Services · integration

Channel margin, after everything is taken out

Marketplace revenue arrives as a net payout with a dozen deductions inside it. Booked as revenue, it produces a gross margin figure that is confidently wrong — and it is wrong in a direction that makes the worst channel look acceptable.

Which channels?

Tell us where you sell and how settlement posts today. We will scope the reconciliation.

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From $6,500, fixed scopeSettlement decomposed per orderTrue margin per channel and SKU
bank feedmatched ledger itemACH CREDIT NORTHWIND 4820$48,200.00exactINV-10442DEP 0819 BATCH 77$31,180.00splitINV-10455 + INV-10460SQ *FULTON SYS$8,940.00fuzzyINV-10471WIRE IN REF 9920134$126,000.00unmatched → exception queueNo candidate — held for a personexact and split match automatically · fuzzy proposes and waits · unmatched never guesses

The situation

What gets connected

Orders, fulfilment, returns, and settlement from each channel, decomposed and matched to the ledger.

Orders at line level

Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop, and WooCommerce at SKU and line grain rather than as daily summaries that cannot be re-cut later.

Settlement decomposed

Referral fees, FBA fees, storage, advertising, chargebacks, promotions, and reserve movements separated out of the payout and posted to their own accounts.

Returns and refunds

Matched to the original order and SKU, with restocking and disposal treated separately, because return rate by SKU is often the fact that changes a decision.

Inventory across channels

One available pool with commitment respected per channel, so the same unit is not sold twice and stock value ties to the ledger.

Landed cost

Freight, duty, and handling allocated across receipts, so unit cost reflects what the goods actually cost rather than the invoice price alone.

Margin by channel and SKU

Revenue net of every deduction, less landed cost, less fulfilment — which is frequently negative on SKUs everyone assumed were fine.

The payout is not revenue

An Amazon settlement is a net figure containing referral fees, fulfilment fees, storage, long-term storage surcharges, advertising, refunds, reimbursements, chargebacks, and reserve movements. Posting it as revenue is fast and it makes every downstream margin figure unreliable.

The distortion is not random. Fees scale with the channel, so the channel taking the most out of each sale looks the least expensive when nothing is decomposed. That is precisely backwards, and it is why sellers routinely discover that their highest-volume marketplace is their lowest-margin one.

Netting settlement makes the most expensive channel look the cheapest. The distortion runs in exactly the wrong direction.

Returns are a SKU-level fact

Aggregate return rate is a vanity metric. A category at nine percent overall can contain a SKU at thirty-four percent that is losing money on every unit shipped, and the aggregate hides it indefinitely.

Matching returns to the original order and SKU, with reason codes where the channel provides them, is what makes that visible. It is usually the first thing customers act on.

Landed cost changes the ranking

Unit cost taken from the supplier invoice ignores freight, duty, and handling, which for imported goods commonly adds fifteen to thirty percent. Allocating those across receipts by value or weight changes which SKUs are profitable, sometimes substantially.

Advertising belongs in margin

Marketplace advertising is functionally a cost of sale for the SKUs it promotes, and it is almost always booked as a marketing expense in aggregate. Attributing it to the products it advertised is the difference between a contribution margin you can act on and one that flatters everything equally.

Where to start

How the engagement runs

01

Map the channels

Every storefront and marketplace, with volume, fee structure, and how each currently posts. Fee structures differ more than sellers expect.

02

Decompose settlement

Historical payouts broken apart retrospectively for twelve to twenty-four months, so prior periods become analysable rather than starting from now.

03

Build landed cost

Freight, duty, and handling allocated to receipts on an agreed basis, applied to cost layers rather than expensed separately.

04

Publish channel margin

True contribution by channel and SKU, with the deductions itemised. Expect at least one uncomfortable finding.

Questions

What people ask.

Which channels do you support?
Shopify, Amazon Seller Central and Vendor Central, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Others scoped on request.
Do you replace our 3PL or WMS?
No. We read fulfilment and hold the order, inventory value, and settlement accounting.
How far back do you decompose?
Twelve to twenty-four months typically, so period comparison works from day one rather than after a year of collection.
Is advertising included in margin?
Where the channel reports it at campaign or SKU level, yes. Attributing it to the products it promoted is usually what changes the ranking.
What will we find?
Most sellers find at least one high-volume SKU that loses money after fees, returns, and landed cost. It is the common outcome, not the rare one.

Find out which channel actually pays.

Tell us where you sell. We will decompose a month of settlement and show you the real margin.