, a signed amount (positive = income to you, negative = deduction), and where relevant an order ID, SKU, and quantity. A typical mid-volume UK settlement runs to tens of thousands of rows.
The maths always closes: sum every amount in the transaction section and you arrive at the disbursement total in the header. TrueBooks verifies this on every import.
How TrueBooks processes it
When a settlement lands — via SP-API polling, a manual backfill, or a direct file upload — TrueBooks works through four steps:
- Parses the header to capture settlement ID, marketplace, currency, period dates, deposit date, and total. These become the row on your Settlements list.
- Imports every transaction line into a structured database, preserving order IDs, SKUs, amounts, and descriptions. You can drill into any settlement and read every raw line.
- Classifies each line into one of a dozen accounting categories — sales, refunds, FBA fees, storage, advertising, marketplace VAT, inventory reimbursements, and so on. The classification guide covers exactly how each decision is made.
- Aggregates by category into a Xero-ready invoice with one summary line per category, the correct tax code applied to each. That's the invoice you post.
Settlement statuses explained
Every settlement on your TrueBooks dashboard carries a status badge that tells you where it sits in the import-and-post lifecycle. Here's what each one means:
| Status | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Processing | TrueBooks has identified this settlement and is currently downloading and classifying the transaction lines. | Wait — it usually transitions to Not Posted within a minute or two for typical settlements. |
| Not Posted | Import is complete. The settlement is fully parsed and classified, ready to be sent to Xero. | Preview the invoice breakdown, then click Post when you're happy. |
| Posted | A Xero invoice has been created and is live in your books. | Open in Xero, roll back if you need to make changes, or use Repost if your mappings have changed. |
| Draft | The Xero invoice has been voided (usually via Rollback), but the settlement data is still in TrueBooks. No active Xero invoice exists. | Update your mappings if needed, then post again. |
| Failed | Something prevented the settlement from importing or posting successfully. TrueBooks logs the specific error. | Check the error detail on the settlement row. Most failures are transient — a Xero rate-limit or a brief API outage — and resolve on retry. Persistent failures warrant a support email. |
| Needs Requesting | TrueBooks can see this settlement exists (Amazon's payment records confirm the payout) but the report file is no longer available through the SP-API — typically because it's older than ~90 days. | Go to Seller Central → Reports → Payments → All Statements, find the row, and click Request Report. Once Amazon generates the file (5–10 minutes), a backfill will pull it in automatically. See Backfill & 90-day window. |
Settlement IDs and Xero references
Each settlement carries a unique Amazon-issued ID — for UK accounts these are typically eight-to-eleven-digit numbers like 26881161592. TrueBooks displays these with a TBUK- prefix for readability, but the raw number is what's stored in the database and used in API calls. When a settlement is posted to Xero, the reference field reads:
(£1,275.20) TBUK-26881161592That reference is the stable identifier — it's the same regardless of how many times a settlement is voided and reposted. It's the safest field to search on in Xero when cross-referencing with TrueBooks. The Xero invoice number (AMZ-TB-10001 etc.) is separate and reused on reposts rather than incrementing — see Posting to Xero for why.
The Settlements dashboard
Your Settlements dashboard at /settlements lists every settlement TrueBooks has imported, most-recent first, with its status, marketplace, period dates, and net disbursement. The summary bar at the top shows your trailing 30-day performance: gross income, total deductions, and net disbursement — plus a note on how many days have passed since the most recent settlement's end date, giving you a feel for when the next one is due.
Clicking any row opens the settlement detail — the full line-by-line breakdown, the preview invoice, and the transaction line view. You can start posting settled periods from the list while older ones are still being imported in the background.