How to check sales on Amazon, and feed the addiction of knowing the moment your Amazon inventory sells
Monitoring Amazon sales is addicting
The feeling of making money on Amazon literally while you sleep, in bed, or are out for coffee, is a literal addiction. It makes you want to just sit there and hit “refresh” on your Amazon seller’s account to watch your profits tick upward, all day.
I’m against micromanaging your Amazon account, but an addiction is an addiction. And I can’t stop checking my sales.
If you’re like most people, you check your Amazon sales by waiting for an email from Amazon telling you your item has shipped. I have this feature disabled, as it only jams up my inbox and forces me to open each email to see what I’ve sold.
Here are three better ways to check your sales on Amazon:
How To Check Sales On Amazon: Method #1
This is best if you want to know what you’ve sold, but aren’t as concerned with how much you’ll be making off the sale.
Go to Orders > Manage Orders
Then, assuming you’re an FBA seller, go to “View FBA Orders.”
This brings up all pending orders, as well as completed orders for the last 30 days (or however many days you tell it to show).
You can see how much the items sold for, but you have to click on each listing individually.
How To Check Sales On Amazon: Method #2
How To Check Sales On Amazon: Method #2The blindspot of Method #1 is that you can’t see a breakdown of Amazon fees, and see your actual Amazon payout.
This next method is slightly more clunky, but will get you a list of all Amazon sales + a breakdown of Amazon fees + your final Amazon payout.
Go to Reports -> Payments -> Transaction View.
Then set “Transaction Type” to “Order Payment.”
Done.
How To Tell When An Item Sells: Method #3
This is best if you want to see at a glance how much items sold for, but don’t need precision accuracy as to where each sale is at in terms of if it’s a fully completed sale or not.
Go to Inventory > Manage All Inventory -> hit the top of the “Reserved” column. This brings all pending orders to the top.
(If you don’t see the “reserved” column, go to Preferences (in the upper right of the page) and enable the Reserved column).
Downside to this method is that there is at least one reason besides having sold that an item could be “Reserved” in your Amazon inventory. Namely, getting moved between FBA warehouses (which is common). And probably a couple other reasons I can’t think of right now.
Disable Your Amazon Sales Notification Emails
Recap: If you want to know how to check sales on Amazon…
Step One: disable your email alerts for new sales
Step Two: use one of these three (better) methods for tracking your Amazon sales.
-Peter Valley
I like the emails, myself, because I can access my email account from my cell phone whenever I take a notion. I like checking the pending orders, but I only do that once a day as part of my daily check in routine. The manage FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) inventory option is not accurate most of the time. Products that are being moved get put into this category, so it can be misleading and quite disappointing. I’ve also observed on occasion that there will be more items on reserve than I have in inventory – not sure how or why that happens, but I’ve seen it often enough now that I no longer trust that screen to tell me what’s about to be sold.
I had the same experience, which is why I switched from monitoring inventory via the Inventory view, to the Orders page.