My sales are off. KDP Reports shows me one number and AHS shows me another.

My sales are off. KDP Reports shows me one number and AHS shows me another. What's going on?

Before we get started in answering that question, please note AHS uses the actual data from service reports, such as KDP, to build an income picture. We use estimated exchange rates and KENP page rate amounts were applicable. It is the sole responsibility of the author to verify all income data directly from the service-source before making any business decisions.

To understand how we handle sales data, please do one test.

1. Do another AHS KDP pull with the bookmarklet.
2. Refresh the AHS page.
3. Download the KDP report xls file after doing that pull.
4. Compare the data with AHS on the “Combined Sales” tab, not the “Orders” tab.
5. Compare the data with AHS in “Net Units Sold” column.

This may be different than what you’re accustomed to focusing on. So why do we ask that you focus on Combined Sales and Net Units Sold? We have a detailed explanation on our video below, but here’s the gist of it.

(Note: If you ever notice a discrepancy in the revenue # please be sure to check to see if you had any unit sales in the UK or overseas. We use current exchange rates to estimate the final revenue.)

As authors, we got out of the habit of looking at the Amazon KDP’s report dashboard. For revenue (our primary interest) it was just too clunky. But we noticed that the KDP spreadsheet contains a treasure trove of information. Two data points that stood out were the “Net Units Sold” and the “Combined Sales”. They always showed consistent information that led to the most accurate sales numbers. We noticed the “Order” numbers were all over the place and not at all accurate in estimating revenue. Why? It probably has something to do with how Amazon handles sales across countries, refunds and other payment triggers in their system.

The bottom line is that we want to provide everyone (including our own author businesses) with accurate sales data for each day. But by showing you “Orders” data like other services do, we don’t believe we’re doing that

Here is a video to explain this in detail



There's a second reporting methodology that can lead to some confusion. When looking back a few months, the monthly data can sometimes appear out of sync with the daily data. Here's why:

When you first sign up to AHS, we can pull 90 days of daily data, and years (and years) of monthly historic data. This historic data from KDP's end does not include daily data, unfortunately. 

As you use AHS more, we continue to pull daily data as provided by KDP. If you use AHS for many months and then pull Historic data using our KDP Tool, the monthly figures from KDP's end still do not include daily data. They just include a tally of the month. This causes a conflict between the daily data you've been tracking in AHS and the reconciled "final" tally that Amazon shows (which is no longer subject to analysis on their end). We want authors to get that accurate tally of revenue so we display that in our monthly reports. However, if you then look at daily breakdown reports in AHS, you will see discrepancies because the daily data has not been updated by the Historic report data pull. 

It's for this reason that we advise our customers to use AHS as a trend tool that shows you what's working and what isn't. We display the data that KDP has in its reports, but we can't reconcile Amazon's payout with what their reports say due to factors outside our control. 

updated 2/2023


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