Any management company can produce a report. The question worth asking before you sign is whether you will be able to check it against the source, and the answer depends on access you should establish at the start rather than request later.
How Do You Verify What a Managed Amazon Store Is Actually Doing?
Through your own Seller Central access, which is the system of record, and which you have because the account is in your name. Every figure in a management report should trace back to a report Amazon generates. If the only visibility you have is a summary somebody else produced, you do not have verification, you have a claim.
The Access to Establish First
Before the build begins, confirm you have administrative access to the Amazon seller account in your own name, with your own credentials, and that your access cannot be removed by anyone else.
This is not an accusation, it is hygiene. Clients retain 100 percent ownership of the storefront under our model, and ownership that you cannot log into is ownership in name only. Ask the same of any company you are evaluating, and treat a reluctant answer as informative.
The Five Reports That Matter
Seller Central produces a great deal. These five answer most questions.
- Payments, Date Range Reports. The closest thing to a bank statement for the store. Shows sales, refunds, Amazon fees, and what was actually disbursed in a period.
- Business Reports, Detail Page Sales and Traffic. Units ordered, sessions, and conversion by ASIN. This is where you see whether a slow month is a demand problem or a listing problem.
- Inventory reports. What is on hand, what is aging, and what is accruing long-term storage fees. Aging inventory is capital that has stopped working.
- Account Health dashboard. Policy compliance and performance metrics. This is the early warning system for the risks covered in what happens if Amazon suspends your store.
- Fee Preview and FBA fee reports. Where the gap between revenue and profit becomes visible in detail.
Reconciling a Management Report
The exercise is simple and most owners never do it. Take one month, and check the chain.
- Start with gross revenue. Compare the management report's figure to the Date Range Report for the same period. They should match.
- Subtract Amazon's fees. Referral fees, FBA fulfillment fees, and storage. All itemized by Amazon.
- Subtract cost of goods. This comes from purchase records rather than from Seller Central, which is exactly why supplier invoices matter.
- Subtract returns and refunds. Visible in the payments report, and in wholesale they are not trivial.
- Subtract advertising and software costs. Ad spend is in Seller Central; tool costs are on your own statements.
- Compare the result to the net profit figure you were given.
Do this once, properly, in the first few months. If it reconciles, you can read future reports with justified confidence. If it does not, you have found something worth a conversation while it is still small.
This is the same discipline behind our published client reviews, which are prepared from each client's own monthly Amazon P&L and reconciled line by line, with no projections or smoothing applied. They are in the Client Diligence Package, and individual results vary as stated there.
Three Numbers People Confuse
Most disagreements about performance are vocabulary problems rather than arithmetic ones.
- Gross revenue. Everything customers paid. The largest number and the least informative.
- Gross profit. Revenue minus cost of goods. Ignores Amazon's fees, which are substantial.
- Net profit. What remains after cost of goods, Amazon fees, FBA and storage, returns, advertising, and software. This is the only one that answers whether the store is working.
When you are shown a figure by anyone in this category, ask which of the three it is before you react to it.
What a Good Report Contains
Whoever produces it, a performance report worth reading should include: the period covered, gross revenue, itemized Amazon fees, cost of goods sold, returns, advertising spend, net profit, units sold, inventory on hand and its age, and account health status.
A report that gives you a revenue figure and a positive tone is not a report. You have a dedicated account manager providing ongoing updates; use them to get the detail rather than the summary.
Questions Worth Asking Monthly
- What was net profit, and how does it reconcile to the payments report?
- How much inventory is aging past 90 days, and what is the plan for it?
- Has anything changed on the account health dashboard?
- What is the current cash conversion cycle, from purchase order to disbursement?
- What would you do differently with more capital, and what with less?
Related Next Steps
- → Who Holds Your Money and Where It Moves
- → What's Expected of You as the Owner
- → Is Cashflow Creators Legit? An Honest Review
FAQ
Do I get my own Seller Central login?
You should, and you should confirm it before the build starts. The account is in your name, and access is what makes that meaningful.
How often should I check?
A proper reconciliation once a quarter and a quick look at account health monthly is a reasonable rhythm for most owners.
What if the report does not match Seller Central?
Ask, immediately and in writing. Most discrepancies are definitional, such as gross versus net, and the ones that are not should be surfaced early.
Why do screenshots not count?
Because a screenshot is an assertion about a report rather than the report. Direct access costs nothing and removes the question entirely.
Are your published client figures verified?
They are prepared from clients' own monthly Amazon P&L statements and reconciled line by line. Our earnings disclaimer also states plainly that figures are self-reported and have not undergone independent third-party verification, which is worth reading alongside them.
Check the Numbers Yourself
Everything above applies to us as much as to anyone else you are considering. That is the point of writing it down.
→ Schedule a Free Consultation, fifteen minutes. Or read the Client Diligence Package first.
