E-commerce accounting: receipts, returns and several channels

Online sales rarely run through a single channel. A shop on your own domain, a marketplace account, sometimes shipping from a partner's warehouse — plus several different ways of taking payment. In accounting terms this is not one stream but several, each reporting amounts differently and releasing the money at a different moment.

Start with a map of your channels

Before you calculate anything, list every place where a sale originates and establish four things for each: who the buyer is, when the tax point arises, who collects the money and which document confirms the transaction.

• Your own shop with online payment — money arrives from the operator in batches, usually already net of the fee.
• A marketplace — the platform often acts as payment intermediary, and the settlement arrives as a periodic report rather than a single transfer.
• Cash on delivery — several days separate the release of the goods from the arrival of the money, because the carrier sits in between.
• Collection in store — a cash register comes into play, along with a separate retail sales record.

Selling to a consumer versus selling to a business

This distinction determines the document. An individual customer generally receives a receipt, or an invoice if they ask for one. A business receives an invoice, but if the sale was first recorded on a cash register, the invoice can only be issued against a receipt that carries the buyer's tax identification number. This cannot be fixed later, so the field for that number belongs in the checkout, not in the exchange with customer support.

Exemptions from cash register obligations are a separate matter. Mail-order sales paid by bank transfer can be exempt, but only where the records and the payment evidence show unambiguously which transaction a given payment relates to. That record is not a formality — without it the exemption simply does not apply.

Returns, complaints and partial cancellations

In online retail a return is a normal part of the process, not an exception. For receipt-based sales you keep a separate register of returns and accepted complaints, with the reason and proof of purchase. For invoices you issue a correction, and the moment it is recognised depends on when the conditions for the price reduction were agreed and met.

1. Set one cut-off date in the month up to which returns still fall into the current period.
2. Link every return to the original document — an order number in the description is not enough, you need the receipt or invoice number.
3. Separate the refund of the goods from the refund of the delivery cost; the rate is sometimes different.
4. Check whether the payment operator also returned its fee — usually it does not, and that is a separate cost to record.

Platform fees and costs

The marketplace commission, the gateway charge and the shipping cost are three different items that are easy to merge into one. The amount you see in your account is already net of deductions, so revenue has to be recognised at the gross value of the sale and the deductions recorded separately as costs. A shop that books only the net inflows to its bank account understates revenue and, a year later, has an unpleasant conversation with its accountant.

Then there are the invoices from foreign platforms. A service purchased from an entity in another country usually has to be settled as an import of services, and dealing with EU counterparties requires registration for intra-Community transactions. It is routine, but it is exactly the routine that is easiest to forget in the first year of trading.

How to tie it together without retyping

The practical goal is singular: every order, from every channel, should enter your records with the same set of fields — number, date, value, rate, payment method and status. Then closing the month means reviewing the exceptions rather than stitching together reports from four places.

• Keep one dictionary of tax rates for all channels instead of mapping them separately in each shop.
• Match payments to orders automatically by payment identifier rather than by amount.
• Once a month reconcile each payment operator's balance with your records — a difference always has a cause, and it is always worth finding straight away.

In Księgowskaz, orders from different sources land in one sales register, and Księgowskaz POS uses the same product catalogue for in-store sales. The same item sold online and over the counter is therefore a single record rather than two separate ones that have to be reconciled afterwards.

In e-commerce, sales are not what goes missing. Context is — which transfer belonged to which order.