An online shop produces several versions of its activity: website orders, marketplace reports, payment settlements, warehouse movements and bank receipts. Company accounting needs these records to explain one coherent business. Copying a platform's payout total into sales can omit refunds, commission and amounts still held by the intermediary.
Define what each source represents before importing data. An order can be cancelled, shipped in stages or paid later. A settlement may combine many orders and deduct fees. Establish identifiers linking the order, invoice, payment, shipment and any return. Keep the commercial invoice process distinct from the platform's own commission invoices.
Prepare a reconciliation from gross sales to refunds, fees, retained balances and bank deposits. Review international orders separately where their tax treatment depends on destination, customer status or the supply chain. A marketplace collecting some tax does not automatically settle every obligation of the seller; establish the facts of each channel.
Consider a hypothetical homeware SL selling on its own website and a marketplace. A customer returns a lamp after the marketplace has already paid the original sale. The business needs the return record, appropriate corrective invoice, later settlement adjustment and warehouse receipt. The bank movement alone cannot show whether the lamp is saleable stock again or damaged inventory.
Inventory control requires a consistent product reference and evidence of purchases, arrivals, dispatches and adjustments. Reconcile physical counts with the system and investigate negative quantities or unexplained shrinkage. Separate the purchase of stock from the cost attributed to goods sold; paying a supplier does not mean every item has already been sold.
Document who approves refunds, discounts and stock write-offs. Monitor transactions that bypass the main system, including manual bank transfers and replacement shipments. Retain downloadable reports before access expires and record changes in platform reporting formats, as these can interrupt a previously reliable reconciliation.
At each close, management should understand sales by channel, settlement balances, returns awaiting resolution and stock differences. These controls make both accounting and commercial decisions more dependable. For a review of your shop's reporting flow, email info@taxdevelopmentconsulting.com with the channels used, fulfilment arrangements and sample report types, without customer personal data.