The Amazon Seller Central report: a tab-separated .txt that Excel opens as one column
Most Seller Central reports — orders, settlements, inventory, the flat-file downloads — come as .txt files with a tab between the fields, not a comma, so a program expecting CSV shows every row in one cell. A settlement report also opens with a summary line for the whole settlement before the column headings. The TSV converter here reads the tabs and writes commas with proper quoting, and every SKU, order id and amount comes through as the text Amazon wrote.
What the download usually contains
A .txt file, one record per line, fields separated by tabs, headings on the first line in lower-case-with-dashes such as order-id, sku, quantity-purchased and item-price. Order ids look like 123-1234567-1234567, SKUs are whatever you named them — often with leading zeros — and dates are written in full with a timezone. The character set is UTF-8, sometimes with a three-byte marker at the start that some programs show as .
A settlement report (the flat file, version 2) is the exception in shape: its first line is a summary of the settlement — the id, the date range, the total amount — and the per-transaction rows with their own headings begin on the line after. A reader that takes the first line as the headings gets the summary’s names and nothing sensible under them.
Turn the tabs into a CSV
The TSV to CSV converter here reads a tab-separated file and writes a comma-separated one with quoting where a value needs it, every value as text: a SKU of 00412 stays 00412, an order id stays an id, an item price keeps its decimals. Drop the .txt file on it — the converter accepts .txt as well as .tsv — and download the CSV.
For a settlement report, open the CSV in the editor afterwards with "First row is headings" unticked, delete the summary line so the real headings are first, and download; the summary’s figures are the totals of the rows beneath it, which the SQL console can recompute.
Then the questions the report is for
With a clean CSV, the rest is ordinary: filter to one fulfilment channel or one order status; count the rows per SKU or per day in the SQL console; merge the order report with the settlement report on the order id to see what each sale actually paid out after fees. Every one of those runs here, on the file as it is, with nothing retyped.
Two reports for overlapping ranges hold the same orders twice; the duplicate remover keyed on the order id, or the order id and SKU together, leaves one of each.
Questions
- Why does the Amazon report open in one column?
- Because the fields are separated by tabs, not commas, and the program you opened it in expected commas. The TSV converter here reads the tabs and writes a CSV every program opens correctly.
- Why is the first line of my settlement report not the headings?
- A settlement flat file opens with one summary line for the whole settlement, then the headings, then the rows. Delete the summary line in the editor here, with the heading toggle unticked, and the file reads as one table.
- Will my SKUs keep their leading zeros?
- Yes. Every tool here carries values as text, so 00412 stays 00412 in the grid and in the download. Excel is what drops them; give Excel a workbook of text cells from the CSV to Excel converter and it will not.
- What is the  at the start of the file?
- The marker some Amazon reports carry to say the file is UTF-8, shown by a program that does not expect it. The converter here handles it; it is not part of the first heading.
- Can I match orders to what was paid out?
- Yes. Convert both the order report and the settlement report to CSV, then merge them on the order id here; the result shows each order beside its fees and the net that reached the settlement.
- Is my report uploaded anywhere?
- No. The tabs are turned into commas inside this page, and your orders, SKUs and settlement figures never leave your computer on the way to becoming a CSV.