It is yours
Your columns, your logic, your assumptions, changeable in a second. Nothing here beats that.
AMZ Verdict vs a spreadsheet
Your spreadsheet does the arithmetic perfectly. That was never the hard part.
Almost every seller starts with a profit and loss model in Sheets or Excel, and it is a sensible place to start. The arithmetic in it is not wrong. The rates you typed into it are.
What a spreadsheet is genuinely good at
The maths is exact
Subtraction is subtraction. We are not claiming a better calculator, and there is no such thing.
It costs nothing
And it will keep working for as long as you keep it up to date — which is the entire question.
Here is what one wrong rate does
Almost every hand-built model uses one flat referral rate across the whole catalogue — usually 15%, because that is the rate most Amazon categories charge and nobody maintains 52 European and 31 US category rates by hand. Here is that assumption against the published rate, on Amazon Device Accessories in Germany — the same product on our home page.
A spreadsheet at a flat 15%
Net price after VAT€20.92
Referral fee assumed−€3.14
Everything else−€9.65
Contribution €8.14
Looks like a business
The published rate for this category
Net price after VAT€20.92
Referral fee, actual (54%)−€11.21
Everything else−€9.65
Contribution €0.07
Don’t
Same price, same costs, same arithmetic. One number was wrong, and the model overstated what you keep by €8.07 a unit — about 114 times over. Every other line in both columns is identical.
The five things a spreadsheet structurally cannot do
Not because it is a bad tool. Because these are not arithmetic problems.
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Know the referral rate for your exact category, in your exact marketplace
Amazon publishes 52 category rates in Germany alone and 31 in the US, and the lists differ by marketplace. Italy prices supplements separately at 5%; the US folds them into Beauty at 8%.
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Tell a cliff tier from a marginal one
Amazon uses both, and its own wording is the only test. “Up to X” charges the higher rate on the whole price; “for the portion up to X” charges it on the portion. One of those creates a price band where earning more leaves you with less.
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Resolve your size tier from real dimensions
Fulfilment is priced on a band derived from length, width, height and weight against published definition tables that differ per region — and there are three separate US grids for standard goods, apparel and dangerous goods.
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Get the VAT basis right
Contribution has to be calculated on the price excluding VAT, but Low-Price fulfilment eligibility and the referral cliff boundaries are tested on the price including it. Same product, two bases, and mixing them moves the answer.
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Change when Amazon changes
Rates move. A spreadsheet is exactly as current as the last afternoon someone spent updating it, and it never tells you it has gone stale.
Keep your spreadsheet
Seriously. It holds things we never will — your supplier terms, your cash flow, your own way of thinking about a range. Export any product here to Excel in six sheets and paste it straight in. What you get from us is the 2026 rate tables and a verdict, not a replacement for how you work.