KDP royalties versus bank credit: currencies and Pending

A KDP royalty total and an Amazon payment answer different questions. Keep the sales period and marketplace currency, the identified payment in its payment currency, and the bank posting separate. Pending payment amounts remain unknown; they are not zero deposits.

Start with Payments, then retrieve the accrual evidence

For the author checking a bank credit, an accrued royalty is an earning assigned to a sales period. A payment is a transfer described by Amazon. The bank statement records the destination account’s own observation. Matching their month names or amounts does not establish that they represent the same population.

1. Open KDP Reports → Payments. Filter Marketplace, Sales Period and Status, then download the relevant report. Preserve the filters with the file instead of comparing an unfiltered dashboard total.
2. Retain Payment Number, Payment Date, Net Earnings, FX Rate and Payment Amount. The downloaded report also includes Sales Period, Accrued Royalty, Tax Withholding and Source; keep their meaning and currency labels intact.
3. Retrieve Prior Months Royalties when checking the underlying earned royalties. Record marketplace, original currency and earning period separately from the payment’s amount/date.
4. Obtain the bank-side record for the identified destination. Associate it with a payment only when references and other evidence support that relationship. Keep a pending amount, missing conversion evidence or unidentified bank credit open.

Amazon’s Payments report guidance documents these fields and coverage for payments after November 2013. Payment Date is Amazon’s transfer date, rather than independent evidence of bank posting. Do not promise that earlier records or a particular bank arrival date are available from this report.

Keep unknown states and currencies intact

Payment Amount can show Pending during processing. FX Rate can update after bank information arrives, and N/A is appropriate for local-currency payment. Filling either state with zero, a guessed exchange rate or the earlier dashboard estimate changes the evidence.

Our fictional case has US accrued royalties 100 USD and a separately given withholding amount of 10 USD, resulting in net earnings 90 USD. The associated payment record says 81 EUR; the bank observation, explicitly linked in this scenario, is 79 EUR. Compare 81 and 79 within EUR: the difference is 2, with no explanation supplied. Do not subtract 79 EUR from 90 USD or label the difference a withholding amount.

A UK marketplace royalty of 20 GBP has a pending payment with no amount/currency supplied. That amount stays unknown. A separate Prime Reading bonus of 5 USD has another payment identity; it is not automatically a member of the first payment. The data provides these relationships for teaching, rather than deriving them from an official KDP export.

The fictional marketplace/payment CSV and executed checks preserve each measure and currency. Local calculations verify only the given arithmetic and blank state. They do not execute KDP exports, establish actual withholding rates, calculate bank FX or test a real receipt.

Investigate a missing earning in the appropriate report

The Prior Months Royalties explanation describes previous-month earnings appearing around the fifteenth and explains that Prime Reading bonuses appear in Payments, rather than that royalty report. Absence from Prior Months Royalties therefore does not establish that every bonus or payment is missing.

The Orders report measures order activity on its own basis. It is not a cash ledger. Before escalating a difference, record whether it concerns orders, accrued royalties, a payment, conversion information or the destination bank event. Request the missing report or payment details for that exact layer.

Retain original report versions when an FX field later changes. Do not combine marketplace currencies without a documented conversion, assume several marketplaces share one transfer, or alter bank details merely to make a comparison agree. This is a document-review method, not tax advice or a promised one-to-one payment match.

For related collection and matching principles, see bank statement reconciliation. If the bank provides only PDF, download LocalExtract to extract one PDF locally into date,description,amount CSV, then check it against the issued statement. The app does not retrieve KDP payments or reconcile them automatically.

Official documentation checked October 17, 2026.