E-commerce bookkeeping: platforms, payouts and GST

Why the bank deposit is not your sales number

Take that $8,540 payout as an illustration. Behind it might sit $9,600 of orders, less $610 of platform and payment fees, less $370 of refunds, less $80 of chargebacks and adjustments. Book the deposit straight as $8,540 of sales and your revenue's understated, your fees are invisible, and the GST on the true sales figure is wrong. Multiply that across every payout on every channel and the accounts drift a long way from reality.

Gross sales, fees, refunds and adjustments each need recording in their own right, with the net payout simply clearing the balance. That's what a clearing account structure does.

Clearing accounts: one per channel

Each sales channel gets its own clearing account. Sales settlement data posts the gross figures into the clearing account, and the bank deposit clears it out. If the clearing account doesn't return to near zero each cycle, something's been missed: an unrecorded fee, a refund, a timing difference, a missing payout.

• Post gross sales, fees, refunds and adjustments from the platform's settlement or payout reports, not from the bank feed.
• Match each bank deposit against the relevant clearing account rather than coding it straight to sales.
• Reconcile each channel's clearing account monthly at minimum, weekly for high volume stores.
• Use connector tools where the volume justifies them, but check their postings, because a misconfigured integration automates errors at scale.
• Keep channels separate in reporting so you can see margin by channel after each platform's fees.

GST across platforms, imports and exports

GST in e-commerce has more moving parts than a shopfront ever does. Domestic sales by a GST registered business generally carry 10 percent GST, but the details multiply fast: some marketplaces collect and remit GST on certain sales themselves, imported stock can involve GST at the border, low value imported goods run their own regime, and genuine exports may be GST-free. Which of these applies to your store depends on your channels, your customers and your supply chain, so map your actual flows against current ATO guidance or sit down with an adviser rather than assuming one rule covers everything.

The practical bookkeeping consequence: GST coding needs deciding per channel and per transaction type, and platform settlement reports, which usually itemise the tax treatment applied, are the source documents worth holding onto.

Inventory, refunds and the other recurring characters

Stock is usually an e-commerce store's largest asset, and cost of goods sold its largest cost, so how inventory gets tracked determines whether your margin figures mean anything at all. Periodic stocktakes with adjustment journals suit smaller operations; perpetual inventory systems suit scale. Either way, landed cost matters: freight, duties and import charges belong in the cost of your stock, not lost in general expenses, or every margin report flatters you.

Refunds and chargebacks deserve their own accounts rather than being netted silently against sales, because their trend is diagnostic: rising refund rates flag product or fulfilment problems, rising chargebacks flag payment risk. Multi currency sales add another layer, with exchange differences to record as foreign currency payouts convert. None of this is difficult individually; the trap is volume, which is why structure and automation matter more here than in most industries.

Channel level clarity every month

NextEra sets up e-commerce clients with per channel clearing accounts, settlement based revenue recording and management reports that show sales, fees and margin by channel. Bank deposits currently standing in for your sales figures? A Strategic Finance Review will quantify the gap and set up a structure that reports the business as it really trades.