The purpose of a clearing account is to easily reconcile your bank account against your bank statement. If you were to deposit daily revenue directly into your bank account, it would be very difficult to reconcile because you would have to match your sales within that time interval against the lump sum. This is why a clearing account is used for both merchant fulfilled and FBA orders.
Preparing QuickBooks for Amazon Orders & Fees
Clearing account for Amazon in QuickBooks: The clearing account, also called a holding account, is a virtual bank account used to hold amazon revenue until Amazon disburses the money in your bank account.
Expense account: Amazon fees expense account
QuickBooks Vendor: Amazon
Webgility Desktop Setup: expenses and fees in Webgility Desktop
Daily downloading and posting orders into QuickBooks
You can choose to have daily order posting to QuickBooks or consolidated order posting by Settlement ID after settlement report is downloaded in Webgility Desktop.
All daily and consolidated revenue is deposited into the clearing account.
Posting Amazon expenses and fees into QuickBooks
Every two weeks Amazon deposits money, which is the net of your orders minus the fees Amazon has taken.
When Amazon expenses and fees are posted to QuickBooks:
Debit the expense account (increase).
Credit the clearing/hold account for the value that Amazon has charged for the expenses and fees (decrease).
Transferring funds from Amazon clearing account to bank account
When Amazon puts the transfer amount into your bank account, you need to create a transfer funds transaction in QuickBooks. Go to Banking > Transfer Funds.
Note: The date and transfer amount should match the transfer amount (closing balance), in the Amazon settlement report.
Clearing account wrap-up
Master equation: Total revenue - $ deposited by Amazon - expenses and fees charged by Amazon = $0
This is why this is called a clearing account.
Note: Your clearing account may never get to $0 due to the timing of new orders coming in and the reconciliation of a past settlement disbursement.
The existing balance will be the new orders coming for the next settlement period.