E-commerce Accounting Services in India: Scope, Cost and How to Choose

There is a point in most online businesses where the person doing the books stops being the right person to do them. Usually it arrives with a second sales channel, or stock in a second state, or a lender asking for monthly numbers nobody can produce.

E-commerce accounting services cover monthly settlement reconciliation, GST returns and TCS credit, inventory and stock movement, returns and RTO tracking, and management reporting on margin. Pricing usually reflects order volume, number of sales channels and number of state registrations rather than turnover alone.

This article is for that moment. It sets out what the work actually involves, what it should cost, how outsourcing compares with hiring, and the questions worth asking before you commit to anyone, including us. If you want the technical ground first, start with the complete guide to e-commerce accounting in India.

What an e-commerce accountant actually does

The phrase "accounting services" covers everything from data entry to a signed audit report, so it is worth being specific about what an online seller is buying.

Monthly settlement work

Taking each platform’s settlement file apart and mapping it into the ledger: gross sales, commission, fulfilment and shipping charges, storage, advertising, penalties, reimbursements, GST TCS and income-tax TDS, each in its own account. This is the part that most general accounting firms do not do, and it is the part that determines whether every other number is right.

GST compliance

GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for each registration, accepting TCS credit into the electronic cash ledger after the operator files GSTR-8, acting on invoices in the Invoice Management System so input credit is actually available, and reconciling before filing rather than after. Since the July 2025 tax period the outward liability in GSTR-3B has been locked to GSTR-1, so an error caught after filing costs far more effort than one caught before it.

Inventory and stock movement

Valuation, stock at fulfilment centres and third-party warehouses, and the tax invoices required when goods move between your own registrations in different states.

Returns and RTO

Credit notes within the time limit, refunds matched to goods actually received, and return rates measured per channel so the number can be managed.

Income tax

TDS deducted by operators agreed to your annual tax statement and AIS, advance tax, and the return itself.

Management reporting

Contribution margin by channel, category and top SKUs, so the books answer a business question rather than just satisfying a filing. That last item is where the value sits, and it is the first thing dropped by a low-cost provider.

What you should receive every month

A scope of work is easier to compare than a price. Use this as a checklist against any proposal.

• Books closed within a stated number of working days after month end.
• Every channel reconciled from order to settlement to bank, with unexplained differences listed rather than absorbed.
• GST returns filed, with a reconciliation done before filing and the TCS credit accepted.
• Input tax credit claimed on platform fees, gateway charges, advertising and logistics.
• Inventory updated by location, with a movement summary.
• Returns and RTO reported as rates, not just amounts.
• A profit and loss account by channel, not only at company level.
• A short commentary explaining what changed and why.
• A named person who knows your file, and a qualified reviewer above them.

If a proposal does not commit to a closing timeline or to channel-level reporting, it is a compliance service rather than an accounting service. Both are legitimate. They are not the same purchase.

What it costs, and what drives the price

Turnover is a poor pricing basis for e-commerce work. Three other things drive effort far more directly.

Broadly, the market splits into three tiers. At the entry level you are buying data entry and return filing, usually from a small local practice, with limited reconciliation and reporting that stops at a trial balance. In the middle you are buying a proper monthly close with reconciliation, channel reporting and a qualified reviewer. At the top you are buying that plus a finance partner who sits in your planning conversations, which is a fractional CFO engagement rather than a bookkeeping one.

CorporateWalla’s accounting plans start from a published monthly fee on the e-commerce accounting page, with pricing set against the drivers above rather than a percentage of your revenue. Professional fees are quoted excluding GST, and any government fees are payable separately at actuals.

In-house or outsourced

The honest answer is that it depends on volume and on what you want the person to do.

An in-house accountant gives you availability, context and someone who can chase a courier claim the same afternoon. The costs are salary, statutory contributions, software licences, workspace, recruitment, cover during leave and the risk of the whole function walking out with the knowledge. The bigger risk is narrower: one person, no review, and no second opinion when a treatment is uncertain.

An outsourced team gives you a reviewer above the preparer, continuity when someone leaves, and exposure to how the same problem was solved for other sellers. What you give up is immediacy, and you take on the work of communicating context that an in-house person would absorb by sitting there.

A practical rule that holds for most sellers: outsource until the monthly work needs more than roughly half a person’s time every day, then hire someone in-house for the operational side and keep an outside firm for review, GST and the year end. Very few businesses under a few crore of revenue need a full-time accountant, and a lot of them hire one anyway because the books are late and hiring feels like the fix. It usually is not. Late books are normally a process problem.

We have set out the wider comparison in outsourced accounting versus an in-house team.

When is the right time

Signals that the current arrangement has run out.

• You cannot say what your margin is by channel or by category.
• Your GST returns are prepared from bank data rather than order data.
• You have never accepted TCS credit into your electronic cash ledger.
• Stock is in more than one state, or about to be.
• Your return rate is high enough to change which products are worth selling, and nobody is measuring it.
• Turnover is approaching the e-invoicing threshold, the tax audit threshold, or the limits for presumptive taxation under Section 58 of the Income-tax Act, 2025.
• A lender, investor or acquirer has asked for monthly numbers.
• The books are more than two months behind.

The last one deserves a note. Books that are two months behind are a scheduling problem. Books that are two years behind are a reconstruction project, and reconstruction is materially more expensive than maintenance because the source data has to be retrieved after the fact and the platform dispute windows have closed. If that is where you are, an accounting health check is the right first step, because it establishes what is wrong and what it costs before anyone starts fixing it.

Ten questions to ask before you sign

• Have you worked with sellers on my specific platforms, and can you describe how their settlement files differ?
• Will you reconcile before filing GST returns, or after?
• How will you handle TCS credit and where will I see it?
• Who reviews the work, and what is their qualification?
• Which software will my books live in, and do I own the licence and the data?
• How many working days after month end do I get my numbers?
• What exactly is in the monthly report, and can I see a sample?
• What is not included, and what does it cost when I need it?
• How do you handle stock in multiple states?
• If I leave, what do I take with me and in what format?

Questions five and ten matter more than most people expect. Books held in a provider’s own licence, with no export, are a lock-in that becomes expensive at exactly the moment you want to move.

Red flags

• A quote given without seeing a settlement file or asking how many channels you run.
• Any promise of an outcome that depends on a tax authority, or a guaranteed refund.
• Fees quoted as a percentage of tax saved.
• No named reviewer.
• Books kept in a spreadsheet and handed over quarterly.
• Reluctance to work inside software you already own.
• Guidance quoting GST TCS at 1 per cent or income-tax TDS on marketplace sales at 1 per cent. Those rates changed on 10 July 2024 and 1 October 2024 respectively, and a firm still using them has not updated its templates in two years.

Switching without breaking anything

Changing accountants mid-year is normal and manageable if the sequence is right.

Close out the current period with the existing provider so there is a clean cut-off. Get a full data export, not a PDF: the ledger file, the trial balance, the fixed asset and stock schedules, GST working papers and copies of returns filed. Confirm the closing balances agree to the last filed return and, if applicable, the last audited financials. Then transition, ideally at a quarter end.

The one thing not to do is switch in the middle of an unreconciled backlog and expect the new firm to inherit it silently. Whoever takes it on will need to price the clean-up separately, and a firm that agrees to absorb it without looking is telling you something about how carefully it will do the rest.

How we work

We take the settlement apart every month and put it back together correctly, inside the accounting software you already own, so you can open your file on any day and see where you are. A qualified CA reviews the output, not just the filings. Reporting runs at channel level as standard, because company-level numbers hide exactly the problem you are trying to find.

We publish our fees, split professional fees from government charges, and work on a 50 per cent upfront and 50 per cent on delivery basis for defined engagements.

Frequently asked questions

Channel-specific detail: Amazon and Flipkart seller accounting for marketplaces, and Shopify and D2C accounting in India for your own storefront.