Build a Marketplace Receivables Ageing Report

What the report should tell you

A receivables ageing report lists what a marketplace owes you and for how long it has been owed. For a brand selling on marketplaces, this is not an invoice you raised. It is the net amount you expect to be settled for delivered orders, after commission, fees, returns and any deductions allowed under your agreement.

Finance teams use it to answer three questions:

• How much cash is still to come from each marketplace?
• How much of it is overdue against the agreed payment cycle?
• Which part is stuck because of a mismatch, short payment or dispute?

Choose the anchor date and buckets

Ageing works only if everyone starts counting from the same date. Common options:

• Settlement due date: delivery date plus the payment cycle in your seller agreement. This is the best base for spotting genuinely overdue money.
• Delivery date: simple to extract, but it ignores the payment cycle.
• Order date: easiest to pull, but it inflates ageing when deliveries are slow.

We suggest the settlement due date, with a separate not yet due bucket. Confirm the payment cycle and the return window in your seller agreement, because they differ by marketplace and can change. A workable bucket set is: not yet due, 1–15, 16–30, 31–60 and 60+ days overdue. Adjust it to your own cycle.

Gather the data you need

You need four sources, all for the same period:

• Sales or order report: order or line ID, SKU, delivery date, selling price.
• Settlement report: payouts, commission, fees, adjustments and payment reference.
• Returns report: return and RTO status, dates, and credit notes or reversals.
• Bank statement and ledger: actual credits and your receivable balance.

Keep your agreement and rate card at hand, since they set the expected deductions. Do not quote rates from memory. Take them from the current rate card and check for revisions.

Join the files on order or line ID, not on totals. One payout often covers many orders, so total-to-total matching hides gaps.

Build the report step by step

1. List delivered order lines in the period, with the selling price.
2. Calculate the expected net receivable per line: selling price less commission and fees per your agreed terms. Treat GST, TCS and TDS as your tax adviser advises.
3. Subtract what the settlement report shows as paid for that line.
4. Remove lines that were returned and fully reversed.
5. Calculate the settlement due date and the days overdue as on the report date.
6. Assign each line to a bucket and summarise by marketplace, bucket and, if useful, SKU.
7. Reconcile the total to your receivable control account in the ledger and investigate any difference.

Run it as of a fixed date, such as month-end, so reports are comparable.

Tag why each balance is unpaid

An overdue total alone does not tell anyone what to do. Add a reason code to every overdue line:

• Short-paid: settled for less than expected.
• Not settled: no payment and no explanation.
• Held or adjusted: the marketplace has withheld or netted it against something else.
• Return in progress: the line may reverse.
• Disputed: a ticket or claim is open, with a reference number.

Short-paid and not-settled lines usually need a claim. Held and return lines need monitoring. Give every code a named owner, so nothing sits with finance by default.

Set a review routine

Review overdue lines weekly and sign off the full report at month-end. Agree with your auditors how long-overdue or disputed balances are treated in provisions, and write the policy down.

Doing this manually in spreadsheets works for one marketplace and a few thousand orders. Beyond that, matching becomes the bottleneck. MarketplaceMetrics by Fundle reconciles marketplace sales and settlements, checks commissions and fees against agreed terms, and tracks returns and recovery cases, which covers steps 2 to 4 above. Myntra Excel reports are reviewed, and other marketplaces are a scope discussion.