Amazon Pay accounting and reconciliation with A2X

Finally a way to accurately automate your Amazon pay accounting and reconciliation with A2X for Amazon. Here’s how.

When customers check out with Amazon Pay, the sales proceeds arrive in the merchant bank account up to two weeks later. They are batched with other transactions and various fees are deducted. Often the merchant has no way to account for the fees or to reconcile the funds received with the sales orders they see in Shopify or other sales channels. It is very difficult to know if the financials are correct?

Using A2X’s Amazon Pay accounting and reconciliation, Amazon pay fees are accounted for accurately and in the correct financial periods. Summary amounts are posted to Xero or QuickBooks Online in a way that reconciles to the amounts settled to the bank account. There is no more posting of Amazon Pay amounts and reconciling by hand thus giving merchants confidence that their ecommerce financials are accurate because the numbers balance to the cash in your bank account.

Boost your sales while keeping your numbers on track

As the largest online retailer in the world, Amazon is often where e-commerce merchants will sell their first products – and many go on to thrive in the marketplace. But it’s not uncommon for brands to also sell their products through an online store using a direct-to-customer platform like Shopify.

Amazon is a fantastic way for brands to access hundreds of millions of customers worldwide who are queuing (virtually) to buy their products. But because the internet marketplace is purely about product and price, it can be hard to build direct and on-going relationships with customers.

That’s why many Amazon sellers will diversify how their customers can buy from them, opting to sell their products across multiple e-commerce channels. However, one of the biggest challenges of converting shoppers across platforms is payments.

Online shoppers are savvier than ever before and are hesitant to hand over their credit card details or other personal information to sites they don’t trust. This is where using Amazon Pay to close the deal can be advantageous.

Amazon Pay – what is it?

Amazon Pay is an online payment method that uses a customer’s payment details stored in their Amazon account to check out online. It can be used on Amazon as well as across other third-party e-commerce platforms like Shopify, simply by adding the Amazon Pay button. It’s a convenient and secure way for your customers to pay across e-commerce channels – without needing to manually type in credit card numbers or expiry dates.

Once you add the Amazon Pay button to your checkout, here’s what happens:

1. A customer clicks the Amazon Pay logo or button during checkout.
2. They’re redirected to an Amazon-hosted page to sign in using their Amazon login credentials.
3. They return to your site to complete the checkout process.
4. They choose the credit or debit card stored in their Amazon account that they’d like to use.
5. They receive a receipt from Amazon Pay after the transaction is complete.

Use Amazon Pay to increase conversions and boost customer loyalty

Amazon hasn’t always been the world’s largest marketplace for online shopping, but if there’s one thing that cultivates customer following as big as Amazon’s – it’s trust.

Using a product like Amazon Pay will not only offer your customers a seamless and secure payment option, it also allows you to benefit from the trust and loyalty associated with the Amazon brand.

Here’s how Amazon Pay can help boost your sales:

• Save your customers time. Instead of entering their payment and shipping information, customers can log in to their Amazon account and complete checkout in just a few seconds. A seamless checkout experience can help reduce cart abandonment and encourage repeat purchases.
• Increase trust. It’s been reported that 20% of online US shoppers have abandoned an order because of security concerns. Adding a payment method by a trusted brand like Amazon can help alleviate any worries.
• Consistent buying experience. Amazon Pay makes it easy for customers to shop across multiple channels. A consistent buying experience across all your channels will give customers confidence that their payment information is safe.

Registering for Amazon Pay

To register for Amazon Pay, fill out this registration form with your personal and business information.

How to enable Amazon Pay in Shopify

A disclaimer: your business needs to be based in an Amazon Pay supported country before you can enable the payment method in your Shopify account.

Setting up Amazon Pay from your Shopify Admin is super-simple.

Follow these quick, easy steps to enable the Amazon Pay button:

1. From yourShopify admin, go toSettings > Payment providers.
2. In the Amazon Pay section, clickActivate Amazon Pay.
3. You’ll be redirected to Amazon’s website.Sign in to your Amazon account. If you don’t already have an account, you can create one.

Once enabled, the Amazon Pay button will automatically appear as an active payment option on your checkout page. Customers will be able to use this to pay for their orders without leaving your site.

Getting paid for your Amazon Pay sales

Great news – your Shopify customers can now pay for their purchases using Amazon Pay. The next step is to make sure that you have all your back-office admin ducks are in a row so you can get paid for the sales you’ve made using Amazon Pay.

Firstly, you need to set up your checking account in Seller Central – so Amazon can deposit your disbursement funds directly into your account.

Here’s how to do that:

1. Sign in to your account on Seller Central.
2. Click Settings, and then click Account Info.
3. Click Deposit Method, and then click View Details(or click Add if no bank account is already associated with the account).
4. In the Amazon Pay area, click Edit(or click Add if no bank account is already associated with the account).
5. Select an existing bank account or select Use a new bank account.
6. Enter your bank account information, including the bank name and routing number.
7. Click Submit.

Secondly, you need to ensure you have a valid credit card number in Seller Central. This is just in case your Amazon Payments Merchant account shows a negative balance at any point – but it’s a mandatory requirement.

To edit the credit card information, follow the instructions below:

1. Click Settings, and then click Account Info.
2. Click the Edit button next to Charge Method.
3. If you want to select a different credit card, click Select an Existing Credit Card, or select Enter a new Credit Card and Billing Address.
4. If you want to edit your existing credit card, click Edit next to the current credit card details.
5. Enter the details of the charge method that you want to use.
6. Click Submit.

Now, it’s at this point you can enable the Amazon Pay button on your Shopify store, start accepting payments and shipping your products to customers.

Lastly, you need to capture payments for your orders. Use the Amazon Pay APIs to collect payments from customers by using the information provided in their orders. If you don’t do this, then you won’t get paid for the orders.

Amazon processes disbursements daily. It’ll take a day or two (business days) for the payment to be completed and appear in your bank account.

Also note that Amazon Pay fees are transaction-based and have a processing and authorization component. The transaction fee is composed of a domestic processing fee of 2.9% and an authorization fee of $0.30, plus tax charged when the purchase is successfully authorised and processed.

Who can use A2X for Amazon’s Amazon Pay accounting and reconciliation software?

• Shopify Sellers who use Amazon Pay as a gateway and are using A2X for Shopify
• Shopify Sellers who use Amazon Pay as a gateway and who currently do not use A2X for Shopify
• Sellers using Amazon Pay as a gateway with different sales channels e.g Magento, Woocommerce

Connor MacArther, Owner of CM Global says:

“Using A2X’s Amazon Pay accounting and reconciliation has given me confidence to reconcile Amazon Pay payouts to the originating Shopify sales and to account for Amazon Fees”

How A2X and Amazon Pay work together?

A2X sits between your Amazon Pay account and your accounting system, QuickBooks Online or Xero, so it can share transaction information using secure data feeds.

It fetches and sorts your Amazon Pay settlements, including the captures (sales) and refunds from Amazon Pay, along with any fees, or other charges (such as disputes, debits or reserved amounts), and posts these to QuickBooks Online or Xero as organised summaries.

• For those merchants already using A2X for Shopify the sales and refunds that are loaded into A2X for Amazon will offset the Amazon Pay clearing account that is being used in the A2X for Shopify account.
• For those merchants who are not using A2X for Shopify or use other sales channels (Magento etc) A2X for Amazon will account for the charges and the fees, but the sales channel accounting is handled outside of A2X. A similar clearing account will be set up to accrue the sales through the additional sales channel.

Transactions are allocated to financial periods in QuickBooks Online or Xero, making it easy to reconcile payments in your bank account, down to the cent.

Emma Fougere of ConnectCPA says:

“A2X’s Amazon Pay makes reconciling Amazon Payouts quick and easy to the originating sales transactions, giving my clients confidence to manage it on their own!”

For more information about about A2X for Amazon’s Amazon Pay accounting and reconciliation go here.