Marketplace settlement reports and bank deposits disagree quietly. Kernos imports the settlement reports, compares every fee line and expected deposit against rules you define, and stages the recovery behind an approval two qualified people sign. Nothing is filed automatically on your behalf — by design.
Pilot scope: one platform’s settlement reports (Amazon first) — settlement report · payout ledger · published fee schedule, parsed and compared, not filed away.
Three platform policy facts set the boundary of what is worth automating. They explain why this page is about settlement reconciliation, not reimbursement filing.
Amazon moved to proactively reimburse eligible units lost in fulfillment centers and certain customer returns never received back — with no claim submitted by the seller. The easy money now arrives on its own; nobody should pay a service to chase it.
The reimbursement basis for lost or damaged inventory switched from sales price to sourcing (manufacturing) cost — after a delay from March 10 to March 31, 2025. Seller discussions commonly describe per-unit reimbursement amounts falling by around two-thirds on affected units. A seller can request a reevaluation within 60 days of a reimbursement.
The two-thirds figure is merchant-reported, one-sided — not an Amazon-published number.
Overcharged fulfillment, storage, or surcharge lines sit outside the reimbursement program entirely — 2026 fee schedules alone add a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to US and Canada FBA fulfillment fees from April 17, 2026. Fee errors are contested case by case, on your evidence, through separate support channels. That is the surface Kernos works.
That is why the Kernos e-commerce line is built around settlement reconciliation, not reimbursement filing. The reimbursement pool is smaller and increasingly automatic. The durable leakage sits in settlement lines nobody reconciles and fee errors nobody contests while the window is open.
Attribution: policy timeline from Amazon Seller Central official announcements; the discovery lag quoted above (30–60 days) reflects seller-community discussions, not a measured benchmark.
Four steps. Two of them are human by design — the two that spend your money or your dispute rights.
Each marketplace settlement report and its matching payout line are imported per period and parsed into typed objects: fee types, units, amounts, expected deposit — not rows lost in a spreadsheet.
A rules engine compares every fee line and expected deposit: unexpected fee types, rate mismatches against the published schedule, missing reimbursements, shortfalls against your own expectations. Each gap becomes an exception with the evidence attached.
A qualified approver who did not build the proposal clears it, with the evidence in front of them. The initiator cannot self-approve — segregation of duties is enforced by the system, not the org chart.
Approval stages the recovery with its evidence bundle. A person on your team submits it through the platform’s own channel, at a timing they choose. Nothing is auto-submitted.
Automated claim-filing services and controlled reconciliation both promise money back. They differ in who acts, who can see the evidence, and who owns the timing.
| Dimension | Auto-filing recovery services | Kernos |
|---|---|---|
| Who acts | The service files claims and disputes automatically, at its own discretion | Kernos stages the proposal, a qualified approver signs it, a person on your team submits it |
| Evidence | Merchant reviews describe disputes and evidence submitted without the merchant’s review | Evidence bundle attached to every proposal, replayable in an append-only audit chain you host |
| Timing | Auto-submission can spend a dispute window before you knew it existed | The dispute window is checked before staging; execution timing stays with your team |
| Billing | Merchant reviews describe charges above the advertised rate and duplicate alert fees | Pilot $1,500 flat, then published plans — no success-fee black box |
| Data location | Vendor SaaS | Self-hosted or private cloud — settlement files never leave your perimeter |
Left column: patterns reported in merchant public reviews — one-sided accounts, not adjudicated findings, and many merchants also report smooth outcomes. The axis that separates Kernos is control and provability, not outcome promises. Kernos’s e-commerce line has no published customer stories yet; see the boundaries below.
Three numbers, one estimate — edit them to match your operation. Illustrative only; it counts settlement value worth reconciling, not guaranteed recoveries.
Method note: the 0.8% default is an illustration, not a benchmark. Seller-community discussions of settlement shortages and fee errors describe rates across a wide band, and we will not invent a precise industry number. Reconcile one quarter of statements to get the only rate that matters — yours. Defaults: $150,000 monthly GMV across 3 marketplaces.
Three limits we state up front, because trust in a reconciliation tool is only as good as its worst stated promise.
Approving a recovery proposal stages it, with its full evidence chain, in your instance. A person on your team executes the submission to the platform. The gap between approval and execution is deliberate: dispute windows reward human judgment, and platform terms restrict automated filing on a seller’s behalf.
Amazon’s services terms restrict automated submission of reimbursement claims on a seller’s behalf, and the March 2025 policy change repriced the reimbursement pool at manufacturing cost. Chasing reimbursements is the wrong center of gravity. Kernos reconciles settlements and fees; you remain the filer of record.
This line is new; construction compliance is the mature vertical, and e-commerce is the second card on the table. The pilot is $1,500 flat for a first period on your real settlement files, then a custom quote against the published platform plans. If the fit is wrong, the free fit check will tell you before you spend anything.
Tell us where you sell, your monthly GMV, and how settlement reconciliation works today. We reply personally, usually the same day. No mailing list without your consent.
Direct email works too: hello@eunomos.io — put “E-commerce” in the subject.