Marketplaces Accountant (Amazon FBA, TikTok Shop) in Paris

An accountant for marketplace sellers rebuilds your gross revenue from platform settlement reports (Amazon Settlement Report, Cdiscount, Etsy and ManoMano statements), reconciles every payout against the commissions, returns and reserves withheld at source, secures VAT (article 14a withholding, OSS/IOSS schemes, Pan-European FBA registrations) and values the inventory entrusted to FBA logistics. The outcome: a readable net margin per marketplace, per category and per SKU, and tax filings consistent with what the platforms themselves report to the tax authorities under DAC7. Cabinet Hayot Expertise, a Paris firm working with sellers across France, runs this steering on Pennylane with n8n automations.

The French marketplace market exceeds EUR 60bn in 2025, representing 38 % of French e-commerce (source Fevad). Amazon France counts over 12 million Prime users and TikTok Shop exceeds EUR 5M in daily transactions. Behind these volumes, the seller's economics are always the same: the platform brings the audience, charges the end customer, withholds its remuneration and pays you a balance.

You never collect your revenue, only a balance

This is the marketplace seller's main accounting specificity. On Amazon, the category commission most often takes 8 to 15 % of the sale price, on top of which come FBA logistics fees (prep, shipping, storage), internal advertising (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands), performance penalties and logistics adjustments. Cdiscount, Etsy, ManoMano, eBay and Rakuten apply the same mechanics with their own fee grids: professional subscription, per-sale commission, listing or internal advertising fees depending on the platform.

The consequence, which we correct in most of the files we take over: booking the net payout received as revenue. This practice understates your declared revenue (a direct tax risk, since VAT is due on the price paid by the customer, not on the net amount paid out), makes your platform costs vanish from the income statement and makes any margin analysis impossible. Correct accounting records gross revenue, then each withholding as an expense, line by line.

Single marketplace or multi-channel: two levels of requirement

A single-marketplace seller can live with a rigorous monthly breakdown. A multi-channel seller (Amazon + Cdiscount + Etsy + own website, for instance) must consolidate statements in heterogeneous formats, different payout calendars and VAT rules specific to each flow: margin per channel becomes the central steering indicator, the one that decides where your advertising budget and your stock should go. If most of your sales run through your own website, our e-commerce accountant page covers the common base (PSP payouts, OSS, logistics) of which this page is the marketplace variant.

A settlement report is not an accounting journal

An Amazon Settlement Report contains more than 30 transaction types: sales, category commissions, FBA fees, advertising fees, storage and Long-Term Storage Fees, customer refunds, VAT withholding, penalties, adjustments. Booking it as one aggregate line crushes that information: your gross margin is wrong, your advertising costs become invisible, and you discover penalties at year-end. Reconciliation means matching, period by period, three realities: orders placed, settlement report lines, and the payout actually received in the bank.

Returns, refunds and reserves: why the payout never matches sales

Three mechanisms create the gap between the month's sales and the month's cash. Returns and customer refunds, first, deducted from a later settlement, sometimes several weeks after the initial sale, with handling fees attached. Reserves, next: Amazon pays out your sales 14 days after delivery, and can hold back more under a performance reserve (disputes, defect rate). On a volume of 5,000 orders per month at a EUR 45 average basket, that timing gap means EUR 105,000 permanently locked at the platform: a working capital need that stays invisible if your accounting only follows the bank. Retroactive corrections, finally: logistics adjustments, imposed goodwill gestures, penalties. Each of these flows must be attached to the right period for your monthly margin to mean anything.

Gateway accounts: our reconciliation method

We structure one gateway account per platform and expense sub-accounts per fee type:

The same logic applies to Cdiscount, Etsy or ManoMano: each channel has its clearing account, each fee type its sub-account. Bank reconciliation becomes mechanical, and monthly reporting delivers contribution margin per marketplace, per product category and per SKU.

Who collects VAT: you or the platform?

Since 2021, some marketplaces (Amazon, Cdiscount, eBay) act as single VAT collectors for B2C EU sales by non-EU sellers, domestic sales included, and for distance sales of imported goods in consignments of EUR 150 or less (article 14a of directive 2006/112). Concretely, on part of your flows the platform withholds VAT before payout and remits it itself. Your French VAT return (CA3) must therefore strictly separate sales where VAT is collected by the marketplace from those where you remain liable. The two classic errors are symmetrical: declaring a second time the VAT already withheld (you pay it twice), or wrongly assuming the platform collects everything (you underdeclare). The breakdown is configured once in Pennylane, then checked at every filing.

OSS and IOSS: the right scheme for the right flow

For a French-established seller shipping to consumers in other EU countries, the OSS one-stop shop lets you declare the VAT on those distance sales from France, without registering in each country of consumption, provided the scheme's conditions are met. The IOSS scheme plays the same role for certain sales of imported goods shipped directly to the end customer. The choice of scheme is not a preference: it follows from where your stock sits, the country the parcels ship from, and who collects VAT on the flow (you, or the platform under article 14a). Our role: map your actual logistics flows, then assign each sale type to the right declarative channel: French VAT, OSS, IOSS or marketplace-collected VAT.

Pan-European FBA: up to 5 VAT registrations

Activating Pan-European FBA means letting Amazon store your products in 2 to 5 EU countries (DE, FR, IT, ES, PL; the UK has no longer been part of the programme since 1 January 2021). Each storage country triggers a mandatory local VAT registration, even before a single local sale, with monthly or quarterly returns and, in most countries, a fiscal representative. Stock transfers between warehouses in different countries are treated as intra-community movements to declare (DEB/EMEBI). Late regularisation is expensive: each country applies its own late interest and penalties (0.20 % per month for late interest in France). We drive the setup with EU fiscal representative partners and consolidate everything into a single filing calendar.

The DAC7 directive requires digital platforms to send the tax authorities, every year, information on their sellers: identity, payout bank accounts, amounts collected, transaction volume. Amazon, Cdiscount, Etsy or ManoMano therefore report your activity whether or not you declare it correctly. The tax authorities cross-check that data against your own filings (VAT returns, annual accounts). A gap between the revenue the platforms report for you and the revenue you declare yourself is the sector's most predictable audit trigger.

Our approach: reconcile upstream, every month, the gross revenue rebuilt from settlement reports with the books, so that consistency with DAC7 data is a by-product of the bookkeeping. That cross-check also removes any temptation to smooth a financial year: the data transmitted by the platforms establishes your real volume.

Stock held by Amazon stays on your balance sheet

Outsourcing logistics does not take stock off your balance sheet: products stored in FBA warehouses, in France or elsewhere in Europe, remain your asset and must be counted, valued and reconciled with the platform's inventory reports. Inventory discrepancies, goods lost or damaged in the warehouse, unsellable returned units: each category has its own accounting treatment, and Amazon's reimbursements must be matched against recorded losses.

Dormant stock: Long-Term Storage Fees

Amazon charges Long-Term Storage Fees once a product has sat more than 241 days in an FBA warehouse. Without rotation tracking and accounting write-downs, you pay twice: recurring storage fees on a product that no longer sells, then the loss on exit (destruction or clearance). We integrate FBA stock depreciation at year-end close and set rotation alerts during the year, so the decision (clear, repatriate, destroy) is taken before fees pile up.

FBM, FBA, Pan-EU: the trade-offs, quantified

Three logistics trade-offs shape an Amazon seller's profitability, and each one can be computed. Moving from FBM (merchant-fulfilled) to FBA generally becomes relevant around 200 orders per month on non-fragile, fast-rotating products (under 90 days). The European Fulfilment Network (EFN) option, which centralises stock in a single country against extra shipping fees, generally stops being competitive against Pan-European FBA plus fiscal representatives around 8,000 units per month. Finally, activating Pan-EU itself is judged country by country: net margin after fiscal representative and filing costs can be negative on one market and comfortable on another. These trade-offs are only reliable if channel-and-country analytical accounting already exists.

The stack: Pennylane, n8n and specialised connectors

Samuel Hayot, Power User and certified Pennylane trainer, has built a stack for marketplace sellers: native Pennylane connectors (Amazon Seller Central, Shopify), custom n8n automations for channels without an official connector (TikTok Shop, Cdiscount, ManoMano, eBay), and specialised tools such as A2X or Link My Books above 5,000 orders per month. Deployment takes less than 30 days, with no interruption to your trading. See our Pennylane tool page for integration details.

A representative case

Amazon FBA fashion and accessories seller, EUR 3.2M revenue on Pan-European FBA (FR/DE/IT/ES). Before engagement: 4 unfiled VAT registrations, 18 months behind on OSS, repeated Amazon penalties never booked. After scoping: retroactive regularisation via a fiscal representative partner, n8n automation of the daily Settlement Report into Pennylane, net margin per marketplace and per country, 512x gateway accounts in place. Result: EUR 38k per year of avoided penalties, and an immediate business decision: stop selling in Poland (negative margin after representative costs), focus on DE/FR/IT.

Anonymised example representative of our engagements.

Quick decision

Marketplace pricing 2026

Personalised quote within 24h after a free scoping audit.