What makes ecommerce books hard
Online sellers deal with borders every day. Stock bought overseas carries import tax that is claimed from the customs document, not the supplier’s invoice. Offshore platforms and apps often shouldn’t charge a registered business local tax at all. And the platform fees themselves are routinely booked to cost of goods sold, which distorts gross margin.
What ExpenseFlow checks on an ecommerce invoice
- Marketplace and processor fees are recognised from the line description and coded as operating expenses, not cost of goods sold, in every country it covers.
- Overseas-billed fees are flagged as imported services that may fall under the reverse charge or self-assessment rules in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada or Singapore.
- Overseas goods suppliers are flagged so the import tax credit is claimed from the customs document for your country, not the invoice.
- Other cross-border invoices from a supplier not registered in your country are flagged as carrying no local input tax credit, to be recorded as a foreign expense.
Everything else it does on every invoice
- Captures supplier invoices, broker statements and platform statements by email forward, upload or phone.
- Reads line items and the invoice currency.
- Codes each line to an account and tax code, with a written reason and a confidence score.
- Routes uncertain lines to a review queue with roles and per-row approvals before anything posts.
- Syncs after approval to Xero with the source document attached, or to QuickBooks Online as a coded bill.
What it does not do
It does not reconcile marketplace payouts to orders, value stock, compute the reverse charge or file your return.