Prove a marketplace cashbook at month end and follow refunds

Steps 4 and 5 of reconciling marketplace payouts: prove at month end that each marketplace cashbook, plus the invoices no settlement report has covered yet, equals what the platform still owes you, and follow each refund into the payout that claws it back. It follows Steps 2 and 3, where each settlement report and each transfer was booked. The running example is GadgetSphere Online’s Shopee shop (Meet GadgetSphere Online). Split the duties: the person who approves refunds in the seller centre should not book the credit notes, and the person who books the vouchers should not sign off the month-end comparison (What BigLedger will not do).

1. Step 4: prove the balance at month end.
2. Step 5: follow a refund into the next payout.

Step 4: Prove the balance at month end

Cashbook applet, Cash Level, and the seller centre. About fifteen minutes per marketplace.

On the last day of the month, compare two figures:

• Your side: the marketplace cashbook’s balance at month end, plus the invoices on that marketplace branch that are still open because no settlement report has covered them yet. The Outstanding Document report in the Debtor and Creditor Report lists those invoices as a live figure, worked out when you click SEARCH, so read it on the day you compare. On Cash Level, set From before the cashbook’s first line and To to the last day of the month, and read Closing; the screen opens at today → today and lists only cashbooks with a line in that range (why). Query Cashbook Transaction gives the same figure on its last row, but only once From is moved on or before month end as well as To: it also opens at today.
• The platform’s side: the seller centre’s balance still to be paid to you, whatever it calls it, plus any amount it is holding.

If they differ, the cause is almost always one of four things, in this order:

1. A cycle boundary. Orders completed at month end that the platform settles next cycle. The difference clears itself in the next report. Note it, and carry on.
2. A held order. An order under dispute or review that the platform has not released. Check the seller centre’s list of held orders.
3. A refund clawed back from a report you have not booked yet (Step 5).
4. A fee charged late, such as a campaign or programme fee billed separately from the order settlements. Book it as in Step 2.

• Who: the accounts clerk prepares the comparison. The finance manager reviews it and signs it off, and should be someone who did not book the vouchers.
• How you know it is right: every difference is on a written list with one of those four reasons, and the list is shorter than last month’s. Do not close the month on an unexplained difference. Carry it on the list until it is found.

Which of the three numbers to trust. You hold three figures for the same money: the platform’s settlement report, the transfer on your bank statement, and your own invoices in BigLedger. Each is the one to trust for a different question.

• The bank transfer, for how much money you have. It is the only one of the three that neither side can revise afterwards. If the settlement report’s net payout and the bank line differ, the bank is right about the cash, and the report is what needs explaining: a transfer covering two reports, a bank charge, or a report you have not booked yet.
• The settlement report, for why the money is less than the sale. It is the only place the commission, fees and claw-backs exist. But it is the platform’s own account of what it owes you, so check its rates against your seller agreement once a quarter, and remember a later report can take money back (Step 5).
• Your invoices, for what you sold. They hold the order price the channel reported when the order arrived, and nothing about what was deducted. If the settlement report lists an order your invoices do not have, look for its sales order first. An order arrives in BigLedger as a sales order, and the invoice is a separate, later step. If the sales order is there, the order simply has not been invoiced yet. Only if there is no sales order is the order missing from BigLedger, and then the order feed is the place to look (Running an Online Channel, Step 8), not the payout.

So when two of them disagree, do not adjust the one you trust to match the other. Explain the other.

• Who: the accounts clerk, while preparing the month-end comparison. The finance manager decides when a difference is the platform’s error and has to be raised with it.
• How you know it is right: every difference on the written list names which number was wrong and why, and none was closed by changing the bank figure.

Step 5: Follow a refund into the next payout

A buyer returns a phone after Shopee has paid you for it. Shopee refunds the buyer and takes the money back from your next settlement, as a negative line.

1. When the goods have been inspected, raise the credit note against the original invoice (Running an Online Channel, Step 4).
2. When the settlement report shows the claw-back, record a Payment Voucher from the Shopee cashbook refunding the customer, contra-linked to that credit note. The cashbook falls by the refund, just as Shopee’s next transfer will.
3. If Shopee also refunds part of its commission, reduce the next purchase invoice from Shopee as a supplier by that amount.

• Who and when: the accounts clerk who books that platform’s settlement reports records the payment voucher while booking the report that carries the claw-back (Step 2), in the same sitting. The credit note in point 1 is raised by accounts once the stock keeper confirms the inspection. If the claw-back arrives before the credit note exists, the clerk notes the order against that report and books the voucher the day the credit note is raised.

• How you know it is right: every negative line on the month’s settlement reports has a payment voucher against a credit note. Any refund without one means your sales are overstated.

What success looks like for this part

The marketplace cashbook’s balance, plus open invoices, equals the platform’s unpaid balance, or every difference is on a written list with one of the four reasons in Step 4, none was closed by changing the bank figure, and the month is not closed on an unexplained one; and every negative line on the month’s settlement reports has a payment voucher against a credit note. Then run the whole task’s success check: its checks 4 and 5 read the profit and loss, which this part does not.

Common mistakes in this part

The task’s common mistakes are one table on the front page. For these steps, read first the row on booking a refund only when the goods come back.

Related documentation

• Reconciling Marketplace Payouts: the whole task, with its success check and the common mistakes.
• Debtor and Creditor Report and Cashbook Applet: the two figures Step 4 compares.
• Running an Online Channel: returns, and whether a channel pays.