Reconciling Marketplace Payouts

Marketplace Payouts Are Short of What I Sold. Where Did This Figure Come From?

A payout lands short of what you sold, and somebody asks: where did this figure come from? Between the sale and your bank, the platform takes its commission, a payment fee, a shipping charge and its share of any voucher. It pays the rest on its own schedule, and takes back refunds from a later payout. This page is for the person who has to explain the difference. By the end of it, each marketplace has a balance in your books that equals exactly what the platform still owes you, and you can prove it at month end in about fifteen minutes.

BigLedger records part of this and leaves most of it to you. The page says which part is which.

Meet GadgetSphere Online

GadgetSphere Online Sdn Bhd (GSO) sells on four marketplaces as well as its own storefront. Take one Shopee order: a smartphone invoiced at RM 2,000.00. Nine days later the settlement report shows:

	RM
Order amount	2,000.00
Commission (6 %)	−120.00
Transaction fee (2.1 %)	−42.00
Shipping fee charged to you	−8.00
Paid out	1,830.00

The RM 1,830.00 arrives in the primary bank as part of a weekly transfer covering 312 orders. The RM 170.00 is a cost of selling on Shopee. If nobody books it, it becomes an unexplained difference between your receivables and your bank.

Before you start

You can download each platform’s settlement report from its seller centre.
You can create GL codes in the Chart of Account applet and cashbooks in the Cashbook applet, or know who can.
Marketplace orders are being invoiced. A settlement report can only clear an invoice that exists.

Reconciling a marketplace, at a glance

Set up a clearing cashbook and four accounts for each marketplace, once, with a settlement method whose Charges tab reads NONE so the fees are not taken twice (Step 1). If a Shopee or Lazada payout job is scheduled for the shop, have it set to INACTIVE before the first settlement you book this way, or the money is counted twice (Step 3). When the shop opens, compare one order’s invoice with the settlement report and note which vouchers the invoice already includes (Three things to know first).
Book three documents for each settlement report: a receipt voucher at the gross amount, contra-linked to the invoices the report pays, a purchase invoice from the platform for its deductions, and a payment voucher paying it (Step 2).
Record a Cash Transfer out of the marketplace cashbook when the payout reaches your bank (Step 3).
Prove each marketplace cashbook at month end against what the platform still owes you (Step 4).
Follow each refund into the next payout (Step 5).

The clearing-cashbook method of Steps 1 to 3, end to end:

    flowchart LR
  SO["Sales Order<br/>from the order feed"] -->|"a separate, later step"| SI["Sales Invoice<br/>order price · receivable"]
  RV["Receipt Voucher<br/>gross amount"] -->|"contra-linked"| SI
  RV --> MC["Marketplace cashbook<br/>what the platform owes you"]
  PI["Purchase Invoice<br/>from the platform<br/>the deductions"]
  MC --> PV["Payment Voucher<br/>from the marketplace cashbook"]
  PV -->|"pays"| PI
  MC -->|"Cash Transfer"| BK["Bank cashbook"]
  BK --> BR["Bank Reconciliation"]

The job runs across three pages: Step 1 is on this one, Steps 2 and 3 are on Book each settlement and move the payout, and Steps 4 and 5 are on Prove the balance and follow refunds.

Three things to know first

Until it pays you, the platform is holding your money. Treat it as a bank account you cannot draw on. That one idea is the whole procedure below. Give each marketplace a cashbook of its own, and its balance is what that platform owes you.

Every one of these parties takes a cut before the money reaches your bank. Names differ by platform; the settlement report lists them.

Deduction	Who funds it	Does the buyer see it?
Commission	You	No
Transaction or payment fee	You	No
Shipping charged to you, or a shipping subsidy the platform pays	Either	Only the shipping they paid
Seller-funded voucher	You	Yes, as a discount
Platform-funded voucher	The platform	Yes, as a discount
Campaign or programme fees	You	No

BigLedger’s invoice holds the order price and nothing else. The price is stored at the moment the order feed brings the order in: the item price the channel reports, with no separate discount amount, and never recalculated from a later settlement. Shopee and Lazada orders are always in Malaysian ringgit; a TikTok Shop order takes the currency of its payment, ringgit when none is given. Commission and fees never reach the order or the invoice.

A Shopee or TikTok Shop order keeps the platform’s shipping figure in a field of its own on the sales order, but it is not a line and nothing posts it. The deductions exist only in the platform’s settlement report. Whether a voucher is already inside the item price depends on how the platform reports it. Check one order when a shop opens: compare its invoice with the same order on the settlement report, and write down which vouchers the invoice already includes.

Two methods: choose the one that suits your business

Steps 1 to 5 teach the clearing-cashbook method. A net receipt with a fee journal is the other defensible way: less work, but it leaves part of every invoice open. Your business chooses, on its accountant’s advice.

	Clearing cashbook (Steps 1 to 5)	Net receipt and a fee journal
It suits you when	Several marketplaces or high volume, frequent refunds, and you want fees by type and a balance for what each platform owes you	Few orders per payout, and one fee figure is enough for your accountant
What it does to the books	The gross receipt closes each invoice in full into the clearing account; the fees reach expense through the platform’s supplier invoice; only the Cash Transfer touches the bank	The bank receives the net payout against the invoices, and a journal moves the gap to fee expense. A journal changes the ledger, not the invoices: the customer statement reads each invoice’s open amount and contra links, so the fee share stays open there, and the ledger and the statement disagree by the fees, until your accountant decides what closes it. What the platform owes you has no account of its own
Work per settlement report	A purchase invoice and a payment voucher, a gross receipt per customer, and a Cash Transfer for each payout	A net receipt per customer and one journal

“Per customer” is one receipt only where the shop bills one customer (the branch’s Default Entity). Neither method can use the Shopee payout job’s receipt unchanged (what each costs).

Step 1: Set up four accounts and a cashbook for each marketplace

Chart of Account applet, then Cashbook applet. About ten minutes per marketplace, once.

For Shopee, GadgetSphere creates:

Account	Type	What it holds
`CLEAR-MKT-SHOPEE`	Current asset	What Shopee owes you. This is the account behind the marketplace cashbook
Shopee as a supplier, under `LIAB-SUPPLIER-TRADE`	Payable	The platform’s charges, until they are netted off
`EXPENSE-MKT-COMMISSION`	Expense	Commission and programme fees
`EXPENSE-MKT-SHIPPING`	Expense	Shipping charged to you

Then create a cashbook called Shopee (held by platform), pointing at CLEAR-MKT-SHOPEE, and a settlement method that settles into it. A receipt reaches a cashbook only through the settlement method on its payment line, so the Step 2 receipt depends on this method. Leave its Charges tab at NONE: a charge rate makes every receipt through it land in the cashbook net of the rate, with the rate posted to the company’s settlement-charges account (why). The fees are already on the Step 2 purchase invoice, so a rate would take them twice and the cashbook would stop matching the report.

The expense codes have no marketplace suffix. Each shop is its own branch, and every journal line already carries its branch, so the Sales Report and the ledger can already split commission by channel. The clearing account does carry the suffix, because it is a balance you reconcile separately for each platform, just like CASH-PRI-KV01.

Who: the finance administrator, when a new marketplace shop is opened, and before its first payout.
How you know it is right: the cashbook is on the Cashbook listing under the right company, its settlement method’s Charges tab reads NONE, and Query Cashbook Transaction shows its opening-balance row at zero. Do not look for it on Cash Level yet: Cash Level lists only cashbooks with a transaction in its date range, so a new cashbook has no row there until its first payout (why).

Next: Steps 2 and 3, book each settlement report and move the payout. What BigLedger records when a payout arrives is there too, and it says whether a payout job is already recording receipts for your shop.

Steps 2 to 5, in brief

Step 2: When a settlement report arrives, book three documents

For each settlement report, book a receipt voucher at the gross amount into the marketplace cashbook, contra-linked to the invoices the report pays, a purchase invoice from the platform for its deductions, and a payment voucher paying it. The cashbook’s movement for the report then equals the report’s own net payout (Step 2).

Step 3: When the transfer reaches the bank, move it out of the marketplace cashbook

Record a Cash Transfer from the marketplace cashbook to your bank cashbook, dated the day the money arrived. If the Shopee payout job is scheduled for your shop, stop it before you use this method (Step 3).

Step 4: Prove the balance at month end

On the last day of the month, compare the marketplace cashbook’s balance plus the invoices still open with the platform’s balance still to be paid to you, and name the cause of any difference (Step 4).

Step 5: Follow a refund into the next payout

When a settlement report claws back a refund, record a payment voucher from the marketplace cashbook against the credit note, so every negative line on the month’s reports has one (Step 5).

What BigLedger will not do, and who does it instead

It will not	Who does it instead, and when
Read a settlement report’s deductions	The accounts clerk books them from the report, once per report (Step 2)
Match a Shopee payout to the invoices it pays	The accounts clerk, through the gross receipt’s contra lines (Step 2)
Post a payment gateway’s fee	The accounts clerk, monthly, from the gateway’s own statement. The same clearing shape works: a cashbook for the gateway, whose balance then matches the gateway’s unsettled amount (Best Practices §7)
Convert a foreign-currency payout	Shopee’s receipt takes the payout amount as it stands and labels it ringgit; Shopee’s own payout currency and rate are kept only in the receipt line’s stored details. Lazada orders and receipts are written in ringgit. A TikTok Shop order takes its payment’s currency with no rate written, and its payout is keyed by hand. Shopify and your own storefront are not covered here. The accountant decides whether a payout in another currency needs a gain-or-loss entry, and at which rates; the accounts clerk books it the day the money lands. The check: a Shopee receipt’s amount equals the ringgit on the bank line. A bank charge, or two payouts in one bank credit, look the same as a mislabelled currency, so rule those out first
Report payouts against sales	The month-end comparison in Step 4 is the report

Split the duties. The person who approves refunds in the seller centre should not book the credit notes. The person who books the vouchers should not sign off the month-end comparison. Then a refund nobody can explain shows up as a difference between two people’s records.

What success looks like

At month end, for each marketplace:

The marketplace cashbook’s balance, plus open invoices, equals the platform’s unpaid balance, or every difference has one of the four reasons in Step 4.
Every settlement report in the month has its receipt, purchase invoice and payment voucher.
Every transfer received has a Cash Transfer out of the marketplace cashbook, and no Shopee payout schedule is ACTIVE for a shop you reconcile this way.
Commission and shipping appear in the profit and loss by branch, so each channel’s margin can be read after its costs.
One of the month’s purchase invoices per marketplace, opened in Ledger and Journal, debits EXPENSE-MKT-COMMISSION and EXPENSE-MKT-SHIPPING and nothing else.

Common mistakes

Mistake	What you see	Fix
Treating the net payout as the sale	Sales understated, no fee expense, and invoices left open	Receipt at gross, fees as a purchase invoice (Step 2)
The Shopee payout job left running under the clearing method	Keyed with a Cash Transfer: the bank shows the money twice. Not keyed: the clearing account never falls, and receivables carry credits that match no invoice	Set the shop’s payout schedule INACTIVE before the first report you book this way, and give any receipts it already wrote to your accountant (Step 3)
Receiving the gross amount straight into the bank	The bank reconciliation is short by the fees every week	Receive into the marketplace cashbook; the bank sees only the transfer
Booking a refund only when the goods come back	A clearing balance that drifts down each month	Follow the claw-back into the next report (Step 5)
A charge rate on the marketplace cashbook’s settlement method	The cashbook falls short of each report’s net payout by the rate, and the fees are expensed twice	Set the method’s Charges to `NONE`; the fees belong on the purchase invoice (Step 1)
Adding a marketplace suffix to every expense code	A chart of accounts that grows with every shop	Branch already splits expenses by channel; only the clearing account needs the suffix