Reconciling eBay sales to PayPal receipts

TheAbacus

I have a couple of clients selling from their websites and eBay. Pre VAT I was happy to take the PayPal Sales Activity as the monthly turnover, but this does not have the VAT breakdown (selling clothes childs = 0 adults = std).

With VAT registration immanent I have been looking at their systems to check how I can get the VAT details. To do this I have to go back to reports from the ecommerce software/eBay but because sales/invoices can be created 1 or 2 days after the order/payment, and conversely some orders are paid several days later, I am having a problem reconciling the PayPal account at month end.

There is a multitude of apps to link the ecommerce software to the accounting software (QBOL and Sage) but with hundreds, if not thousands, of invoices created in eBay how do I reconcile the bank (PayPal) account? This must be a common problem these days so I am wondering how others do this or if there is an app that would solve the problem.

Also with the introduction of VAT MOSS in January for digital downloads I am wondering how eBay will handle this?

Gem7321

I'm sorry I don't know, just didn't want to read and run! I know from ebay you can get a report which shows 'sold awaiting payment' report but this will only be helpful as at that date, I don't think it is customisable. And I'm sure there must be one for paid awaiting dispatch but again I don't think it will be very helpful unless you run it on the last day of the month.

I have no idea how Ebay will handle MOSS. All I know is that in January I am expecting to receive an invoice from them with 20% VAT instead of having to reverse charge it.

Sorry couldn't be more helpful.

burg

Again I'm not totally sure. You can certainly import from Paypal into Clearbooks etc, which clears out the money in money out for virtually every transaction. Can you use the retail margin scheme in reverse? i.e. work out the split of 0% items to 20% items bought and apply the same percentage to sales for the period. The only 'error' in the calculation will be in stock remaining but it should be fine.

TheAbacus

Thanks Gem for advice on eBay. I will pass that on to my client to check if they can produce these reports.

Regarding VAT MOSS there seems to be very little guidance, even Sage haven’t considered it and support could only suggest editing VAT codes. IF there are digital sales to every EU country that means setting up nearly 30 new codes. Regarding the input tax GOV.UK says:

“The VAT MOSS scheme only allows you to pay output tax on your cross-border B2C supplies. If your VAT MOSS business incurs any input tax related to those supplies in the MSI, you should recover that input tax through your domestic VAT return. If you have a VRN in the MSC, you must reclaim the input tax on your VRN return. If you incur any input tax in an MSC in which you don’t have a VRN, you must reclaim your input tax using the electronic cross-border VAT refund scheme.”

I need to get that translated and hope the charges from eBay, etc., are B2B and the current arrangements still apply.

Thanks also to Burg. One client selling children’s clothes, with some adult that can vary dramatically from one month to the next. I am wondering if the Flat Rate Scheme might be the best way forward for VAT.

I can import from eBay and PayPal but the problem is reconciling hundreds, if not thousands, of transactions and identifying the invoices that have not been paid.