eBay seller reporting services

How the service runs

1. 01

   Agree measures

   What to report and how each figure is calculated.

   Output: Measure definitions

2. 02

   Gather data

   Seller Hub downloads, invoices and your cost figures.

   Output: Monthly data

3. 03

   Reconcile

   Sales, fees and payouts checked against each other.

   Output: Reconciled figures

4. 04

   Report

   One-page report with a short commentary.

   Output: Monthly report

5. 05

   Review

   Measures reviewed each quarter.

   Output: Updated template

Why definitions matter

'Sales' can mean item price only, or price plus postage, before or after refunds. 'Margin' can include or leave out packaging and staff time. Unless each measure is defined in writing, figures change meaning from month to month and comparisons become unreliable. Ask the service to write a short definition for every measure in the report and keep it with the template.

Reconciliation checks

Warning signs in a reporting service

• Dashboards with no definitions

  Figures you cannot interpret or compare.

• No reconciliation

  Errors in the data go straight into the report.

• Template locked to the provider

  You should be able to run it yourself.

• Long reports with no actions

  Numbers without explanation or next steps.

Example: payouts that did not match

A short commentary

Numbers need a few sentences of explanation: what changed, why it probably changed and what to consider doing. Ask for the commentary to separate what the figures show from what is a guess about causes, so you can judge how much weight to give it.

Access to data

Much of the data can be downloaded by your team and shared, so the service may not need account access. If it does, use separate user access where eBay offers it, limited to viewing reports.

Working with your accountant

Management reports and your statutory accounts serve different purposes. Share the definitions and reconciliation with your accountant so the two do not drift apart. Where your accountant needs figures in a particular format, ask for the template to produce them, so the same data serves both purposes and nobody has to re-enter it.

Matching costs to products

Margin by category is only as good as the costs behind it. The service needs your product costs, ideally by SKU, and a way to assign postage and packaging to orders, whether actual costs from your carrier account or a standard cost per postage policy. Setting this up takes time the first month but is quick after that. Where costs are not available, the report should say which figures are estimates, so you do not treat them as exact.

Account standing in the report

A useful report includes a short section on seller level, defects and cases, timed before eBay's monthly evaluation, which eBay UK says happens on the 20th. Spotting a rise in defects a week before the evaluation gives time to resolve open requests and fix the cause.

Several channels

If you sell on other marketplaces or your own website, a combined report can show which channel earns what after its own fees. Each channel needs its own measure definitions, because fees and returns work differently.

The quarterly review

Every quarter, look at which measures were used to make decisions and which were ignored. Drop measures nobody uses and add any that would have helped. Keeping the report short is part of keeping it useful.