Amazon and Flipkart Settlement Matching: Excel or an AI Worker?

Why the payout is never the sales figure

A marketplace payout is the end of a chain of deductions, not the price the customer paid. In a Flipkart or Amazon settlement, the sale value comes first, and then the platform takes its commission, its shipping or fulfilment charge, any fixed fee, and the tax on those fees. Returns and cancellations reverse some of those amounts in later cycles. Amazon can also hold part of a payout back as a reserve, which is meant to cover future returns and refunds, and release it in a later settlement. Advertising charges can be taken from the same payout.

Tax is the part most owners underestimate. Under Section 52 of the CGST Act, the e-commerce operator must collect tax at source on the net value of taxable supplies made through its platform, and the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) FAQ on e-commerce sets the rate at 1 percent, split as 0.5 percent CGST and 0.5 percent SGST for intra-state sales, or 1 percent IGST for inter-state sales. On the income tax side, Section 194-O of the Income Tax Act requires the platform to deduct TDS on the gross value of sales made by resident sellers. The Income Tax Department's TDS rates list shows 0.1 percent for Section 194-O, which follows the reduction from 1 percent that took effect on 1 October 2024. Some older articles still quote 1 percent, so check the department's own page before you set a rule in your books.

The practical result is that the bank credit is the sum of many small movements. A settlement can cover a period that runs from the 28th of one month to the 11th of the next, so it does not line up with your calendar month. Your revenue for each month has to be assembled from the order-level lines, not from the deposit date.

The Amazon report change, and what is not yet confirmed

A settlement-tool page has said that Amazon's older XML and Flat File settlement reports are removed on 11 November 2026. The claim is consistent with Amazon's own developer documentation. Amazon's Selling Partner API changelog, dated 9 March 2026, names two report types, the XML settlement report and the original flat file settlement report, and gives 11 November 2026 as the date they will be removed. The same changelog says the Flat File V2 settlement report replaces them and that no XML replacement exists.

The changelog is developer-facing. It is clear for applications that call the reports directly. It does not, in the text retrieved for this guide, say what happens to the manual download in Seller Central. Amazon's seller help should be checked before you act on the manual route. For anyone who downloads by hand, the practical step is simple: move your monthly template to the Flat File V2 layout now and test it against one settlement you have already reconciled. If Seller Central stops offering the older file, the template will already be ready.

The monthly Excel match, step by step

A typical month-end match for Amazon and Flipkart follows the same sequence. First, download the order or sales report for the period, and the settlement reports that cover it, plus a few extra weeks so that late settlements are included. Amazon settlement reports sit under Payments, and Flipkart provides them through the Payments section of Seller Hub, though menu names change from time to time. Second, check that each settlement file's total equals the bank credit with the same reference. Third, match each order to its line in the settlement, using the order ID for Amazon and the order item ID for Flipkart, because one Flipkart order can hold several items that are paid and returned separately. Fourth, sort the gaps into three groups: timing, fee differences and missing orders.

The Excel method is cheap and transparent. The person doing it learns the business. The cost is time, and the risk is that the work gets skipped in a busy month. Formulas also break when a platform changes a column name or adds a fee line, and nobody notices until the cash does not tie. A spreadsheet only finds what someone thinks to look for.

What a custom AI reconciliation worker does

A reconciliation worker is a set of rules and language-model steps that runs on a schedule. Each cycle, it reads every settlement file the seller supplies, reads the matching order file, and works through the same checks a careful bookkeeper would make. It matches each order to its payout line. It compares the commission, shipping, fixed fee and tax lines with the amounts the seller expects from the sale value. It flags differences of any size, and it lists the orders that have a settlement line but no sale, or a sale with no settlement yet. Then it posts a summary for a person to review.

The worker does not decide what is owed. It does not raise a claim with Amazon or Flipkart, and it does not agree a dispute. A person reviews the exception list, decides which differences are worth a claim, and submits it through the platform's own process. The worker also cannot change the fee rules that the marketplace applies. If Flipkart changes a commission or a shipping charge, the worker will show the new numbers, but it will not change the rule.

Results depend on the seller's own figures. How many differences are real, and how much time is saved, can only be measured against the seller's own past settlements. The free automation audit at AiStaffo is where that baseline gets measured.

Comparison: Excel match against a reconciliation worker

Who each option suits

A monthly Excel match suits a seller with a few hundred settlement lines a month, one marketplace or two, and an accountant who already checks the books. It also suits a business that wants to understand every rupee before it trusts a tool. A reconciliation worker suits a business with several marketplaces, a team that cannot spend a full day each month on the match, or a finance lead who needs every order checked, not a sample. It also suits a business that is growing into large volumes, where the same fee and tax lines recur and the exceptions need to be sorted quickly.

Total cost of ownership beyond the sticker price

The cost of an Excel match is mostly the hours it takes, and those hours rise with volume. Ask who does the work, how many hours it takes in a normal month, and what happens in the month when that person is away. The hidden cost is the mistake that is not found: a missing order, a double-counted refund or a tax credit that does not match. Those errors usually surface at year end, when correcting them costs more.

For a worker, setup is the first cost. Someone must map the columns of each report, agree the expected fee rules with the seller's own rate cards, and test the output against a settlement that has already been reconciled. Maintenance follows. Amazon and Flipkart change report layouts and fee names, and a change to a column name can make a worker stop reading a field without warning. Someone has to own that check every month. Breakage is the risk of a silent failure, and the mitigation is a control total: the worker must show that the lines it read add up to the deposit, and a person must look at the summary before the books close.

Vendor lock-in matters if the worker holds the only copy of the matched data. Ask for the output in plain spreadsheet form and for the mapping rules in writing, so that the work can move if the arrangement ends.

The custom-built alternative, and when it wins

A custom build means the business owns the logic and the code, and it fits the seller's exact fee structure and chart of accounts. It wins when the business has a developer or an internal technology team, when it needs direct access to Amazon's reports through the Selling Partner API, and when it wants the reconciliation to feed its accounting software automatically. It loses when the team is small, when the work is seasonal, or when no one will own the code after the first version. A packaged tool that reads the downloaded files may also be enough for a seller with moderate volumes. Compare the vendor's own product pages on the same checklist before deciding.

Migration notes

1. Export the last three settlement cycles for each marketplace, and reconcile them by hand once. This becomes the test set.
2. Move the Amazon template to the Flat File V2 layout now, and confirm that the column names in your file match Amazon's published field list.
3. Run the worker in parallel with the Excel match for two cycles. Compare the exception lists line by line before you switch.
4. Agree in writing who reviews the summary, who approves each claim, and where the output is stored.
5. Keep saved copies of every settlement file in your own storage, so the history is not held only by the tool.

Where the worker does not help

If your volume is small and your Excel template already ties every month without exceptions, the worker adds cost without adding much. It also does not help if the real problem is pricing or returns quality, because a reconciliation shows the loss but does not prevent it. The worker reads what you give it. If the files are incomplete, the summary will be incomplete.

This explains the rule in general terms; it is not legal or tax advice for your case.