Amazon Order History - RIP

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I just went to do my usual Saturday morning Amazon reconciliation and saw this. VERY bummed. Very.

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I havenā€™t been using them for a while, but I liked having them available to refer back to occasionally, so yeah, this is unfortunate.

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Do you track it manually or use @jsharpie7 's way or something else? I think a bunch of us are going to be scrambling for a new way to track. For sure I am.

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Currently when I get an Amazon transaction, I go to the Amazon order page, find what I ordered, copy the name, paste it into Notepad (because every time I copy the name it copies a blank line preceding the title), copy just the title from Notepad, paste as value over the transaction description. I really need a better workflow, but I found that importing the Amazon transactions wasnā€™t worth it for me as they frequently donā€™t match up well with the bank transaction. I just downloaded yearly reports for everything back to 2006 (wouldnā€™t let me put in a date earlier than that) so at least I have it in spreadsheet form to refer back to. Do you have a workflow youā€™re happy with?

Interesting.

Currently, on Saturday mornings, I download the weekā€™s orders and refunds and then load both CSVā€™s into Tiller. Works great. Easy peasy.

Iā€™m wondering if maybe I could create my own CSVā€™s as I go. @randy Tiller doesnā€™t NEED all those columns, right? What are the minimums I would have to fill in to make this manual system work and which ones can I just leave blank?

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As Iā€™m looking through the Amazon site, trying to imagine an improved workflow, I see their ( ā€œTransactionsā€ page) which does a reasonable job of linking the ā€œamountā€ to an order number (eg. 111-7062042-8877809) and a payment method (eg. ā€œAmazon.com Visa Signature ****0123ā€). I noticed that clicking on an order number takes you to a page with a predictable URL:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/your-account/order-details/ref=_or?ie=UTF8&orderID= <order number>
Seems like this could be a starting point for automating something, though it likely wouldnā€™t be a built-in Tiller thing since it would need to authenticate against your Amazon account.

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Good points. I think I can mostly change my ordering habits to make it a bit more tiller friendly (one item per order). BUT the returns do have me hosed a little.

Generally, I have Amazon just put the credit on account. So then I end up ā€˜buyingā€™ stuff with the buying account being NOT one of my accounts but ā€˜gift certificate/cardā€™. I can also fix this by telling Amazon to always credit my credit card.

Ugh. just Ugh.

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Yeah, I have an Amazon Visa, so I get points back, which I can then use on orders. I just ordered something yesterday that is broken into two transactions, one for however many points I had available, which Tiller will not see, and another for the remainder that goes on the Visa, which Tiller will see, but only represents a third of the actual cost of the item. Itā€™s stuff like this that makes it hard to have an automated/predictable workflow!

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i use the card points towards the card balance but still get tripped up by the returns.

I think iā€™m just stuck with some variation of your copy paste situation. Too much of my consumerism is Amazonian making close tracking pretty much required. Amazon makes my life so much better/easier and Iā€™m so grateful BUT then they come along and kick dirt in my face. Sigh.

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I have a manual asset account called Gift Cards and I use it to hold the dollar value of various unspent gift cards/store credits. For instance today, it consists of a Costco Cash Card, a Southwest flight credit, an Alaska flight credit, and an Amazon return credit.

When I make a new purchase and use some/all of that credit, I may have 2 added transactions - one from the Gift Card account and the other for the credit card used (if I still had a balance owed). Like @jpfieber indicated, trying to capture the true cost of an item can be challenging sometimes.

I use the Split Transaction feature a lot for Costco and Amazon purchases.

I always turn credit card ā€œpointsā€ into cash or statement credits and track those in an income Category called Rebates to track those total dollars entering my budget.

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Is anyone able to use the method shared by @jsharpie7? : I tried using it but was a bit confused and didnā€™t have time to spend more time on it.

I would assume Business customers of Amazon will be expecting some way to get reports - what is Amazon planning to do for them?

I am just wondering what would be potential path ahead for importing Amazon purchases into Tiller for folks who do most of their monthly buying from Amazon - it is not acceptable to stay blind about these purchases.

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I tried @jsharpie7 method. It did not work as explained and the other method was so much easier that I gave up. It would be great if Tiller pulled a trick out of the hat, but I donā€™t consider it part of Tillerā€™s charter.

Amazon to Tiller manually is going to be such a PIA.

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I just installed the Chrome Extension for Amazon History.

At least it gives you a couple of table views of your purchases - by item or by order. Itā€™s a little fiddly and Iā€™m not sure how it could be used programatically (refunds are hard to find, for instance) but it does beat the hell out of copy and paste from the order page.

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For me, the Amazon integration is a critical path given how many purchases I do with them. Even Mint integration open source also seems to be tracking this issue.

I really hope Tiller/Community can come up with something here. I wish I knew enough programming to be able to contribute/tackle this headache.

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This does seem like a step backwards for sure, my process is all manual but i use the orders page and split amazon purchases the best way i can but sometimes the math just doesnt add up, i use the orders page and guess the closest amount that i can and split accordingly and always have the refunds go back to the associated credit card with that amount going to the same budget category as well to offset the original purchase.

Fellow Amazon Splitter here. I feel your pain!
I have over 450 itemized transactions/splits dating back to 2019.

Last I tried the jsharpie7 approach it was a no-go as the AZAD Chrome extension was not working for me. I had sent logs to the developer, but I manually muddled my way through my transaction backlog before getting a response.

I have since developed a process involving the Order Reports to produce a reconciliation sheet. In a separate Google Sheet, I have one tab for Item reports data and another for Orders and Shipments. Into these, I import subsequent CSV reports and append the data.
In a third tab, I coalesce the two reports into an Order/Item Report by way of arrayformula that groups queries from each by date and order ID.
This has allowed me to identify Tiller transactions by the order total, then identify the items in that order in order to (attempt) to split them.

Wouldnā€™t our accounting lives be improved if Amazon were to include the Order ID in bank transaction?!? :nerd_face:

But even then, there are so many problems with accurately splitting Amazon transactions which include:

  • Not all amazon charges come from Your Orders, but many different sources such as annual Prime Payments, digital orders, video, restaurants, ā€¦
  • transactions split into multiple charges and not usually clear which items are included in each split.
  • gift card and discounts applied (coupons, Deals, shipping, S&S) and not usually clear which item discount is applied to.
  • Then thereā€™s the standard dilemma of how to itemize the tax amount and which items are taxable.

A New Hope
Today while bumbling around their site looking for a way to change my default payment, I stumbled upon the Transactions page which actually seems to list ALL payments in one place, including annual Prime Payments, digital orders, ā€¦ I donā€™t know if this page is new, or if it has been around.
Your Transactions

This page keys transactions of all types and includes:

  • date
  • amount
  • payment method
  • Order ID (and hyperlink to Order Details)
  • ā€œsourceā€

I hope this helps those trying to split Amazon transactions! It seems that any attempt to reconcile Amazon transactions, particularly post-Order Reports, should start on this page.

The Challenge
It strikes me as ironic that the data-driven juggernaut that is Amazon, causes such manual reconciliation! WTF?!? Sometimes I wonder if it is an actual attempt at obfuscation.

Anyway, I doubt there is a way to truly automate the split of transactions because there are so many exceptions to their billing process.

At best, Iā€™d be satisfied with an automated way to scrape the My Transactions page and assemble a reconciliation page like what I created for myself above. As significant challenge is that this page doesnā€™t list items, which would have to be scraped from a separate order summary page, keyed by the Order ID.

Seems like thereā€™s a large market for a potential Amazon Splitter. Iā€™d be willing to contribute.

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I canā€™t see how that transaction page can help us automate the process BUT damn! That sucker has detail Iā€™ve been looking for forever. What a great find. Thank you!!

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Oh no! Not this again!

@randy Does the other way of importing Amazon transactions from the Privacy Center report still work? As discussed on this post: Amazon Order History Page Gone? - #112 by randy

Thanks!

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If I were to write a script for myself to create a CSV replicating the Amazon Order History CSV, which columns need to be populated in order for it to work? I have all of the column headers the same as Amazonā€™s report, and the following columns are populated: Order Date, Order ID, Title, Purchase Price Per Unit, Quantity, Item Subtotal, Item Subtotal Tax, Item Total. And the importer is getting hung up.

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