Amazon Seller Central may be a one-stop shop for tracking daily sales, monitoring inventory, and managing payments; however, something it’s not is a dedicated accounting solution. So, it’s no surprise why most eCommerce business owners seek out a solution to sync Amazon with their cloud accounting software.
As an industry-leading accounting software with a suite of commerce-focused products, QuickBooks enables sellers to automate eCommerce accounts and access daily financial reports.
Here’s a quick guide to QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller Central Integration, including how to connect both platforms.
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What’s QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller Central integration?
QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller Integration is a bridge between an eCommerce business owner’s QuickBooks Commerce account (now included with a QuickBooks Online subscription) and their Amazon business account. It’s meant to streamline how sales data is synced with bookkeeping.
The Amazon Seller Central integration has been specifically developed by the QuickBooks team to allow users to connect their multiple sales channels with an existing QuickBooks account. Orders, payouts, revenue, and expenses are automatically recorded so no data falls through the cracks.
By connecting your accounting software with your Amazon sales channel through the QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller integration, you can view your current cash flow, monitor your inventory, and even get ahead for tax season. QuickBooks will record the sales tax collected and remitted on each order.
If you’re selling on Amazon, connecting with the QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller Central integration is vital to:
- Maintain accuracy. QuickBooks’ Amazon Seller Central integration separates revenue from taxes and fees and maps each transaction to the appropriate accounts to run accurate reports, assess cash flow, and stay on top of business profitability.
- Monitor cash flow. QuickBooks displays all business balances on one convenient dashboard for eCommerce business owners to forecast the money-in and money-out up to 90 days in advance and view current financial trends at a glance.
- Master expenses. Business owners can upload or email business receipts directly to QuickBooks, where the platform can automatically pair receipts with existing expenses, create new expenses, and sort receipts into tax categories.
How to integrate QuickBooks and Amazon Seller Central integration
You can connect your QuickBooks accounting software and Amazon sales channel in a few ways. The first, of course, is QuickBooks’ native integration for Amazon Seller Central, available through QuickBooks Commerce or QuickBooks Online. The others include A2X and Zapier integrations.
QuickBooks Native Integration
As mentioned above, the QuickBooks developer team specifically designed this application programming interface (API) to connect to Amazon accounts.
Because the Amazon Seller Central Integration was developed by QuickBooks, the connection is quite simple. All you have to do is sign into your QuickBooks account as the company admin, select Commerce, toggle to Connect a Sales Channel, input your sales channel info, and that’s it!
Pros for the QuickBooks native integration:
- Data is synced in as quickly as a few hours
- Free guided set-up from a QuickBooks expert upon integration
- Payouts are broken down by sales, selling fees, shipping income, discount, reimbursement, subscription fees, advertising fees, and fulfillment and warehousing fees
However, this native integration does have some limitations:
- Currently only supports Amazon US region marketplace
- Inventory tracking may require ongoing manual maintenance if selling across multiple sales channels
- Amazon is added as a new account, even if you’ve already been tracking transactions for that channel (transactions can be mapped later)
- Not ideal for high-volume sellers
A2X
A2X is an eCommerce accounting software that enables automation for Amazon, BigCommerce, Etsy, Shopify, and other eCommerce sales channels.. Aside from the QuickBooks’ native integration, A2X created its own integration to connect Amazon and QuickBooks data.
By selecting A2X for Amazon, you alter the Amazon settlement data that’s synced with QuickBooks so that you can view past, present, and future transactions, rather than only recording when cash changes hands. A2X helps business owners enable accrual accounting for optimal accuracy.
Pros for the A2X integration:
- Reconcile each Amazon payout to the original sales transaction
- Supports settlement data for multiple countries and currencies
- Separates Amazon and Non-Amazon transactions, like FBA fulfilled versus merchant fulfilled
- Works for international and high-volume Amazon sellers
However, this integration does have some limitations:
- No guided set-up to minimize the potential learning curve
- Requires a subscription and charges higher fees to connect multiple Amazon marketplaces
Zapier
Zapier is an automation tool that allows business owners to integrate various web applications and create automatic workflows. With over 5,000 app integrations to date, the Zapier Amazon Seller Central + QuickBooks Commerce integration has become popular among eCommerce owners.
The Zapier integration for Amazon and QuickBooks does more than just sync sales data, it creates Zaps, or workflows that automate repetitive tasks. Users can set triggers, like ‘new order’ or ‘order fulfillment’ and designate an action for the Zap to perform, like ‘generate an order number.’
Pros for the Zapier integration:
- 14-day free trial for premium features and apps
- No immediate cost and a set of “free forever” features
- Entire integration process typically spans no longer than three minutes
However, this DIY integration does have some limitations:
- Does not support inventory management features
- Geared toward order and customer information management more than financial data
- Not supported by QuickBooks directly, so questions or concerns may not be able to be addressed by QuickBooks support
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So, what do we recommend?
If you are a fast-growing eCommerce store, we recommend going with A2X since it blends simplicity with scalability. You can set it up once and you don’t have to worry about it breaking like some other integrations or hacky workarounds.
Looking for help with your A2X setup? Schedule a free call with our team.
