I’ve been packing orders today and notice my payment balance is not updating (orders showing up in transaction view, but my payment balance remains zero). Also gone is the message that has been at the top of the Payments Dashboard for a few weeks, telling us the “latency” issue from a few weeks ago has been cured. So, at least for me, the latency has returned. I wonder if this means there’s an update in progress. I’m afraid we should be afraid, very afraid.
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Updates on a Friday of a holiday weekend are an awesome idea so you’re probably right. They are tinkering with something.
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Just noticed that there is a balance showing on the seller mobile app, but everything else is zero. I can’t request the balance there, and “net proceeds” is zero. Unnerving.
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On the desktop version, we have been having to refresh one to two times to get all of the widgets to load.
Amazon is probably getting close to pushing out the new GUI on Seller Central.
It’s not 5pm in California yet … have to wait until everyone is walking out the door.
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Not seeing any performance issues here on desktop.
Been on all day doing a variety of things.
3AM is probably a better time.
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So the balance is finally updating. That note at the top being gone still seems like a harbinger.
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Things have been wonky-er than usual on Seller Central… 
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Latency is fundamental to transaction processing systems like Amazon’s. The amount of latency varies with system load, the number of active servers and communications bandwidth.
The number of servers online may vary, system maintenance activities and the number of transactions may impact what you see.
Rarely is there anything about the software that requires fixing that is specific to what is being observed.
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And yet, they were able to do something a few weeks ago that took the latency away. In recent weeks, totals had been updating faster than ever before. Things seem to be back to normal right now.
Longtime Amazon FBM sellers have experienced numerous incidents over the years where the totals did not update, sometimes for nearly an entire day, and not necessarily during a time when one would expect the system to be overloaded, such as on Black Friday or Prime Day. So it’s not just the number of transactions or bandwidth. It’s happened too many times for them not to know exactly how to prevent it from happening again.
If Amazon were a small company with limited resources, it might be easier to accept. But Amazon is a wildly wealthy behemoth with untold computing capacity, so there is no excuse for long delays in seeing accurate seller payments. Whenever that happens, I picture the worst finally occurring: That it goes on so long that some payments for shipped orders somehow “disappear” and I never get paid. It would not surprise me in the least.
I’m not going to get into a long discussion about computer systems engineering. I just know Amazon can fix it when it wants to, like it did recently.
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More likely to be a reduction in overall activity on the site than any change made.
Amazon regularly limits its use of computer capacity. The delay on Prime Video before a movie starts or a menu is displayed varies greatly. Even with a megabit connection from here.
Your backend issue is likely to have generated under a 1% complaint rate. The only performance issue which has any traction when there are complaints is when the buyer places an order, and the Amazon system is optimized for that function.
This is an engineering issue, and the Amazon uses a system which is designed for processing orders in real-time and doing nothing else in real-time.
This is an approach which has been used for online order processing systems for over 50 years.
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Latency is baaaaaaack! For me at least. I’ve been packing books all day (it is now nearing 2:30 here in California) and only charges are showing in my balance, no credits whatsoever. All my shipping labels, infuriating postage “adjustments” and even the monthly $39.99 are all there. All red. I really hate when this happens, because someday I just know I’m not going to get paid what I am owed.
Anyone’s else balance not updating?
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We ourselves rely more on downloaded reports & API queries for accounting purposes than we do on any of Seller Central’s GUIs - but I do take a gander at the Seller Central Dashboard widgets on a daily basis, and it appears to me that there’s been some tinkering going on since last Friday, 060625, with @ least the Payments, B-SM, & Advertising widgets.
I suspect that the looming-nearer 061825 deprecation of the current SC Dashboard in favor of the Next Gen Selling/Seller Experience Lab (link, SAS) replacement is likely the main culprit in that…
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