How to Read an Amazon Report

Amazon sellers need to know how to read an Amazon report. An Amazon report, also known as an Order History Report, contains a detailed listing of all of the transactions between a given seller and a given buyer.

How to Generate a Report

The buyer or seller must select the desired dates for the report, and then the site retrieves the information regarding all orders made between those dates, and generates a report in a CSV file. The report may be downloaded and saved for convenience, and a copy remains on Amazon’s site under Order History Reports, in Your Account.

Report Column Details

The report is a CSV file and is opened with Microsoft Office, appearing as an Excel file. Every order made by the buyer during the specified period of time appears on the sheet (horizontally), and the following details populate the columns, provided per order:

Order Date	Order ID
Title	Category
ASIN/ISBN	Release Date
Condition	Seller
Per Unit Price	Quantity
Payment – Last 4 Digits	Purchase Order Number
Ordering Customer Email	Shipment Date
Shipping Address Name	Shipping Address Street 1
Shipping Address Street 2	Shipping Address City
Shipping Address State	Shipping Address Zip
Shipment/Order Condition	Carrier Name & Tracking Number
Item Subtotal	Item Subtotal Tax
Buyer Name	Group Name

Troubleshooting Excel Quirks

For the most part, this kind of report is self-explanatory, describing the merchandise and terms of the given order. It should be noted, however, that certain quirks of Excel may result in ASINs and tracking numbers missing digits, particularly when zeros are the first digit of a longer number. If this happens, Amazon recommends opening the file using a text editor, or using Excel’s import data utility to load the CSV file. Both approaches convert numeric values to text.