Amazon's old settlement reports stop on November 11. Run one settlement through both files before then

What goes away on November 11

Amazon's developer announcement is short. On November 11, 2026, two settlement reports are removed for sellers in all marketplaces: the XML Settlement Report and the original Flat File Settlement Report. The Flat File V2 Settlement Report replaces both. Amazon says it's available now and carries the same information "in fewer columns and streamlined formatting." There is no XML replacement.

If you sell on Amazon and someone else built your books, you may not know which of these your setup uses. That's the first job: find out. Settlement reports are the files that explain each deposit, order by order and fee by fee, so they tend to sit underneath the parts of the business that nobody looks at until the numbers stop matching. An accounting connector, a profit dashboard, a reconciliation spreadsheet with a macro in it, a nightly script a contractor wrote three years ago. Any of these can be reading a report type that stops existing next week.

The good news is that the date is known and the fix is bounded. The less good news is that "the file still downloads" isn't the test.

Find every reader of the old files

Make a list before you change anything. For each tool that touches Amazon money, ask one question: which settlement report does it read?

• Accounting connectors and apps. Check the vendor's notices or ask support directly whether they've moved to Flat File V2 and when. Get the answer in writing.
• Your own scripts. Search your code for the report type names. The old ones are GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_XML and GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_FLAT_FILE. The new one is GET_V2_SETTLEMENT_REPORT_DATA_FLAT_FILE_V2. The names are close enough that a quick glance can miss which one you're using.
• Spreadsheets. Anything built on a downloaded settlement file probably expects the old column layout. Note who owns it.
• Access roles. Amazon's documentation lists Flat File V2 under the Finance and Accounting role only, and for Seller Central sellers. The old flat file was also listed under Inventory and Order Tracking and Amazon Fulfillment. If a connector was authorized with a narrower role, it may need to be reauthorized.

One more thing that trips people up: you can't request or schedule settlement reports yourself. Amazon generates them on its own schedule, and your code finds them with the Reports API's getReports operation. So switching means looking for the new report type among what Amazon has already produced, not asking for a new one.

How the columns move

This is where most of the actual work is. The old flat file spread charges and fees across many columns, with names like item-related-fee-type and item-related-fee-amount. V2 condenses all of them into three general-purpose columns:

• amount-type holds what used to be the price or fee type name.
• amount-description holds what used to be the type value, such as Commission, and also absorbs some descriptions that used to live elsewhere.
• amount holds the number, always in one column.

Amazon's mapping also says transaction-type may now show up either in transaction-type or in amount-description, and that "disjointed amounts may be consolidated." In plain terms, some rows you used to see separately may come through combined.

That last line matters for reconciliation. If your old process matched individual fee lines one for one, a consolidated row will look like a mismatch even when the totals agree. Decide in advance which level you reconcile at: deposit total, order, or individual fee. Most teams will want the first two to match exactly and will accept that line counts may differ.

Two format changes are easy to miss. The V2 file is tab-delimited. And amounts are shown in local currency formats, so a European marketplace shows 95,00 instead of 95.00. A parser that assumes a decimal point will read that number wrong without throwing an error.

A report migration is finished when the deposit ties out, not when the file downloads.

Read one settlement through both files

Here's the check we'd run this week, while both reports still exist:

1. Pick a recent closed settlement with a normal mix of orders, refunds and fees. Avoid a quiet week.
2. Pull both the old flat file and the V2 file for the same settlement-id.
3. Compare the header facts first: settlement dates, deposit date, total-amount and currency. These should match exactly.
4. Group the old file's fee columns and the V2 file's amount-type and amount-description pairs by order, then compare the totals per order.
5. Look at the rows that don't line up one for one and confirm they're consolidations, not missing money.
6. If you sell in more than one marketplace, repeat with one settlement that uses comma decimals.

If all six pass, point your tools at V2 and keep the comparison sheet. If one fails, you've found the problem while you can still look at the old file to understand it. After November 11, you can't.

We wrote about another payout change with a fixed date recently. The lesson carries over: money files deserve a test with real numbers, not a read of the release notes.

If you're late

It's possible you'll read this after the 11th. If so, don't panic, but do act in order.

• Check whether your accounting connector is still importing. A tool that silently finds no report may simply stop posting Amazon deposits, which looks like a quiet week until the bank balance disagrees.
• Switch the report type, then reprocess any settlements Amazon produced after the cutover.
• Reconcile those settlements at deposit level before you trust anything more detailed.
• Tell your bookkeeper or accountant which settlements were imported under the new format, so they know where to look if something is off at month end.

Who should do this

If your Amazon books run through a mainstream connector, this is mostly a phone call and a test. If you have custom scripts, a data warehouse, or several marketplaces in different currencies, it's a small development job with a hard date.

Our marketplaces team builds and repairs the plumbing between marketplaces and the books, including report parsing and reconciliation. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on the switch before the 11th, get in touch and tell us what reads your settlement files today.

Related work: Paddle8.