It tells you what the platform paid. It does not tell you whether that matches what you sold — and the difference between those two is where e-commerce margin goes.
Every marketplace provides a settlement report. It is detailed, it arrives on a cycle, and it is usually treated as the record of what happened. It is not. It is the record of what the platform decided to pay, which is a different document.
The reconciliation between what you sold and what you were paid is where short payments, unclaimed returns and fee errors show up. Platforms rarely raise these on your behalf, and the window for disputing them is finite.
Revenue arrives already reduced
A marketplace deducts before remitting: commission, fulfilment and shipping, payment gateway charges, advertising, and the cost of returns. The deduction detail often arrives separately from the money, on its own timetable.
Booked as a single net receipt, the business loses the ability to say what any channel actually earns. Revenue is understated, the deductions never appear as the costs they are, and nothing can be compared against a direct sale.
A channel that looks strong on gross sales can be the one consuming the margin, and a net-receipt entry makes that invisible by construction.
Returns are a cost, not a sales adjustment
A returned order reverses the revenue. It also carries forward shipping, reverse shipping, handling, and stock that may not come back sellable. Treated as a reduction in sales, all of that disappears.
Treated as a cost with a cause, return rate becomes measurable by product and by channel — and return rate is frequently the difference between a profitable line and an unprofitable one in the same catalogue.
What the reconciliation should cover
- Order to settlement, line by line
Every order in the period either settled, pending, returned or short-paid. Unexplained differences listed rather than absorbed.
- Every deduction categorised
Commission, fulfilment, gateway, advertising, penalties, adjustments. Each is a different cost with a different owner.
- Returns and undelivered orders
Quantified separately, with the stock position on each: returned to sellable, returned damaged, or not returned at all.
- Tax collected by the platform
Reconciled to the credit actually available, not assumed to match.
- Inventory across every location
Warehouse, platform fulfilment centres and stores as one position. Stock sitting in a fulfilment centre is still yours.
Do it on the settlement cycle
A difference found in the current cycle can still be raised with the platform. The same difference found at year end usually cannot — the dispute window has closed, and what was a recoverable short payment has become a permanent cost.
That timing is the whole argument for doing this as routine work rather than as an annual exercise.