Marketplace payouts, COD and returns: how D2C brands reconcile without losing a month 

Marketplace and payment reconciliation can run automatically. Settlement and payout files are read and matched to orders, fees and returns. Short payments and wrong fees are listed for follow-up, and clean totals pass to your accounting software. The person who used to do this by hand moves on to the exceptions.

Reconciliation means proving that the money that reached your bank matches the orders you shipped, less the fees, returns and charges you expected to pay.

Why does one person spend most of the month on settlement files?

A D2C brand in India rarely has a single source of money. There may be two or three marketplaces, a payment gateway for the brand's own site, and one or more couriers remitting the cash they collect on delivery. Each sends its own report, on its own schedule and in its own layout.

Someone in accounts downloads these files, pastes them into one large spreadsheet and matches them to orders by hand, looking for the order, the fee, the return and the amount in the bank. Every mismatch means a search through another file. The work is slow, and it starts again every cycle.

The outcome is easy to predict. One month's books close well into the next. Short payments are noticed late, if at all. A marketplace deduction that was wrong in March is still unchallenged in June, simply because nobody had the time to look.

Say a brand ships a few hundred orders a day across two marketplaces and its own site. Even if only a small share of those orders has a problem, that is dozens a day to find, explain and chase. Left until month end, the pile is too large to finish, so most of it is quietly dropped. That dropped money is the real cost of manual reconciliation.

How are payout and settlement files read automatically?

Each report is brought in as it arrives, either by download or from your email. A reader picks out the order number, the sale value, each fee line, any return or refund and the amount paid. Every marketplace uses a different layout, so each source is set up once. From then on it runs without anyone opening the file.

• Marketplace settlement reports, with one layout set up per marketplace.
• Payment gateway payout reports for your own website.
• Courier COD remittance sheets.
• Bank statement lines, so that receipts can be tied to payouts.

Everything lands in one clean table, with a row for each order and each charge. That table is the base for every check that follows.

How are payouts matched to orders, fees and returns?

Each order from your store or order system is matched to its line in the settlement. The match checks the sale value, the commission and fee lines, any shipping charge and any return or refund. It then works out what you should have received and compares that with what was actually paid.

Most orders match and need no attention, which is exactly the point. Nobody should have to read through the thousand orders that are right in order to find the twenty that are not.

Returns need more care. A return can appear in a later settlement than the original sale. The matching links each return back to its order, so a month does not look wrong only because the sale and the return fell in different cycles.

How are short payments and wrong fees queued for follow-up?

Where the amount received is below what was expected, or a fee is higher than your agreed rate, the order goes into a follow-up list. Each entry shows the order, the expected and received amounts, the difference and the reason it was flagged.

A person decides which items are worth chasing and sends the claim, with the facts already gathered in one place. Over time the list also shows which marketplace and which fee type cause the most leakage. That lets you raise the pattern in a proper business conversation rather than one order at a time.

How are COD and non-delivery cases handled?

Cash on delivery adds a gap. The courier collects the cash and remits it later in a batch, and between delivery and remittance that money is out of your hands.

Delivered COD orders are matched to the courier's remittance sheets. Orders that were delivered but not remitted after the number of days you set go to a chase list, with the courier name, the amount and the delivery proof. Orders marked undelivered or returned to origin are checked so that no revenue is booked against them.

Failed deliveries, often called NDR cases, can be listed with their status too, so the customer care team can follow up before the parcel goes back. Strictly that is a customer service step, but it runs on the same order data.

How do clean totals reach your accounting software?

Once the matching is done, the totals are ready: sales, fees, returns, COD in transit and amounts received for each channel. They are prepared in the format your accounting software accepts, such as Tally or Zoho Books, so the entries go in without anyone re-typing them.

Your accountant reviews the totals and the exception list before anything is posted. Tax treatment, such as how marketplace fees and returns appear in your GST records, stays with your accountant and Chartered Accountant. The automation prepares the figures. It does not decide the tax position.

Timing matters here. Marketplaces usually allow only a limited window to raise a dispute, and that window is set in your seller agreement. A list updated every day lets you raise a claim while the window is still open. A list built once a month often finds the problem after it has closed. Check the dispute period in each of your agreements and enter it during setup.

Keep a record of each claim as well: when it was raised, what was asked for and what came back. Without one, the same short payment gets chased twice or forgotten altogether.

What does the monthly close look like afterwards?

Matching runs as the files arrive, so by the end of the month most of the work is already done. The close turns into a review: check the totals, clear the exceptions and post the entries. The person who used to build the spreadsheet now works the follow-up list and deals with the marketplaces.

1. List every source of money: marketplaces, gateway, couriers and bank.
2. Collect one recent report from each and set up reading for them.
3. Match one past month and compare the result with your manual figures.
4. Fix the differences, then move the current month to the automatic run.
5. Add the follow-up lists and the posting to your accounting software.

We do this for you. We scope it, build it, connect it to the tools you already run, train your accounts person and keep it running. Your accounts person approves everything that is posted.

Rules, rates and dates change. Check the current position with your Chartered Accountant before you act.