Accounting software for ecommerce sellers

TCS under Section 52, GSTR-8, and your cash ledger

Every marketplace order has a settlement: gross order value, returns, marketplace commission, payment-gateway fee, FBA/FBF fulfilment fee, advertising charges, and TCS at 1% deducted under Section 52. The net payout lands in your bank 7–15 days later. The marketplace files GSTR-8 monthly reporting the TCS deducted per seller — and the TCS shows up as a credit in your GST cash ledger that you accept to use against output tax in GSTR-3B. HelloBooks ingests Amazon Seller Central settlement reports, Flipkart settlement files and Meesho payout statements, posts every line item (commission, fee, ads, TCS) to the right account, and reconciles the TCS shown in GSTR-8 against the TCS in the settlement file.

The GSTR-1 marketplace section (Table 14) reports outward supplies through e-commerce operators separately from direct sales. HelloBooks tags each order with the marketplace at the source, routes orders to Table 14, and ensures the marketplace TCS doesn't get double-counted on the seller's own ITC. A typical Indian Amazon seller pulling ₹50 lakh annual GMV with ~10% returns runs through ~12,000 settlement-line reconciliations a year — manual reconciliation is hours per week; automated reconciliation is minutes per month.

RTO accounting, returns, and the reverse-logistics line

RTO (Return To Origin) is the heaviest hidden cost in Indian ecommerce. A package shipped to a customer who refuses delivery comes back to your warehouse — and you pay forward freight, reverse freight, and the original order pick-pack cost without any revenue. HelloBooks records the RTO at the marketplace event level, reverses the original sales and GST entries, reinstates the inventory to your warehouse, and accumulates RTO-related logistics costs into a 'returns expense' account that's visible alongside revenue. Profitability per SKU shows GMV, returns rate, RTO rate, net revenue and net margin so a Meesho seller knows which SKUs are bleeding before the quarter ends.

Marketplace returns also affect GST: a return within the same tax period offsets the original supply in GSTR-1; a return in a subsequent period is handled via a credit note in GSTR-1 Table 9B and adjusts output tax in GSTR-3B. HelloBooks generates the right credit note automatically based on return-event timing, so the GST treatment matches the financial treatment without manual intervention.

Multi-marketplace, Shopify D2C, and Shiprocket

Most serious Indian ecommerce sellers run on 3–6 channels simultaneously: Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Myntra, a Shopify D2C store and sometimes Nykaa or Ajio. HelloBooks integrates with Amazon Seller, Flipkart, Meesho and Shopify directly, and routes orders to a shared inventory pool so stock allocation is consistent across channels. Shiprocket integration covers manifest generation, courier selection (Delhivery, Bluedart, Ekart, Xpressbees, Shadowfax), AWB capture, and NDR (Non-Delivery Report) handling. Returns and RTO flow back into the same inventory and finance pipelines, so a single 'pendency' dashboard shows what's in transit, what's stuck at the courier, and what's already in RTO.