How to audit an Amazon DSP fleet invoice

What a fleet invoice contains

A fleet invoice is a list of charges, one or more lines per van. Each line usually has a unit number or VIN, a description, a charge type and an amount. Lease and rental lines cover a billing period, often the calendar month. Other lines are one-off: excess mileage, damage repairs, maintenance, tolls and admin fees, and sales tax at the bottom.

Whether your vans come through a fleet management company or a rental agency, nobody checks the invoice against your own records unless your team does. The fleet company bills from its system. It doesn't know a van sat at a body shop for nine days unless that shows up in its records too.

Gather four records first

Every check below compares the invoice with something you wrote down. If a record is missing, that check turns into a guess, and a dispute built on a guess usually gets denied.

1. The van list with status history: every van, its unit number and VIN, and the dates it was in service, grounded, in the shop or retired.
2. Repair orders with dates: when each repair was opened, approved, dropped at the shop and finished, with the estimate and the final amount.
3. AMP coverage notes: for each repair, whether your team confirmed that Amazon's maintenance program covers it or that the DSP pays.
4. The invoice itself, ideally as the CSV or spreadsheet export rather than a PDF, so you can sort and filter it.

If your status history lives in a group chat, pull it into one sheet before you start: van, status, start date and time, end date and time, reason. It is the record you will use most.

Check 1: charges while a van was grounded or in the shop

For each van that was down during the billing period, count the days it was down. Count a day only when the van was grounded or in the shop for most of that day. A van that went to the shop at 4 PM and came back the next morning was not down for two days.

Then skip short outages. A van down for one or two days is rarely credited, and chasing it costs more than it returns. A reasonable floor is three down days in the period.

For the vans left, the amount to ask about is the line amount times the down days, divided by the days in the billing period. In the sample data, V407 was in the shop 9 days of a 31-day month on a $1,450.00 lease, so the amount to ask about is $1,450.00 × 9 ÷ 31 = $420.97.

Whether that money is owed depends on the contract. Rentals usually bill by the day, and a broken rental should be swapped or taken off rent, so a rental charge for a down van is a strong claim. Lease contracts differ on downtime credits. Read yours before you dispute a lease line.

Check 2: retired or unknown vans

Match every line's unit number or VIN to your van list. Two kinds of lines fall out.

• A van you retired or turned in. If it was gone before the billing period started, the whole line is in question. If it left partway through, the lease or rental share after the return date is.
• A unit or VIN that isn't on your list at all. Before you dispute it, make sure it isn't a loaner or a new van nobody entered yet.

Turn-in charges such as damage or mileage on a retired van are different: they may cover use before the van left, so check the dates on the line before you count them.

Check 3: duplicate lines on one invoice and across invoices

Sort the invoice by unit, then by description. Two identical lines for the same van, same charge and same period are a duplicate on one invoice. Then put this month's invoice next to any adjustment or supplemental invoice from the same company and look for the same charge billed on both.

Be careful with tolls and small fees. Two tolls of the same amount on the same day can be real. A monthly lease line billed twice for the same period almost never is.

In the sample data, V401's $42.50 excess mileage charge appears on both the monthly invoice and an adjustment invoice for the same month.

Check 4: AMP-covered repairs billed to you

For each repair your team marked as covered by AMP, look for a maintenance or damage line on the same van around the repair dates. The strongest match is a line whose description carries the shop's reference or your repair order number. A weaker match is a line within the repair window whose amount is close to the repair's final cost.

In the sample data, a rear axle seal repair on V407 was marked AMP covered, and the adjustment invoice billed it anyway: $718.00, with the shop's reference in the description.

This check is only as good as the coverage notes. If nobody recorded coverage when the repair was approved, settle it with the fleet company before you dispute anything.

Check 5: repairs finished above the estimate

Compare each completed repair's final cost with the estimate you approved. A small overrun is normal. Flag the ones that finished more than 10 percent and at least $25 above the estimate.

Shops need approval to go over an estimate, but approval sometimes happens by phone and never reaches the paperwork. Before you dispute, ask whoever handles repairs whether they approved the extra work. In the sample data, an alternator repair estimated at $420.00 finished at $515.00, $95.00 over.

Writing the dispute and the evidence to attach

One dispute per problem works better than one long email about everything. Each one should say which invoice and line, what is wrong, the amount you are asking for and how you worked it out.

Attach the evidence as a small spreadsheet rather than screenshots: the invoice line, the status history rows that overlap the period, the repair order with its dates and coverage. Whoever reviews it can check your arithmetic without asking you for more.

Fleet charges are disputed with the fleet company, and some go through Amazon support. Follow the process in your own agreements; this guide doesn't replace them.

Tracking it until the credit posts

Keep a list of every dispute: date filed, who you filed with, their reference, the amount claimed, and the outcome. When a credit arrives, record the amount and the date, even when it is partial. When a claim is denied, write down the reason, because it tells you which checks to tighten next month.

Check the list every week. Credits often arrive as a line on a later invoice rather than as a payment, which is easy to miss.

Download the worksheet

The worksheet below has one row per check, with what to compare and what to write down. Download it as a CSV for your spreadsheet, or print this page.

How SXT Ops handles this

On the Station + Back office plan ($699 per station per month), SXT Ops runs these five checks every time a fleet invoice is imported, using the van status history and repair orders your team already keeps in it. Each finding shows its evidence rows and the arithmetic, a dispute draft comes with the evidence as a CSV, and you track it until the credit posts. SXT Ops never files a dispute or contacts the fleet company; a person on your team does that.

The downtime check is only as good as your van status records; the grounded van guide covers keeping them. See the checks on Payment gaps, estimate your own numbers with the payment gap calculator, or bring one station to the pilot.