Accounting built around orders, returns and the money that actually lands
Marketplaces, your own store and cash on delivery — reconciled to the order behind every dirham, so the number you report is the number you kept.
- Payouts matched to orders
- Returns credited on time
500+ Businesses
Supported across the UAE
Marketplace & own store
One channel or six at once
COD & gateway
Cash tracked to the day it lands
Dedicated Advisor
One person across every channel
Three things that break an online seller’s books
Not general accounting with a storefront bolted on. These are the places e-commerce businesses actually lose money and fail reviews.
A sale that is not final
In some categories a large share of what ships comes back. Book the gross order and every month is a forecast; the correction arrives weeks later, in a period that has already been filed.
Money that is somewhere else
Collected by the courier on delivery, held by the marketplace until the payout run, kept back by the gateway as a rolling reserve. Your bank balance is a snapshot of other people’s timetables, not of what you have earned.
Fees that never arrive as a bill
Commission, fulfilment, storage, advertising, payment and COD fees are deducted before you are paid. Book only the payout and none of those costs appear in your P&L — and none of their input VAT is ever recovered.
Your dashboard says one number. Your bank says another.
The same month, followed from the orders your storefront counted to the money that reached your account.
Three numbers, three different jobs. AED 500,000 is what you sold, AED 385,000 is what you declare — and only if every refund has a tax credit note behind it. The AED 103,950 of fees is not a discount off your sales; it is several separate supplies to you, each with its own treatment and, where UAE VAT is charged, input tax to recover.
A worked example on a stated 15% commission and stated fee lines, not a quote. Your own rates depend on your category, your channels and your contracts.
“Every online seller we meet knows their revenue. Almost none of them can tell us, to the dirham, what they kept.”
Ripple Accounting · DubaiWhose VAT return does the sale belong in?
It depends on the role the platform takes, and that is set by your contract with it — not by how the money moves.
The platform buys and resells
The platform takes the goods on its own account and sells them on. Two supplies: yours to the platform, and the platform’s to the customer.
The platform accounts for the VAT on the customer sale.
The customer never knows you exist
The platform sells in its own name while acting for you. For VAT this is also treated as two supplies — you to the platform, the platform to the customer.
The platform accounts for the VAT on the customer sale.
The platform sells in your name
The customer knows they are buying from you; the platform is introducing and collecting. One supply, and it is yours. Its commission is a separate supply to you.
You account for the VAT on the sale.
Read your platform agreement before you decide which of these you are. Assume the wrong one and the same sale is either declared twice or by nobody — and on a marketplace that error repeats on every order, every month.
The whole cycle, from the order to the filed return
Channel and payout reconciliation
Every settlement report matched back to the orders behind it, per channel — so a payout is explained by orders rather than accepted as a lump sum.
Returns, refunds and credit notes
Tax credit notes raised inside the 14-day window the law allows, with the VAT adjustment landing in the period it belongs to instead of being netted off quietly.
COD and gateway settlement
Cash collected by couriers followed from the doorstep to the bank, with the shortfalls and the timing differences named rather than written off at year end.
Fee capture, channel by channel
Commission, fulfilment, storage, advertising and payment fees booked as the costs they are — so you can see which channel actually earns, and recover the input VAT on it.
Stock across fulfilment centres
Goods in your warehouse, in the platform’s, and in transit between them, counted once and valued on one method — not three times on three spreadsheets.
VAT and Corporate Tax
Returns filed inside the 28-day window on net sales you can prove, and Corporate Tax at 9% above AED 375,000 calculated on records that stand up to a question.
Four steps, then it runs
Channel review
We go through every place you sell, what each platform’s agreement says, and how its money currently reaches you.
Set the reconciliation
One method per channel for tying a payout back to orders, written down, so every month is closed the same way.
Monthly close by channel
Orders, returns, credit notes, fees, COD and stock reconciled per channel, with the settlement reports filed against the entries.
Returns and reporting
VAT filed inside the 28-day window, and a per-channel margin view that shows which one is actually paying for itself.
Common questions from UAE online sellers
Do I account for the VAT, or does the marketplace?+
It depends on the role the platform takes under your agreement with it. If it acts as principal, or as an undisclosed agent, the sale to the customer is treated as the platform’s supply and the platform accounts for that VAT. If it acts as a disclosed agent — selling in your name, with the customer knowing who you are — there is one supply, from you to the customer, and you account for it while the platform’s commission is a separate supply to you. Read the agreement; do not infer it from who receives the cash.
A customer returned an order. How do I fix the VAT?+
With a tax credit note. Where an output tax adjustment is triggered — and a refunded return is exactly that — the credit note has to be issued within 14 days of the event, under Article 62(2) of the Decree-Law. The adjustment then belongs in that period. Quietly netting refunds off the next month’s sales in a spreadsheet is not the same thing, and it carries a penalty.
Why does my bank balance never match my sales dashboard?+
Because they are measuring different things at different moments. The dashboard counts orders placed. The bank shows what survived cancellations and returns, minus commission, fulfilment, storage, advertising and payment fees, and only once the platform’s payout run and the courier’s COD remittance have both happened. Neither number is wrong — but only one of them is your revenue, and neither is your profit.
Do I charge VAT when I ship to a customer outside the UAE?+
An export of goods can be zero-rated, but only if you hold the evidence that the goods actually left the country — the customs and transport documentation, kept with the transaction. Without that evidence the supply is treated as a normal domestic sale at 5%, and the difference comes out of your margin. On small parcel volumes this is a filing discipline, not a one-off task.
When does an online seller have to register for VAT?+
Registration is mandatory once taxable supplies pass AED 375,000 in the previous twelve months, and voluntary from AED 187,500. Note what is being measured: it is the value of your supplies, not the gross order value on a dashboard, so returns that have been properly credited reduce it. Sellers usually cross the threshold a good deal earlier than they expect, because the test is turnover and not profit.
Talk to someone who has seen your books before
Thirty minutes, a look at how your channels, payouts and returns are recorded, and an honest view of what is missing.
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