Amazon posts four separate reports to your DSP Console every week, and most owners download only one of them. That one report is the settlement summary, and it turns out to be the least useful of the four. The dollar amounts that carry the actual signal, chargebacks by tracking ID, incentive tier math, per-route pay, and missed fleet supplement charges, all live inside the other three reports that most owners never open.
This is not Amazon hiding information. All four reports are freely available in DSP Console, they post the same day, and each one downloads in under two minutes. The problem is that the summary looks complete on its own. It shows the gross earnings, the total deductions, and the net deposit. Nothing about it tells you that you are only reading a quarter of the picture.
That is exactly the position most DSP owners find themselves in every week. The four reports together tell a very different story than the summary alone. The difference between reading one report and reading all four often works out to five figures a year in recovered chargebacks and missed incentives.
This gap between what the summary shows and what is actually happening is the same one we cover in 7 Costly Amazon DSP Settlement Mistakes, where several of the costliest errors hide in exactly the three reports most owners skip. Reading all four reports weekly is also the foundation of a fast month-end close, see How Amazon DSP Owners Can Speed Up Month-End Close for the full workflow.
Key Takeaways
- Amazon does not send one settlement report per week. It sends four separate documents, and the three that are not the summary hold most of the recoverable money.
- The chargeback detail is the single most important report Amazon provides. Every dispute you can file starts there, and the dispute windows are as short as seven days.
- The incentive calculation report is where scorecard tier lag hides. A rating that moved up to Fantastic during the service week can still get paid at the lower Great rate, and the summary will never tell you.
Where Settlement Reports Live and How to Access Them
Amazon posts every DSP’s weekly settlement to the DSP Console, which older material sometimes calls the Relay Console. The settlement covers one service week, usually Saturday through Friday, and the reports appear in DSP Console roughly two to three days after the service week closes. The bank deposit follows a few days after that.
The four reports live under the settlements section of the console. Each one downloads as a separate CSV or PDF. You will need to grab all four every week, since none of them contains the full picture on its own.
Report 1: The Settlement Summary
The settlement summary is a one-page document showing the top-level math for the week. Base route pay, per-package pay, incentives, peak surcharges, chargebacks, program deductions, and adjustments all get added up here, and the final line is the net deposit that lands in your business bank account. The fields worth knowing include the settlement period (the service date range), gross earnings by component, total deductions, adjustments from prior settlements, net payment, and deposit date.
Start by comparing the net payment on the summary against the actual bank deposit through Payee Central. They should match the penny. If they do not, the gap could be a timing issue (an ACH lag or a weekend delay), or it could be a real problem worth flagging with your account manager the same day.
The trap here is that the summary hides which specific component actually moved. A $5,000 shortfall from last week could be chargebacks, could be a scorecard drop, could be a route pay error, or could be all three at once. The summary tells you the total moved, but never tells you why.
Report 2: The Route-Level Detail
The route-level detail is a line-by-line list of every route dispatched during the settlement period, with base pay, per-package pay, stop counts, and route-specific adjustments broken out for each one. Key fields include the route ID, service date, route type (cargo van or step van), package count, stop count, base pay for that route, and any variable pay applied on top.
Start by counting the routes on the report against your own dispatch log. Every route your team ran should appear here with the expected base rate. Then check the route type coded on each line. Step van routes should pay step van rates, and cargo van routes should pay cargo van rates. It is a common error for the wrong route type to get coded on the settlement, almost always in favor of the lower-paying rate.
The bigger trap is routes that ran but never appear at all. This is different from a wrong rate or a zero-pay entry. The route simply is not on the report. This happens most often during station reassignments or system glitches on Amazon’s end. Nothing on the settlement flags the missing route, which is why the only way to catch it is a manual comparison against your dispatch data.
Route Recon AI compares your dispatch log against the route-level detail automatically, so dropped routes get flagged the moment the settlement posts.
Report 3: The Chargeback Detail
The chargeback detail lists every deduction Amazon took during the week, itemized by tracking ID, chargeback type, service date, and dollar amount. This is the report that answers the question “why was my settlement lower than expected?” Key fields include the tracking ID, chargeback type (damaged, missing, concession, POD failure, late delivery, safety), service date, dollar amount, dispute status (open, disputed, resolved), and the dispute window closing date for that specific chargeback.
Start by sorting the report by tracking ID. Any tracking ID that shows up more than once is a possible duplicate chargeback, which happens when Amazon processes a customer complaint one week and processes it again in a later settlement. Duplicates are fully recoverable if you catch them inside the dispute window. Then sort the same report by chargeback type as a second pass. A sudden spike in “concession” charges is usually a customer service problem rather than a driver problem, and needs a different kind of response.
The trap most owners fall into is thinking the dispute window is longer than it actually is. Each chargeback closes on its own timeline, and once it closes the deduction is permanent. Windows run seven to fourteen days depending on the chargeback type, which means a Tuesday settlement can have items aging out by the following Friday. Reviewing the report weekly is fine, but reviewing it within 48 hours of posting is much safer.
Route Recon AI flags duplicate tracking IDs automatically and places countdown alerts on every chargeback so nothing ages out silently.
If you only download one report every week, download this one. Every dispute you can file starts here.
Report 4: The Incentive Calculation
The incentive calculation is the math behind your scorecard incentive pay for the week. It shows the tier Amazon applied, the underlying metrics that fed into that tier, and the incentive rate that resulted. Key fields include the scorecard tier applied (Fantastic Plus, Fantastic, Great, Good, Fair, or At Risk), the metric-by-metric breakdown, the incentive rate for that tier, and the total incentive pay for the week.
Start by comparing the tier on this report against the tier you saw in the DSP Console during the service week, and make sure they match. When they do not, it is usually a scorecard lag issue where the settlement engine pulled the prior week’s rating. On a 25-route fleet, a lag from Fantastic to Great is $2,000 to $6,000 in underpaid incentive for a single week. That money is recoverable if you file a correction with a screenshot of your true tier for the week in question.
The catch here is that Safety and Compliance sits above every other metric on the scorecard. If your safety score comes back as Great, the whole rating gets capped at Great, no matter how strong every other metric is. If your incentive on this report is lower than expected and every other metric looks fine, safety is usually the reason behind it.
How the Four Reports Connect
Each report answers a different question, but they are most useful when read side by side. The route-level detail confirms the routes and pay match your dispatch data. The chargeback detail explains the deductions on the summary. The incentive calculation explains the bonus math on the summary. Payee Central (a separate portal from DSP Console) confirms the deposit actually hit your account.
None of these checks work on their own. A summary alone cannot tell you a chargeback duplicated in a previous week. A chargeback report alone cannot tell you a route was missed. A route report alone cannot tell you a tier was applied wrong. The value comes from reading all four together, in the same session, and letting the numbers cross-check each other.
What to Review Every Week: The 10-Minute Checklist
Once you have all four reports downloaded, the review itself takes about ten minutes if you know where to look.
| Report | Check | Time |
| Settlement Summary | Net deposit matches Payee Central | 2 minutes |
| Route-Level Detail | Route count matches dispatch log; route types coded correctly | 3 minutes |
| Chargeback Detail | Sort by tracking ID for duplicates; check dispute windows | 3 minutes |
| Incentive Calculation | Tier applied matches DSP Console screenshot | 2 minutes |
Anything that looks off gets flagged, disputed, or escalated to your account manager the same day. This is where most of the recoverable revenue lives, and the reason it goes uncaptured is not complexity. It is that most owners never make the time for a 10-minute review that pays back thousands of dollars every year.
Where Manual Report Review Falls Short
The 10-minute checklist works when it runs consistently. What is hard is running it every week without exception, especially during peak season, and especially across four reports that do not cross-reference each other automatically. Four reports across 52 weeks equals 208 documents to download, compare, and act on every year. Miss two weeks and you have missed roughly 8% of the year’s chargebacks aging out silently.
This is the specific gap BeanSquad’s Route Recon AI™ was built to close. The platform ingests all four Amazon settlement reports every week, along with the other two portal sources Amazon provides for fleet and program details. It runs pattern detection across all 13 billing categories and cross-references reports against each other automatically. Chargebacks get flagged with dispute-window countdown alerts. Scorecard tier lag gets caught by comparing the incentive calculation against your DSP Console history. Dropped routes get identified by comparing dispatch data against the route-level detail.
Based on BeanSquad’s data across onboarded DSPs, the average fleet recovers $62,400+ per year in chargebacks alone. That is money that would otherwise disappear silently inside a summary-only weekly review.
Book Your Free Reconciliation Assessment →
Thirty minutes, no obligation. See what your last few weeks of settlements are actually hiding.
Conclusion
The settlement summary is not the settlement. It is one of four reports Amazon publishes every week, and by itself it does not answer any question worth asking about your revenue. The three reports most owners never download, the route-level detail, the chargeback detail, and the incentive calculation, are where the disputes get filed and the money gets recovered.
Download all four reports every Tuesday, run the 10-minute checklist, and act the same day on anything that looks off. Do that consistently and settlement reconciliation stops being a source of leaked revenue and starts being a system that protects it.
BeanSquad is currently accepting the first 50 DSPs into the Founding Partner program at $499/month with the first two months free. Claim your spot →
Frequently Asked Questions
How many settlement reports does Amazon send per week?
Amazon posts four reports every week: the settlement summary, route-level detail, chargeback detail, and incentive calculation. Only the summary shows in the quick view, so most owners miss the other three.
Where do I download DSP settlement reports?
All four live under the settlements section of the DSP Console, which older material sometimes still calls the Relay Console. Each one downloads as a separate file, and you need to grab all four every week.
What is the difference between the settlement summary and the chargeback detail?
The summary shows top-level math for the week: gross earnings, total deductions, and net deposit. The chargeback detail lists each individual deduction by tracking ID, type, and dispute window.
How often should I review Amazon DSP settlement reports?
Weekly at the latest, ideally within 48 hours of the settlement posting. Chargeback dispute windows run 7 to 14 days, and anything past that becomes a permanent loss.
Can I dispute a chargeback based on the settlement report alone?
Yes, the chargeback detail is where every dispute filing starts, with the tracking ID and reason code you need to reference. Supporting evidence like delivery photos and GPS timestamps pushes win rates into the 30% to 50% range.
Why does my incentive pay change even when my metrics look consistent?
This is usually the Safety and Compliance ceiling at work, which caps your whole scorecard tier at whatever your safety rating is. The incentive calculation report shows the metric-by-metric breakdown, so it is the fastest place to spot the cause.