Your first sale on Amazon: what happens next, from Pending to payout

Where you actually see your first order

The moment we remember best is not the sale itself but the refresh. In 2021 our first order on amazon.de sat in Manage Orders as a single line: a status, a SKU, a quantity, and nothing else. No price, no fanfare. That is normal.

You find every order in Seller Central under Orders, then Manage Orders. Pending orders are listed apart from the unshipped ones, and you cannot do anything with them yet. On amazon.com and amazon.co.uk the page works exactly as it does on the European marketplaces.

The official Seller app shows the same list, but it does not tell you when an FBA order comes in. An Amazon employee put it plainly on the EU Seller Forum: "There are no SMS push notifications for FBA, only for FBM. You can get an email every 2 hours summarizing recent FBA orders shipped, but no email as FBA orders are made." We cover every route in how to get notified when you make a sale on Amazon, and the gap in the official app in what the Seller app does and does not notify.

That gap is why we built Agent ChaChing: it checks your orders every minute and plays a cash register sound on your phone, usually two to three minutes after the order is placed, often faster. Cha-ching!

The timeline of a first sale on Amazon

The full sequence, from the buyer's click to the money in your account. The statuses are the ones Amazon uses in Seller Central and in its Orders API, so they look the same on every marketplace.

Step 1: Pending, and why you see no price

Amazon defines the status like this: "The order has been placed but payment has not been authorized." The buyer has clicked, the card has not been charged yet, and until it is, Amazon shows the order without an amount. Its own documentation says that while an order is Pending, the order items call "does not return information about pricing, taxes, shipping charges, gift status or promotions". That is why Seller Central, and every tool built on top of it, shows a blank where the price should be.

How long? Amazon writes that "the fulfillable date of an order is usually 30 minutes after the order has been created". On our own account we have seen orders sit in Pending for hours, and in rare cases Amazon says it can take up to about three weeks. None of that means something is wrong. Read what an Amazon pending order really means if yours takes longer than you would like.

Two things not to do while an order is Pending. Do not ship it if you fulfil orders yourself; it is missing from your unshipped list for a reason. And do not cancel it because it looks stuck: seller-initiated cancellations count against your pre-fulfilment cancel rate, which Amazon explains on the help page "Pre-fulfillment cancel rate".

Step 2: Unshipped, Shipped and the fees

Unshipped is the status you were waiting for: "Payment has been authorized and order is ready for shipment." Now the price appears, and with it the fee preview. On most items the referral fee is somewhere between 8 and 15 percent, and FBA adds a fulfilment fee per unit; the exact figures depend on the category and the size of the product, so check Amazon's current fee page. We break the whole cost picture down in how much it costs to sell on Amazon.

If you use FBA, this is where your involvement ends. Amazon picks the item from its warehouse, packs it, ships it, and the status moves to Shipped on its own. If you fulfil the order yourself, the ship-by date is now your deadline: ship it, enter the tracking number and confirm the shipment in Manage Orders. The difference between the two models, including the notification difference, is in Amazon FBA versus FBM.

A buyer can still cancel. Within about 30 minutes of ordering they can do it themselves; after that it becomes a cancellation request that an FBM seller has to act on, while Amazon handles cancellations for FBA orders. A cancelled first order feels awful, but it is normal and it does not count against you when the buyer initiated it. More in what a cancelled order means for you as a seller.

Step 3: Delivered, and the return window

Delivery is not a status you will see change in Manage Orders; you see it in the tracking. It matters for one reason: the return window starts here. Amazon's rule for sellers is simple: "Amazon allows customers to return most items within 30 days of their order's estimated delivery date, regardless of who fulfilled the order."

For FBA orders, Amazon takes care of the whole return: the buyer sends the item back to Amazon and Amazon handles the customer service. For seller-fulfilled orders you authorise the return, the buyer ships it back with a prepaid label, and you refund. Do not worry about a return before it happens; a single return is not a mark against your account.

Step 4: When do you get paid after an Amazon sale

Every new seller asks this a week after the first order, and the honest answer is: not yet. Amazon writes: "In general, Amazon settles seller accounts every two weeks." At each settlement it takes your opening balance, adds your sales, subtracts fees and refunds, and holds back a reserve. For deliveries, Amazon says it will "typically reserve funds for seven days to give customers time to inspect their purchases and get refunds if needed". The reserved money rolls into the next settlement.

Then the transfer itself: "After Amazon initiates a payment, it can take up to five business days for the funds to appear in your bank account." Put those three together and a first payout can take several weeks, depending on where in the two-week cycle your order was delivered. The same rhythm applies on the European marketplaces; sell.amazon.de describes it as paying out the available balance every two weeks.

Where to look: in Seller Central, hover over Payments and open the Payments dashboard. The Statement View shows your balance; the Disbursements tab lists every past and scheduled payout with its date and estimated amount. And one thing to do right now if you have not already: make sure your bank account is registered and verified, because Amazon cannot send anything without it.

What to check after your first sale, and what to leave alone

Worth a look:

• The marketplace, SKU and quantity on the order. A first sale sometimes reveals a listing live in a country you did not expect.
• FBM only: the ship-by date. Ship on time and confirm the shipment with tracking.
• Your stock. If Amazon holds two units and one just sold, restocking takes longer than selling.
• Your notification settings, so you hear about the second order faster than the first. We walk through them in Seller Central notification settings.

Leave alone:

• A Pending status that lasts an hour. It is payment authorisation, not a problem.
• The missing price. It appears when the order leaves Pending.
• The buyer. Do not message them unless they message you; Amazon has strict rules on contact and on review requests.
• The money. It arrives on the schedule above; checking the Payments dashboard every hour does not speed it up. We tried.