Aug 17, 2026 · 7 min read

Amazon Earnings Report Columns, Decoded

Every Amazon affiliate has downloaded the Product Earnings Report CSV, opened it, and seen a wall of columns that mostly get ignored. Most people read two numbers — total sales and total commission — and close the file. That's where underpayments hide. The CSV is the only per-line record you have of what Amazon actually paid you, and its columns tell a coherent story once you know what each one means. This guide decodes every meaningful column and shows you where anomalies sneak in.

The identity columns: order, date, and product

These columns tell you what earned you money. They're the keys you use to cross-reference everything else:

• Order ID. Unique per order line. Keep it intact when you export — it's the ID you'll quote in any claim.
• Order Date / Date of Order. The date the order was filed, not the date you earned it. Rate changes are keyed to this date, which is why it matters for verification.
• SKU / ASIN. The product identifier. A changed ASIN across periods is often a sign of a category remapping.
• Category. The rate category applied to the item. This is the column that determines which rate applies — and the first place discrepancies appear.

The money columns: rates, fees, and commission

Here's where the actual math lives, and where most anomalies are visible:

• Advertised Fee Rate. The headline percentage for the category and market. It's the number Amazon advertises — and the number that goes into most of the misinformation online.
• Effective Fee Rate. The rate that actually applied to this line. When this is lower than the advertised rate without a clear reason, that's a flag worth investigating.
• Eligible Order Amount. The sales value the commission is computed on — after discounts and gift-wrap exclusions. Compare this to the item's list price to check you're being charged on the right base.
• Fees. Per-item and fixed fees deducted from the order. These are part of the formula, not a mystery line — but they change over time, so a fee line that looks unusual deserves a look at your market's fee schedule.
• Total Commission. The bottom line for this line. It should equal the effective rate times the eligible amount, minus the fees. If it doesn't, the discrepancy is here.

The Current Rate Table holds the advertised rates per market and category, so you can compare any line's effective rate against what should have applied on its order date.

The anomalies that cost you money

Once you can read the columns, the patterns become visible. The ones that show up over and over:

• Effective rate below the advertised rate on lines that don't look like exceptions — the classic silent-underpayment pattern.
• Commission that doesn't equal the math. Rate and amount look right, but the paid commission is short. Multiply it out; the arithmetic doesn't lie.
• Missing or blank categories. Rows without a category can't be checked against a rate table, so they tend to get skipped. They shouldn't be — treat them as manual-review rows.
• A category change between periods. The same ASIN moving from one category to a lower-paying one is either a remapping you should know about or a discrepancy.

If you're checking by hand, start with a pivot table on category × date and look for effective rates that drift below the published schedule. If that sounds like a chore, the Earnings Audit reads the whole file and flags exactly these patterns automatically — it compares every paid line against the correct rate for its order date and totals any shortfall. The CSV explained guide has more detail on the raw export format if you want the full picture before you run anything.

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