Marketplace Operations SOP for Growing D2C Brands

What a marketplace operations SOP should cover

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a written routine with a named owner, a frequency and a clear output. For a D2C brand selling on marketplaces, it should cover the work that touches money and customer experience, not every small task.

• Catalogue and pricing: who approves listing, price and promotion changes.
• Orders and dispatch: cut-off times, delays and cancellations.
• Returns: receiving, grading and claims for damaged or wrong items.
• Settlements: matching payouts to sales.
• Fee audits: checking deductions against agreed terms.
• Escalations: who raises a dispute and by when.

Start with settlements, fees and returns. That is where money quietly leaks when volumes grow faster than the team.

Step 1: Map the money flow and assign owners

Draw the path of one order on one marketplace. Most brands find it looks like this:

1. Order is placed and confirmed.
2. Order is packed and handed to the courier.
3. Order is delivered, or returned or cancelled.
4. Return window closes.
5. Marketplace settles the payout after deductions.

Next to each stage, write who owns it and who backs them up. A workable split is: operations owns dispatch and returns receiving, the ecommerce head owns listings and the marketplace relationship, and finance owns settlement matching and fee audits. One person should own the SOP document itself, so it does not go stale.

Step 2: Build one reference file of terms

You cannot audit a deduction without knowing what was agreed. Create a shared folder, with a version log, holding:

• Your signed seller agreement and any addenda.
• The current commission and fee rate card for each category.
• Written notices of fee or policy changes, with the date they took effect.
• Return, damage and claim policies, including dispute time limits.
• Tax-related documents your adviser needs, such as GST and TCS statements.

Do not copy rates from memory or from another brand. Rates and rules differ by marketplace, category and contract, and they change. Confirm the latest figures in your seller agreement, the rate card on the seller panel, your settlement reports and, for tax treatment, with your tax adviser.

Step 3: Set daily, weekly and monthly routines

Keep routines short enough that people actually do them. A starting template:

Each routine needs a defined output, such as a variance sheet or a list of cases raised, saved in a fixed location.

Step 4: Write rules for fee audits, returns and recovery

This is the part most SOPs skip. Write down exact steps so any team member can follow them.

1. Fee audit: for a sample or all orders, compute the expected deduction from your rate card and compare with the settlement report. Record the variance by fee type.
2. Threshold: decide the variance that triggers a dispute, and who approves it.
3. Returns: capture photos and condition at receiving, and match each return to its order and claim.
4. Recovery case log: order ID, issue, amount claimed, date raised, marketplace ticket number, status, amount recovered.
5. Deadlines: note the dispute window in your agreement and raise cases well before it closes.

If manual spreadsheets become the bottleneck, 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; other marketplaces are a scoping discussion.

Step 5: Define escalation and review the SOP

Decide in advance what happens when a check fails. For example: variances above your threshold go to the ecommerce head within two working days, who raises a ticket with the marketplace account manager and logs it. Agree internal response times so cases do not sit idle.

Then maintain the document. Review it every quarter, after any marketplace fee notice, and whenever you add a new marketplace. Treat the first marketplace SOP as a template: copy it, replace the rate card and policy references, and adjust only the steps that genuinely differ.