What your accountant needs from your eBay shop (UK guide)
Your accountant needs four things from your eBay shop: total sales, the real cost of the goods you sold, your business expenses, and a clear note of anything estimated or missing. An eBay payout statement gives them roughly one of those. The gap between what you hand over and what they actually need turns into billable hours and missed deductions.
Why isn't an eBay statement enough?
eBay's reports show money in and fees out. That is a record of transactions, not a record of trading.
What they do not show:
- Cost of goods sold — what you paid your supplier. eBay has no idea.
- Your postage spend if you bought labels elsewhere
- Business expenses — packaging, storage, subscriptions, mileage
- Which sales belong to which accounting period when a payout straddles a month end
An accountant handed only a payout statement has to reconstruct the rest. That means a list of questions for you, and time on the clock while they untangle it.
Why cost of goods is the piece that matters
Profit cannot be calculated without it, and neither can tax.
Get it wrong in one direction and you overstate profit, which means paying tax on money you never made. Get it wrong the other way and you understate profit, which is a different and worse problem.
This is also the figure most likely to be wrong, because it is the one nobody has a clean record of. It lives across dozens of supplier confirmations, on different dates, under different order numbers, often on a different platform from the sale itself.
What does a clean handover actually contain?
For a defined period, your accountant wants:
| What | Why they need it |
|---|---|
| Total sales, orders and refunds | The top line, and what came back out of it |
| Cost of goods sold | To calculate gross profit and your tax position correctly |
| Every cost as its own line | Supplier cost, eBay final value fees, promoted listing fees, postage labels — separated, not lumped together |
| Platform costs that are not per-sale | Shop subscription and listing fees are paid whether you sell or not, so they are not part of any single order |
| Confirmed vs estimated, clearly separated | So they know how much to trust each figure without asking |
| Payouts kept separate from profit | Money landing in your bank is not the same as profit earned — conflating the two is a common and expensive error |
| Your VAT status for the period | Including the date it changed, if it changed |
| Closing stock | Stock you hold at period end affects the accounts |
Why "confirmed vs estimated" matters more than it sounds
Most reports present one number and leave the accountant to assume it is solid.
If some of your orders have no supplier cost recorded, that number is part fact and part gap. An accountant who can see which is which knows where to look. An accountant who cannot has to either query everything or trust everything, and both cost you.
Saying "£4,310 confirmed, £280 across six orders still missing a cost" is more professional than a single clean-looking total that quietly includes six unknowns.
Payouts are not profit
This catches out a lot of sellers, and it is worth being precise about.
A payout is a transfer of money into your bank. It might cover orders from several days, minus fees, minus refunds, and it may straddle a month end. Profit is what you earned on the sales themselves, in the period they happened.
Treating payouts as income overstates some months and understates others, and makes reconciliation impossible at year end. Keep them as two separate things that happen to be related.
What about an accountant who doesn't know eBay?
Many are excellent generalists who have never dealt with marketplace selling. They may not know that fees are charged on postage, that promoted listing fees are separate, or that shop subscription costs are not attributable to individual orders.
The fix is not to find a specialist — it is to hand over records structured clearly enough that a competent generalist can work from them without a tutorial. If your figures name what each line is and where it came from, any accountant can use them.
What to do before year end
- Make sure every order has a cost against it. This is the single highest-value hour you will spend. Anything missing now is harder to reconstruct in six months.
- Separate platform costs from per-order costs. Subscription and listing fees are overheads, not cost of sale.
- Record closing stock. What you are holding on the last day of the period.
- Note your VAT status and any date it changed.
- Keep the supplier confirmations. They are your evidence for cost of goods if anyone ever asks.
Making the handover a five-minute job
SellerControl produces exactly this, for any period: sales, orders and refunds; every cost as its own line; trading profit split into confirmed and estimated; eBay's monthly costs broken out separately; what you actually kept; a month-by-month table; and every order behind the totals in a CSV your accountant can import.
It states plainly what it does not do, too: it does not calculate your VAT, it does not split out the tax inside eBay's fees, and it does not know the tax on your postage. Those are your accountant's call — and a report that says so is more useful than one that guesses.
For the underlying calculation, see how to work out your real profit on eBay.
Frequently asked questions
What records do I need to keep as an eBay seller?
Sales, supplier invoices showing cost of goods, postage costs, eBay fee statements, business expenses, and closing stock. HMRC expects records to be kept for several years, so keep the supplier confirmations as well as the summaries.
Is an eBay payout statement enough for my accountant?
No. It shows money in and fees out, but not cost of goods, not business expenses, and not which period sales belong to. Your accountant will have to reconstruct the rest.
Do I need to declare eBay income in the UK?
If you are trading — buying to resell rather than clearing out your loft — then yes, it is taxable income. Whether you need to register and how depends on your circumstances, which is a question for an accountant.
What is cost of goods sold?
What you paid to acquire the items you sold in the period, including any tax and delivery you paid on the way in. Not what you paid for stock still sitting unsold — that is closing stock.
How do I work out cost of goods if I buy in bulk?
Use a consistent rule, most commonly FIFO — first in, first out — where the oldest stock is treated as sold first. The important thing is applying the same rule throughout, and being able to show how you arrived at the figure.