On this page
Print on demand bookkeeping gets awkward because the customer’s sale and the supplier’s production cost arrive on different days, from different companies. Add a marketplace payout and a supplier charge in another currency, and the bank statement alone cannot show what an order earned.
Why POD costs are hard to match
A production charge can leave your card before the marketplace releases the customer’s payment. A card charge may also cover several orders, while a reprint or refund can create another entry after the original order looked complete. Matching nearby dates or similar amounts can attach the wrong cost to a sale.
Currency adds another layer. The supplier’s invoice might show dollars while your card statement shows pounds, including a foreign transaction fee. Keep both amounts visible: the invoice explains what you bought, and the card entry explains what left your account.
For limited companies, GOV.UK guidance says accounting records must include all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to (unless the company runs a retail business). Keep supplier details with each production cost so the purchase remains traceable. See the company and accounting records requirements.
Print on demand bookkeeping: match by order number, not by date
Start with the marketplace order number carried through to the POD order. Keep the POD supplier’s own reference alongside it. If an imported order has lost its marketplace reference, investigate the connection before assigning the cost; a matching date is only a clue.
Use an order register with fields for the shop, marketplace order number, supplier order reference, customer payment, production and shipping costs, marketplace fees, currency, card payment and payout reference. Add links to the supporting documents. Including the shop helps distinguish orders across Etsy, Shopify and eBay.
For Printify accounting, the practical aim is to follow the order from the shop record through the supplier invoice to the card charge. Apply the same approach to Printful, Gelato or Prodigi. The supplier name identifies the source; the order reference identifies the sale being fulfilled.
Where a card charge covers several orders, allocate its components using the supplier’s breakdown and check that the allocated amounts add back to the charge. Leave any unexplained difference visible for investigation. Do not spread a difference across orders simply to make the total agree.
An order confirmation and an invoice may describe the same purchase. Attach both to the existing transaction rather than creating another expense; the guide to the same payment having two documents covers that situation. If the card charge is present but the invoice is missing, mark it as awaiting evidence and follow the steps for a payment without an invoice.
Billfetch reads Printify, Printful, Gelato and Prodigi alongside Etsy, Shopify and your bank, and puts each production cost next to the sale it belongs to. See the integrations.
A worked example: one T-shirt order
These figures are hypothetical. The Etsy fee rates below are assumptions for this example, not a statement of current charges. The calculation uses the stated cash amounts without making VAT adjustments; it is an order-margin illustration, not a calculation of taxable profit.
The customer pays £32.00, including £4.50 postage. Keep that postage within the customer payment total: it is already included, so adding it again would overstate the sale.
| Item | Calculation or supporting detail | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Customer payment | Includes £4.50 postage | £32.00 |
| Assumed Etsy transaction fee | £32.00 × 6.5% | £2.08 |
| Assumed Etsy processing fee | £32.00 × 4% + £0.20 | £1.48 |
| Total assumed Etsy fees | £2.08 + £1.48 | £3.56 |
| POD production | Supplier invoice | $11.92 |
| POD shipping | Supplier invoice | $4.75 |
| Total POD supplier charge | $11.92 + $4.75 | $16.67 |
| Card payment in sterling | Includes an illustrative £0.12 foreign transaction fee | £12.73 |
| Order margin before overheads and tax | £32.00 − £3.56 − £12.73 | £15.71 |
The £0.12 foreign transaction fee is already inside the £12.73 card payment. Show it separately when categorising costs, but do not deduct it again from the margin. Keep the dollar invoice alongside the sterling card entry rather than replacing the invoice amount with an unexplained conversion.
| Event | Date | Link retained in the order register |
|---|---|---|
| Customer pays for the order | 29 September | Marketplace order number and £32.00 sale |
| Order goes to production; supplier charges the card | 30 September | Same marketplace order number, POD reference and supplier charge |
| Etsy payout reaches the bank | 6 October | Payout reference linked back to the existing sale |
At the September month end, the register therefore shows the sale beside its production cost even though the payout arrives in October. Match the payout against the marketplace settlement breakdown. If it contains other orders or adjustments, reconcile those components too rather than assuming the bank receipt represents this T-shirt alone.
Cost of sales vs. expenses
For the order-margin view described here, group the supplier’s production charge and POD shipping under cost of sales. These are the costs of making and delivering the item sold. Keep marketplace selling fees and foreign transaction fees in separate categories while including them in the order-margin calculation.
Keep subscriptions and mock-up tools in overheads in this view. They support the shop more broadly, so do not attach their entire charge to whichever order happens to share the payment date. An order can have a positive margin while the business still has overheads to cover.
For sole traders, GOV.UK includes business purchases for resale, such as stock and raw materials, among allowable expenses for the self-employed. That guidance describes the expense category; it does not establish the treatment of every supplier charge or every seller’s circumstances.
When organising cost of goods sold for print on demand, keep the category and the order link together. The category helps summarise spending; the link explains which sale generated it. Agree the accounts presentation and any VAT adjustments with your accountant rather than treating the illustrative margin as your tax result.
VAT on POD invoices
Begin with the supplier’s invoice. Note the supplier details, what was supplied, the currency and whether UK VAT is shown. Keep any VAT amount separately visible in your working records. If the invoice is unclear, flag it for the supplier or accountant rather than filling in a VAT figure yourself.
For Printful VAT in the UK, bring the actual invoice to the discussion. The brand name or the currency of the card charge is not enough information to decide how you should record the purchase. Keep a subscription invoice distinguishable from an invoice for production and shipping.
A UK business buying services from an overseas supplier may need to account for VAT itself through the reverse charge. Whether this applies depends on the circumstances. GOV.UK explains that the business acts as supplier and customer, with recovery of input tax subject to the normal rules. See the guidance on purchases from abroad.
For imports, VAT-registered businesses can use postponed VAT accounting to account for import VAT on their VAT return, with recovery subject to the normal rules. The same GOV.UK import VAT guidance explains the approach. Ask an accountant to check the invoice, import circumstances and relevant evidence before applying it to a POD order.
VAT records must be retained for at least 6 years. Organise the invoices and supporting records so they remain retrievable alongside the matching work.
Month-end cut-off
Review the order register alongside the marketplace balance, supplier documents and bank statement. Keep separate fields for the customer payment date, production charge date and payout date. Those dates describe different events; replacing them with the bank payout date loses useful evidence.
In the example, keep the £32.00 sale and £12.73 card cost linked in the September order-margin view. Mark the related marketplace funds as awaiting payout, then attach the 6 October settlement to that existing record. Avoid entering the payout as another sale in the order register.
This operational matching view does not decide the recognition dates for statutory accounts or a tax return. Give your accountant the underlying dates and documents so they can apply the accounting basis relevant to your business, including any cut-off adjustments. Do not move an invoice’s date just to make a monthly report balance.
Digital-platform reporting is another reason to keep marketplace records understandable. UK platform operators may need to report seller details to HMRC. Sellers receiving €2,000 or less, approximately £1,700, for fewer than 30 sales of goods in a year fall within the stated reporting exception; both conditions matter. See GOV.UK’s digital platform operator guidance.
Keep that platform-reporting test separate from the calculation of an order’s margin. At the year end, pass over the register, reconciliations and unresolved items with the source documents. Use what is in the accountant package to organise the handover.
Reprints, returns and refunds
Keep the original order as the starting point, then attach each replacement, refund or credit to it. Record who bears the extra cost using the supplier’s confirmation and the actual charges. A customer refund and a supplier refund are separate movements, so check for each rather than assuming they happen together.
For a free reprint with no additional supplier charge, attach the replacement reference and confirmation to the original order. Note that the supplier covered it. Do not invent another purchase expense or another customer sale simply because another parcel was produced. Retain the original production cost unless the supplier also issues a credit against it.
If you pay for the reprint or replacement shipping, attach the additional invoice and payment to the same order. Update the order-margin view to include the extra cost. If the supplier later credits it, link the credit back to that charge so the register shows the complete sequence.
For a customer refund, record the amount returned against the original sale and retain the refund evidence. Check the marketplace statement for any fee adjustment and the supplier records for any production credit. Leave missing evidence flagged until resolved rather than assuming the original margin has been restored.
General information, not advice. This is general information about UK rules at the time of writing, not advice about your circumstances. Check the linked GOV.UK guidance or speak to an accountant about your situation.
