A question is only as good as the data under it
Every question below can be answered from reconciled per-SKU Amazon data: order-date revenue, each fee line matched to its order, ad spend attributed by product, refunds matched to original sales, storage charges by SKU, and FIFO landed cost. None of them can be answered from a Business Reports export, because the export has no costs in it. Under each question is the one thing that must exist in your books for the answer to be trusted. If it does not exist, the AI will still answer, and the answer will be wrong by exactly the size of the gap. The general craft of phrasing is covered in how to write questions for an AI financial assistant. These are the Amazon-specific ones.
Profitability
- Which ten SKUs earned the most contribution last month, and which ten earned the least? Needs FIFO landed cost per unit on every active SKU, or the ranking is by revenue in disguise.
- Which SKUs have a positive gross margin but a negative margin after ad spend? Needs ad spend attributed to the SKU by day, not the account-level ad invoice.
- Which SKU's margin moved the most between last month and this month, in points, and which cost line moved it? Needs every fee line posted against the SKU that caused it, so the decomposition ties to the total.
- What share of last month's contribution came from my top five SKUs, and has that concentration grown? Needs the same per-SKU contribution for at least six trailing months.
- Which products had a better margin in any month of the past year than they have now? Needs a per-SKU monthly series with cost layers intact, so a landed-cost change shows as a change and not as noise.
Advertising
- On which SKUs is my ACoS above the margin before ads? Needs margin before ads per SKU and per-campaign ACoS by product. Amazon's advertising guides define ACoS as ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales; the break-even is the SKU's own margin, not an account average.
- How much gross profit did each campaign's attributed sales produce, against what it cost? Needs attributed sales by SKU multiplied by that SKU's margin before ads. Revenue-based ROAS answers a different question.
- When I cut spend on a product in July, what happened to its total units, not only its ad-attributed units? Needs organic and paid units by SKU by week, so the cannibalization question can be tested.
- What is my TACoS by SKU, and which SKUs are drifting up? Needs total sales by SKU alongside ad spend by SKU, both on an order-date basis.
Fees
- Which SKUs' fulfillment fee per unit stepped up this year, on what date, and by how much? Needs the FBA fulfillment fee posted per order line, so a band change on one SKU is separable from a rate card change on all of them.
- What did referral fees cost me as a percentage of revenue by category, and does any SKU sit in the wrong fee category? Needs referral fee per order line and the category assignment per SKU.
- How much did I pay in refund administration fees last quarter, and on which SKUs? Needs the refund commission line matched to the refund it belongs to. Amazon's Seller Central help page defines the fee as the lesser of $5 or 20 percent of the referral fee on the refunded item.
- What did account-level charges (subscription, storage, inbound placement, low-inventory-level fees) cost per unit sold last month? Needs the "Other" settlement lines allocated across units by a stated rule, so per-SKU margin includes them.
Inventory and storage
- Which SKUs will cross 181 days in FBA before the next monthly snapshot? Needs receipt dates by lot at the warehouse level. Amazon's aged inventory surcharge page says the charge starts at 181 days and is assessed on the fifteenth of each month.
- For each aged SKU, what is the cash contribution of holding versus discounting versus liquidating versus removing? Needs future storage and surcharge rates, velocity, cubic feet per unit, and a price-velocity assumption you supply. Paid COGS is excluded as sunk.
- Which SKUs have less than 28 days of supply at current velocity? Needs on-hand by warehouse, inbound in transit, and a velocity net of stockout days. Amazon's 2026 fulfillment fee page describes a low-inventory-level fee below 28 days of supply.
- What is my inventory value by warehouse at FIFO cost, and how much of it is more than 90 days old? Needs cost layers per receipt, not an average cost.
Returns
- Which SKUs have a return rate above 8 percent over the trailing 90 days, and is it rising? Needs refunds matched to original orders, so the rate uses the right denominator.
- What did returns cost me last month, including unrecovered fulfillment fees and COGS on unsellable units? Needs sellable versus unsellable disposition per return, and the fulfillment fee per order that Amazon does not refund.
- How many refunds last quarter had no unit returned? Needs the refund transaction matched against the returns report, so returnless refunds separate from returned ones.
Pricing
- At what price does each SKU's contribution per unit go to zero, after referral, fulfillment, ad spend per unit, and landed cost? Needs all four per SKU. The floor is a computed figure, not a guess.
- Which SKUs sit within $1 of a fulfillment fee price band boundary? Needs current price per SKU against the $10 and $50 boundaries on Amazon's rate card, where the fee steps.
- When I raised the price on a product in June, what happened to units, margin per unit, and total contribution over the following eight weeks? Needs a price series by day alongside units and contribution by week, on an order-date basis.
Cash
- How much of my contribution last month is sitting in Amazon's reserve rather than in the bank? Needs settlement reconciliation that carries the reserve balance forward and matches deposits to statements.
- If I reorder my top 20 SKUs at last-quoted cost, what is the cash out, and how does that compare to the contribution those SKUs earned over the last lead time? Needs supplier cost by SKU, lead time, and per-SKU contribution over a matching window.
One question, worked
Illustrative numbers. Take question 7 on a single campaign. Spend last month was $1,500. Attributed sales were $3,660, so ACoS is $1,500 divided by $3,660, or 41 percent. The SKU's margin before ads, from reconciled data, is 32 percent: price $24.99, referral $3.75, fulfillment $4.60, landed cost $8.64, contribution $8.00 per unit. Gross profit on the attributed sales is $3,660 times 0.32, or $1,171.20. Net of spend: $1,171.20 minus $1,500 equals negative $328.80. The campaign lost $329 last month, and the console reported a 41 percent ACoS with no verdict attached. The verdict requires the 32 percent, which lives in your books, not in the ad console.
Where the answers come from
Crunch, the analytics AI inside ConnectBooks, answers questions like these from the seller's reconciled data on Amazon and the other synced channels, following the same chain each time: what changed, across which periods, on which products, why, and what to do next. The data it reads is produced by settlement reconciliation into QuickBooks or Xero and the SKU-level profit reports built on it. Nothing on this list is answerable without that layer, whatever tool asks the question.
What no AI can answer from this list
Question 15 depends on a velocity-at-discount assumption and a liquidation recovery figure, and both come from you. Question 25 depends on a supplier quote the ledger does not hold until the PO is entered. Questions 18 through 20 tell you which SKU is bleeding; the reason is in the return comments and the returned units. And none of the 25 produce an action. The price change, the campaign pause, the removal order, and the reorder are yours to make, in Seller Central and with your supplier. The AI's job is to make sure you make them for the right SKU.
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