3fin Data Accuracy & Consistency
Why is there a mismatch between the Brand Manager and the Profit & Loss?
3fin’s Brand Manager draws most of its numbers from Amazon’s sales & traffic reports (Business Reports). Those reports include all orders placed during a certain time period, regardless of settlement status. Business Reports also includes cancelled orders.
3fin’s Profit & Loss takes its numbers from the LFE API corresponding to the “Payment Report” on Amazon Seller Central. Payment reports do not include cancelled orders and only show orders that have shipped. This explains the difference you might notice between 3fin’s Brand Manager and Profit & Loss.
Why is my cost of advertising on the P&L weird or missing?
Amazon Cost of Advertising refers to the fees charged by Amazon to sellers and vendors for advertising their products on the Amazon platform. Amazon offers several advertising options, including sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads, and sponsored display ads, which allow sellers to increase the visibility of their products and drive sales.
Selling partner API: the amount Amazon charged you for all types of advertising using your account balance, typically charged bi-weekly. Selling partner API does NOT include advertising that was paid by credit card.
Sponsored product, brand, display, television ads: the daily amount spent on various ad types as shown in the Amazon campaign reports. This will be shown regardless of whether the advertising was paid via credit card or account balance. While more granular and accrual than the selling partner API cost, the daily ad spend can only be retrieved for the past 60 to 90 days via API, as such you will not be able to see your ad spend from more than 90 days ago when you first register to 3fin.
Sponsored product and sponsored display ads can be allocated to a SKU/ASIN level ; this is NOT the case for sponsored brand and sponsored television ads which CANNOT be allocated at a SKU/ASIN level.
3fin will always use the advertising spend data from the reports when available as it is more granular, available on a daily basis, and more accrual than the selling partner API ad spend.