Which eBay Reports to use for eBay Seller Bookkeeping?

If you're looking for a quick guide of which eBay reports to use to account for your eBay sales, refunds and fees without loads of waffle, then you're in the right place.

Let's dive straight in...

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DISCLAIMER

We are not Tax Advisors and so our advice and suggestions on the application of tax rules cannot be construed as tax advice. We highly recommend that users seek advice from qualified accountants for their tax compliance.

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What figures do we need?

Firstly, taking a step back, let's have a think about what figures you actually need for accurate bookkeeping of your eBay sales.

You will need the following:

• Sales (by destination country)
• Refunds (by destination country)
• eBay Fees

The reason you need sales and refunds split by destination country is because they may need to be treated differently for VAT based on this. For example a sale going to a UK customer would typically incur 20% VAT but a sales going to a customer outside the UK is classed as an export and as such is typically zero rated for UK VAT.

Depending on where your business is established you may also need to take into account sales where eBay is responsible for collecting and remitting the VAT directly to HMRC too. We can discuss this more later.

Where to obtain these figures?

eBay recently made some upgrades to their Managed Payments Payout report so the data we need is all in there now.

Payout report

Your Payout report provides a summary of your payouts for a specific date range. Here’s how to download your Payout report:

1. Go to the Payments tab in Seller Hub.
2. From the menu on the left, select Reports.
3. Select the Reports tab.
4. Select Payout report from the dropdown menu.
5. Select the Start and End date.
6. Select Create report next to the report you would like to download.

The payout report contains the following columns which we will use:

• Transaction creation date
• Type
• Post to country
• Item subtotal
• Postage and packaging
• eBay collected tax
• Final value fee – fixed
• Final value fee – variable
• Very high 'item not as described' fee
• Below standard performance fee
• International fee

What to do with these figures?

Now that you have the figures from the payout report you can begin to enter them into your accounting software or spreadsheet.

Since eBay collect VAT on some sales but not others you will need to sum up your sales into the following categories:

• Sales shipped to the UK (Seller VAT Responsible) - Typically 20% VAT
• Sales shipped to the UK (eBay VAT Responsible) - Typically zero rated
• Sales shipped outside the UK - Typically zero rated

To do so follow this logic...

Sales shipped to the UK (Seller VAT Responsible) are those where:

• Post to country is GB
• eBay collected tax is blank

Sales shipped to the UK (eBay VAT Responsible) are those where:

• Post to country is GB
• eBay collected tax contains a value

Sales shipped outside the UK are those where:

• Post to country is not GB

Sales

To find your sales figure firstly filter the report to show only "Order" types in the Type column. Then total up the following columns:

• Item subtotal
• Postage and packaging

Refunds

To find your refunds figure firstly filter the report to show only "Refund" types in the Type column. Then total up the following columns:

• Item subtotal
• Postage and packaging

Fees

To find your fees figure firstly filter total up the following columns:

• Final value fee – fixed
• Final value fee – variable
• Very high 'item not as described' fee
• Below standard performance fee
• International fee

VAT on most eBay fees is 20% but you should double check your monthly eBay fees invoice to ensure you do not have any that are zero rated.

Alternatives to doing this manually?

As you may be seeing by now, doing this manually is going to take time and patience and even so it is going to be pretty susceptible to human error.

Most eBay sellers decide that this task is something they don't want to spend much time on each month. So what are your options if you too decide this?

1. Get your accountant/bookkeeper to do it
2. Use software to automate it

Using an accountant or bookkeeper

If you use an accountant or bookkeeper then this will definitely save you some time. The downside is that they will charge you per hour for doing so. The likelihood is that it will take them just as much time as it would have taken you and this could easily end up costing you a few hundred pounds per month.

Using software

Using software would be most eBay sellers preferred choice. This is quick, accurate and cost effective. One such tool is Link My Books.

Link My Books hooks up directly to your eBay account and accounting software such as Xero or QuickBooks and posts summaries of each of your eBay payouts following the same format as we discussed above.

It's trusted by thousands of sellers and is rated 4.9/5 on average across hundreds of reviews.

You can try Link My Books for free here.

Wrap up

Knowing which reports to use and where to find them is just the beginning. Picking them apart and putting all your sales, refunds and fees figures together correctly is the hard part.

If you have the time and patience to learn the process then do so.

Most sellers value their time enough to want to either outsource this task or automate it.

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