Payouts aren't sales: how to find your real turnover

1. The short answer

Making Tax Digital and VAT both test your turnover: what customers paid for your sales, after refunds, but before platform fees, payment processing, ads, postage and stock. Fees are expenses. They reduce your profit, not your turnover.

Platforms take those fees before they pay you. So if you add up your payouts or bank deposits, you'll undercount, and that can be the difference between being under a threshold and being over it.

Sources: GOV.UK: Work out your qualifying income for Making Tax Digital · GOV.UK: Register for VAT

2. Why your payouts are lower

• Fees come off first. Selling fees, payment processing, fulfilment and ad charges are deducted before you're paid.
• One deposit, many orders. Each payout is a net total of dozens of sales, refunds and fees, so you can't read your turnover off a bank statement.
• Payouts don't line up with months. A payout can cover sales from two different periods, and some platforms hold money back before releasing it.

Over a year, that seller's bank shows about £34,200. Their turnover is £48,000. That's over the £30,000 line for Making Tax Digital, and over halfway to the £90,000 VAT threshold.

3. Where to find your sales figure on each platform

Use the platform's sales or transaction report, not its payouts or deposits list. Platforms rename menus from time to time, so if a step doesn't match what you see, search the platform's help centre for the report name.

Amazon

In Seller Central, go to Payments, then Reports Repository. Choose the Summary report type and a monthly date range, then request the report. It lists your income (product sales and refunds) separately from Amazon's fees.

eBay

In Seller Hub, open Payments, then Reports, and download the Transaction report for your dates. The gross transaction amount column is each payment before fees. Monthly Statements, under the same menu, summarise orders, refunds, fees and payouts.

Shopify

In your Shopify admin, open Reports and look in the Sales and Finance reports for gross sales, returns and net sales over your period. Shopify Payments payouts have card fees taken off, so don't use those totals.

Etsy

In Shop Manager, go to Settings, then Options, then Download Data. Choose Orders, pick the month and year (leave the month blank for a whole year) and download the CSV.

TikTok Shop

In Seller Center, go to Finance, then Statements, and export. Each daily statement shows Revenue and Fees separately from the Settlement amount you're paid. Use revenue, not settlement. One export covers up to 90 days.

Selling on Vinted or Depop as well? Add those sales from your sales history. Turnover is the total across every platform and your own website, added together.

Sources: eBay: Reconciling your sales transactions · Etsy: Download a spreadsheet of your sold transactions · Shopify: Sales reports

4. Doing it by hand, or automating it

Once a year, downloading these reports into a spreadsheet works. Under Making Tax Digital you'll need the figures every quarter, in digital records, and that's where sellers on more than one platform tend to struggle.

A sales-to-books connector does the splitting for you. It reads each payout from the platform, breaks it back into sales, fees and refunds, and posts that to your accounting software, so your turnover is right and your bank deposits still match.

5. When to get help

It's worth handing this to an accountant if your platform figures won't reconcile, you sell to customers in the EU, or you're close to the £90,000 VAT threshold. Our VAT check works out exactly where you stand.