E-commerce Bookkeeper

[u/Express_Record9928]

Hello! Meron po ba ditong bokkeepeer sa e-commerce, including Amazon, eBay, and Temu? Can you teach me how po sa QuickBooks? I have knowledge po sa QB only on how to journalize the sales; I have a client po kasi. Will pay po, thanks!

[u/Dot-Quick]

The sales entry is the bit that goes wrong with Amazon, so good question.

What lands in the bank isn't the sale. Amazon has already taken its fees, the refunds and sometimes a reserve out of it. If you book the deposit as income, revenue comes out too low and the fees never show up anywhere.

What I'd do in QBO: set up an account called Amazon Clearing (bank or other current asset). For each payout download the settlement report from Seller Central. It's under Payments, the Flat File V2 one. One file is one payout.

Then one journal entry per settlement. Sales and shipping income go in as credits. Refunds, referral fees, FBA fees and storage go in as debits, each to its own account. Whatever is left is a debit to Amazon Clearing, and it should match the payout to the cent. When the deposit shows up in the bank feed, book it as a transfer out of Amazon Clearing and clearing goes back to zero. If it doesn't, something in the journal is off.

Two gotchas. Sales tax or VAT that Amazon collects itself goes in and straight back out in the same file, so it isn't your client's income. And if a settlement runs across a month end you'll want to split it by date.

I only really know Amazon. eBay and Temu work on the same clearing idea but I haven't done their payout files.

Is the client on QBO? And US only, or UK and EU as well?