How to Audit Marketplace Fee Overcharges

What counts as a marketplace fee overcharge

An overcharge is any deduction that is higher than, or not covered by, the terms you agreed with the marketplace. It is not the same as a fee you simply dislike. If the agreement allows it, it is a cost to manage, not an error to recover.

The usual places where mismatches appear:

• Commission: a rate applied to the wrong category, brand tier or price band, or a rate change that was never notified.
• Fixed and collection fees: charged on orders where your terms exclude them, or charged twice.
• Shipping and weight-slab fees: the marketplace's recorded weight or dimensions differ from your catalogue.
• Return and RTO charges: reverse shipping or return fees on orders that were never returned, or charged at the wrong stage.
• Penalties and adjustments: charges with no matching order, reason code or notice.
• Tax-related deductions: amounts that do not match the tax statements. Rates and treatment change, so confirm current rules with your tax adviser and the marketplace's own tax documents.

Gather the documents before you open a spreadsheet

An audit is only as good as its reference data. Collect these first:

1. The signed seller agreement and every addendum or commission-change notice.
2. The current rate card for your categories, including any fixed-fee and shipping-fee slabs.
3. Order-level sales reports for the period.
4. Settlement reports or payment advices, with the order-wise deduction breakup.
5. Returns and RTO reports, including return reason, received date and status.
6. Debit notes, invoices for fees, and any penalty communication.

Do not rely on memory or on an old rate card. Always confirm the terms that applied on the order date, since rates and slabs may have changed during the year.

Step-by-step: audit fees order by order

1. Fix the period and the key. Use the order or sub-order ID as the common key across sales, settlement and returns files. Audit by order date or settlement date, but do not mix the two.
2. Match orders to settlements. List orders with no settlement, settlements with no order, and duplicates. Timing differences are normal; unexplained gaps are not.
3. Recalculate each fee. For every order, compute commission, fixed fee and shipping fee from your rate card and compare them with the deducted amounts. Keep one column per fee component.
4. Flag variances. Mark any line where the difference is more than a rounding tolerance you set, for example a rupee or two.
5. Group by root cause. Wrong category, wrong weight slab, unnotified rate change, duplicate deduction and so on. Groups reveal patterns that single lines hide.
6. Quantify and prioritise. Total each group, then work the largest and best-evidenced ones first.

Doing this in spreadsheets works for a few hundred orders. Beyond that, formula errors and version drift become the real risk.

Check returns and RTO charges separately

Returns and RTO are where disputes are most common, because the charge depends on the order's logistics status, not only on its price. Review them as their own block:

• Was a return or RTO charge deducted for an order that shows as delivered and not returned?
• Was the sale reversed and also charged a return fee that your terms do not allow for that return reason?
• Did the returned item reach you, and does your warehouse record match the marketplace's status? Where it does not, keep your GRN or receiving photos.
• Were commission and fixed fees reversed on returned orders as your agreement says?
• Are there repeated deductions against the same return ID?

Read how your agreement treats customer returns, seller-fault returns and RTO separately. Do not assume they are charged alike.

Turn variances into recovery claims

A variance list is not a claim. A claim needs proof the marketplace team can verify quickly.

• Per claim: order ID, settlement reference, amount deducted, amount that should have been deducted, and the clause or rate card line that supports your figure.
• Attachments: the settlement extract, the relevant agreement page, and logistics or warehouse proof for return disputes.
• Batching: raise one ticket per root cause, with an annexure of order IDs, rather than hundreds of single-order tickets.
• Timelines: check the dispute window in your agreement and raise claims well inside it.

Log every claim with a ticket number, date raised, amount, status and follow-up date. Then verify that approved amounts actually appear as credits in a later settlement. Approval alone is not recovery.

Make the audit a monthly routine

One-off audits find old money; a monthly routine stops new leakage. Close each settlement cycle with the same checklist, review the root-cause groups, and update your internal rate sheet whenever a notice arrives.

If volumes make manual checks slow, a reconciliation tool can help. MarketplaceMetrics by Fundle reconciles marketplace sales and settlements, checks commissions and fees against agreed terms, and tracks returns and recovery cases. Myntra Excel reports are reviewed today, and other marketplaces are in scope discussion. Whatever you use, the finance head should sign off the rate sheet it checks against.