eBay Bookkeeping Without a Sync Subscription
Fee types, funds on hold, postage VAT and payouts. What A2X and Link My Books do for you, and how to get the same books without a second monthly bill.
Quick answer
An eBay payout is a net figure with gross sales, ten kinds of fee, postage labels, refunds, collected tax and funds still on hold folded inside it, so booking the deposit as income is wrong in four directions at once. Doing it properly means splitting the fee types, treating held funds as a debtor rather than a cost, recognising that a charge pulled from your bank is money moving into the balance rather than an expense, and coding postage by VAT treatment: Royal Mail universal service is exempt, Tracked and courier services are standard rated, and getting that wrong cost one real seller close to two thousand pounds of input tax in a single month. CodeIQ does this from the eBay export and posts to Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or Pandle at no extra charge, so there is no separate per-channel subscription to keep.
Why the deposit is never the sales figure
An eBay payout is a net number. Somewhere inside it are the gross sales, ten different kinds of fee, the postage labels you bought, the refunds you issued, the tax eBay collected on your behalf, and whatever was still on hold when the payout ran. Booking the deposit as income gets you a turnover figure that is wrong, a cost of sale of zero, and no input tax on any of it.
That is the problem A2X and Link My Books exist to solve, and they solve it properly. The question worth asking is whether it needs to be a second monthly subscription sitting between your marketplace and your ledger, or whether the software doing the bookkeeping should simply understand eBay.
The five things that go wrong
1. Every fee in one bucket
Final value fees, the variable element, regulatory operating fees, international fees, below standard performance fees, very high not-as-described fees, promoted listing fees, store subscriptions, insertion fees. Lumping these into "eBay fees" destroys the only view that tells a seller which part of their cost base is a choice. Promoted listings are marketing. A store subscription is software. A final value fee is a genuine cost of sale. They belong in different places because they answer different questions.
2. Postage coded with one VAT treatment
This is the expensive one. Royal Mail’s universal service is VAT exempt. Tracked 24 and Tracked 48, courier services and most Special Delivery options are standard rated. If every postage label is coded the same way, either you are reclaiming VAT that does not exist or you are binning VAT that does. On one month of one real seller’s postage that second mistake was close to two thousand pounds of input tax.
3. Funds on hold treated as a cost
Money held back by eBay has been earned. It is not an expense and it has not disappeared. It is a debtor, and it will be released. Booking it as a cost understates profit now and overstates it later.
4. A charge from your bank read as a fee
When your eBay balance cannot cover a refund, eBay pulls the money from your bank account. Those rows read like a charge and they are positive: funds moving into the eBay balance. Treat them as a cost and you have double counted the refund and left the clearing account drifting. On one three month export that drift was over seven hundred pounds.
5. A balance transfer mistaken for a payout
eBay uses the word "transfer" for the release of held funds inside your balance, not only for money leaving for your bank. Exclude both as payout legs and the releases never post at all.
Ten fee types, and why the split earns its keep
Once the fees are separated, a seller can answer questions that a single fee total makes impossible. What did promoted listings cost as a share of the sales they produced. Is the store subscription paying for itself. Are international fees concentrated in one marketplace. None of that survives a single nominal called eBay Fees.
| eBay charge | What it really is | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| Final value fee, fixed and variable | Commission on the sale | Cost of sales |
| Promoted listings | Advertising you chose to buy | Marketing |
| Store subscription, eBay Plus | A recurring software cost | Software and subscriptions |
| Insertion fees | Listing cost | Cost of sales |
| Regulatory operating fee, international fee | Cost of trading in that market | Cost of sales |
| Below standard, very high not-as-described | Performance penalties | Cost of sales, visible separately |
| Postage labels | Carriage outwards, VAT depending on service | Postage and courier |
| Funds on hold | Earned, not yet released | Other debtors |
| Charge from your bank | Money moving into the balance | Transfer, not a cost |
| Payout | Money moving out to your bank | Transfer, matched to the bank line |
Postage, split three ways
Postage is worth doing properly because the money is real and the rule is not obvious.
Exempt
- Royal Mail universal service: 1st and 2nd Class, Signed For
- Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm
- No input tax to reclaim, and claiming it is an error
Standard rated
- Tracked 24 and Tracked 48
- Special Delivery by 9am, and Saturday guarantee
- Evri, DPD, Yodel, DHL, UPS and the rest
- Input tax you are entitled to and should be claiming
All three treatments land in the same nominal, because they are all postage. What differs is the VAT code, and that is the part that carries the money. A parser that reads the service name off the label row can tell them apart. One that reads "postage" and stops cannot.
Two ways to get it into the books
There are two honest routes, and which one suits you depends on where your ledger lives.
Route one: the export, coded by CodeIQ
Download the eBay transaction report, drop it into CodeIQ’s Merchant Accounts tab, and it is parsed into journal entries with the fee types, holds, refunds and postage separated as above. Amazon and PayPal have their own built-in parsers. For anything else, Stripe, Etsy, Square and the rest, RiQ reads the columns and proposes a mapping for you to confirm.
The result posts alongside your ordinary bank transactions, in one review and one posting run, to Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage or Pandle. Your ledger stays exactly where it is. This is included in CodeIQ rather than sold as a channel add-on.
Route two: connect eBay directly
If the books are kept in IQ Books, eBay connects as a feed in its own right. You consent once at eBay, and the balance behaves like any other account in the ledger: sales, fees, refunds, postage and holds arrive as they happen, and each payout posts as one settlement journal with the VAT landing in the period it belongs to. The payout itself is then paired with the deposit on your bank feed, so the two sides reconcile rather than both claiming to be income.
A settlement journal is charged at a flat 50 credits per payout, not per line. The lines inside a payout are held unbilled and exist only to build that journal, so a busy month with a thousand transactions and four payouts costs two hundred credits.
Why the balance, not the payout, is the thing to read
A payout-first integration cannot see money that is still on hold, because it has not been paid out yet. Reading the balance means the held funds are visible as a debtor from the day they are earned, and the clearing account stays true between payouts instead of jumping.
What the alternatives cost
| A2X | Link My Books | CodeIQ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | From around $29 to $229 a month, per sales channel | Around £13 to £249 a month | Included in the plan you already have |
| Scope | Sales-channel settlements only | Sales-channel settlements only | The whole month: bank, receipts, invoices, VAT and the sales channels |
| Second subscription | Yes | Yes | No |
| Posts to | Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite | Xero, QuickBooks Online | Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage, Pandle |
Pricing for other products changes, so treat those figures as a guide and check them. The structural point is the one that matters: a settlement tool does one job and bills for it monthly, forever, per channel. If the software already coding your bank month understands eBay as well, that bill has nothing left to buy.
Run a real eBay export through it
Download your transaction report, drop it into the Merchant Accounts tab and look at what comes back before you code a single row yourself.
Try CodeIQFrequently asked questions
Why does my eBay payout never match my sales?
Because the payout is a net number. Gross sales, final value fees, promoted listing fees, store subscriptions, postage labels, refunds, tax eBay collected and anything still on hold are all folded into it. The deposit is the residue, not the revenue.
Is postage on eBay VAT exempt or standard rated?
It depends on the service. Royal Mail’s universal service, which covers 1st and 2nd Class, Signed For and Special Delivery Guaranteed by 1pm, is exempt. Tracked 24, Tracked 48, Special Delivery by 9am, Saturday guarantee and the courier networks are standard rated. Coding them all the same way either invents input tax or throws it away.
How should funds on hold be treated?
As a debtor. The money has been earned and will be released, so it is not a cost and it has not gone. Booking a hold as an expense understates profit in the period it happens and overstates it when the funds land.
What is a "charge" row on an eBay statement?
It is usually eBay pulling money from your bank account into your eBay balance, typically to cover a refund your balance could not fund. It is positive and it is a transfer in, not a fee. Treating it as a cost double counts the refund and leaves the clearing account drifting.
Do I need A2X or Link My Books if I already use CodeIQ?
No. The eBay, Amazon and PayPal settlement work is part of CodeIQ rather than a per-channel add-on, and the output posts to Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage or Pandle alongside your ordinary bank month in one review.
Can eBay connect directly rather than through an export?
Yes, if the books are kept in the IQ Books ledger. You consent once at eBay, the balance behaves like an account in the ledger, and each payout posts as a settlement journal charged at a flat 50 credits per payout rather than per line. The payout is then paired with the matching deposit on your bank feed.
What about Amazon, Etsy, Square and Stripe?
Amazon and PayPal have built-in parsers alongside eBay. For other platforms, drop the export in and RiQ reads the columns and proposes a mapping for you to confirm before anything is coded.