Category: Software

Amazon FBA simplifies fulfilment. It also complicates accounting in ways most sellers do not see until year end. Stock moves between fulfilment centres, gets damaged or lost, comes back as returns, all without you touching it. Without a robust inventory accounting process, your cost of goods sold is a guess, your gross margin is wrong, and your corporation tax bill is being calculated on figures that do not reflect reality. We have unpicked enough of these to know how expensive it gets.

Selling to EU customers used to be straightforward. Then Brexit happened. Now every parcel crossing the border has a customs declaration, every sale carries a VAT decision, and every UK ecommerce business with EU customers has to decide whether to register for IOSS, OSS, both, or neither. The schemes are meant to simplify EU VAT compliance. The rules around when each one applies confuse experienced sellers as much as beginners.

Dropshipping looks simple from the customer’s side. They order, your supplier ships, you keep the margin. HMRC sees it very differently. To them, you are a UK trader earning income, potentially holding title to the goods even if briefly, and quite possibly liable for VAT on every order regardless of where the product physically came from. We get a lot of dropshippers in our inbox who only realised the tax picture once HMRC sent them a letter. By that point the position is much harder to fix.

TikTok Shop has gone from novelty to serious revenue channel for thousands of UK sellers since it launched here in 2021. The combination of viral content and one-tap checkout drives sales that scale faster than any other marketplace. Sellers we onboard regularly hit five figures a month within weeks of going viral. HMRC has noticed. The casual side-income mindset that worked when TikTok Shop was new does not survive a nudge letter from HMRC’s digital platforms team.

When Shopify sellers manually reconcile payouts in Xero, revenue and VAT are almost always incorrect. Learn how to stop hiding fees, correctly manage gift card liabilities, and automate your reconciliation process accurately.