How to See Your Total Amazon Spending

Tracking your Amazon spending offers valuable insights for personal financial management, aiding in budgeting, expense categorization, and overall financial planning. Understanding where your money goes can help identify spending patterns, optimize future purchases, and provide necessary documentation for various financial purposes. This includes preparing for tax season or simply satisfying curiosity about past expenditures.

Viewing Your Basic Order History

Accessing your recent Amazon purchases is a straightforward process through your account. Navigate to the Amazon website and locate the “Returns & Orders” section. Clicking this link will display a summary of your most recent orders, usually defaulted to the past three months of activity.

From this “Your Orders” page, you can easily adjust the displayed timeframe using a dropdown menu, allowing you to view purchases from specific years. Each order entry provides basic information such as the item purchased, the purchase date, and the total price paid. This view offers a quick overview but does not allow for direct data export or detailed analysis.

This access is useful for checking the status of a recent delivery, initiating a return, or finding specific items. You can also utilize a search bar to find particular orders by keywords like product name or order number. This method is ideal for quick checks.

Generating a Detailed Order History Report

For a more comprehensive review of your spending, Amazon provides a feature to generate detailed order history reports. This process involves requesting your data through Amazon’s “Privacy Central” service, which differs from simply viewing orders on the “Your Orders” page. You will find a link to “Request your data” within your account settings.

Upon reaching the data request page, select “Order History” as the type of data you wish to receive. After submitting your request, Amazon will send a confirmation email to verify your identity and authorize the data compilation.

Once confirmed, Amazon begins preparing your data, which can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending on the volume of your purchase history. You will receive another email notification when your report is ready for download. The report is typically provided as a ZIP file containing multiple CSV (Comma Separated Values) files.

Interpreting and Using Your Spending Data

Once you have downloaded the ZIP file containing your order history, extract the CSV files to access your data. These files can be opened using common spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, which organize the information into rows and columns. Each column represents a specific detail about your purchase, such as the Order Date, Order ID, Title, Category, Subtotal, Shipping & Handling, Sales Tax, and the Total amount paid.

Analyzing this data allows for detailed financial insights beyond what the basic online view provides. You can sort and filter your purchases by date ranges, item categories, or total amounts to identify spending trends or unexpected costs. Separating sales tax amounts can be useful for financial reconciliations or business reporting.

For individuals operating a business, this detailed report is valuable for identifying deductible expenses. Purchases such as inventory, office supplies, equipment, and shipping materials can be categorized for tax purposes, aiding in the preparation of tax forms like Schedule C. Maintaining clear records from these reports can help substantiate business deductions.