Is the Total items shipped in "Earnings Summary" part of the Ordered items in "Orders Summary"? Or are these two numbers independent -- they are together becoming all the transactions you referred? Thanks.
No they are seperate. When a customer places an order, that goes onto your "ordered items" reports. When the items are shipped (which could be a few days later) they go onto your "Earnings" report. The items might never get shipped (the customer could cancel the order, out of stock etc.) so the two reports are unlikely to tie up. You can also get returns, which show up as a negative number on your "earnings" report and the commission is taken back off you.
After the items go onto the "Earnings" report, do those items still stay as part of the "Ordered items" report?
Yes they always stay in the "Ordered Items" report, even if the order gets cancelled. Once it goes into the "Earnings" report it stays in the "Ordered Items" report.
Thanks. This is really helpful. I am trying to understand more. If I have 15 items in the "Earnings" report, and 20 items in the "Ordered Items" report at some day, it means 5 items have not been shipped (some may never been shipped and stay there for the month), right? If this case (15 vs. 20) happens in the last day of the month, and Amazon resets both reports to 0 item on the first day of the next month, what happens to the 5 items?
Those 5 items must be pre-order items or items that are not in currently in stock. You only get paid when Amazon ships those items.
They might be shipped in the next month... so even if you didn't make any sales in the next month you might still get them appear on your "earnings report". The numbers will probably never balance however due to people canceling orders or the product never coming into stock. Even if someone cancels the order it stays on your ordered report.
@freshdevelopment I have just started to use Amazon Affiliate program on my hupages and I had the same confusion. Thanks a lot to make things clear.