Selling online is straightforward for your customers.

Behind the scenes, it rarely is.

The moment you start selling through a marketplace or payment platform, you have multiple systems producing their own reports, their own timelines and their own deductions. What lands in your bank account is not the same as your turnover. And since 2024, platforms like Amazon, eBay and Etsy are reporting seller income directly to HMRC every year.

That does not mean selling online creates a problem. It just means your records need to be set up properly so that what you report and what HMRC can see line up cleanly.

This guide covers what you need to keep, how long to keep it, and the most common mistakes we see online sellers make with their bookkeeping and VAT. It is practical and specific, whether you run a Shopify store, sell on a marketplace or use a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal.

If anything in here raises a question about your own setup, we are happy to take a look.