E-commerce

The platform reports are not your accounts.

Marketplace settlements, multi-channel VAT, stock that lives in someone else's warehouse and fees deducted before the money ever arrives. E-commerce breaks the assumptions most bookkeeping is built on.

What we see

The pattern in this sector.

E-commerce businesses are usually excellent at the numbers the platform gives them and blind to the ones it does not. Seller Central will tell you units, sessions and conversion. It will not tell you your gross margin after fees, advertising, returns and shipping, and that is the number that decides whether growth is worth having.

The recurring pattern is a business that has doubled turnover and made less money. Fees rise with volume, advertising is treated as a cost of doing business rather than a cost of sale, returns are netted off somewhere invisible, and nobody has calculated contribution per product. The profit and loss shows it after the year end, at which point another year has been spent pushing the products that sell rather than the products that pay.

Getting this right starts with the settlement data being properly broken out rather than posted as a lump. Once that is in place, margin by product and by channel is straightforward, and the decisions get considerably easier.

Watch outs

Where it goes wrong.

Settlement accounting. A marketplace payout is a net figure covering sales, refunds, fees, advertising and adjustments, often spanning two periods. Posting the payout as revenue understates turnover, hides the fee load and puts the VAT in the wrong place.

The VAT registration threshold. It is measured on gross sales, not on what lands in your bank. Sellers who watch their payouts rather than their sales cross it later than they think and register late.

Stock you cannot see. Inventory sitting in a fulfilment centre is still yours and still needs valuing at the year end. Getting it wrong moves profit between years and the tax with it.

Overseas sales. Selling into the EU, or holding stock there, brings obligations that have nothing to do with UK VAT. Worth resolving before volume makes it expensive.

What we do

The whole job, on a fixed monthly fee.

Business accounting

Year-end accounts, corporation tax, VAT and payroll, done properly and done early.

Bookkeeping

In-house bookkeepers alongside the accountants, so the numbers are current rather than annual.

Live reporting

Margin by job, product or client, refreshed rather than rebuilt. Where the sector-specific answers actually live.

Finance Partner

A whole finance team on one fixed monthly fee, when you need more than compliance.

Talk to someone who has seen it before.

A first conversation costs nothing and takes about half an hour. We will tell you what we would do and what it would cost.