There are numerous platforms offering online marketplaces where you can sell products, such as bol.com, Amazon, Etsy, and so on. E-commerce can be a very effective way to sell your product to a wide audience.
When managing your accounts, two things are important: firstly, the costs charged by such an online marketplace, and secondly, the income.
The costs
If you use an online marketplace run by an e-commerce platform, you will incur costs. You will receive a summary periodically, for example detailing fixed fees, commissions on your sales, or advertising costs.
Sometimes cost summaries are combined with income. For example, on a monthly summary, you will first see all your income, followed by the costs, such as commissions. The end result is a net amount that is actually paid out to you.
- Are only costs listed? Then you can simply enter these into Dexxter as an expense.
- A mix of costs and income? Use the document exclusively to record the costs. You process the income separately (see the chapter ‘Income’).
Income
When recording your income, it is important to determine who your customer is. There are two possible scenarios:
- The e-commerce platform is your customer
This is rare, but can occur in certain partnerships.
- The end customer is your customer (most common)
In this scenario, the e-commerce platform is merely an intermediary and not your customer. Legal speaking, the customer in your accounts is the person who purchased your products.
So we need to include those end customers in your accounts – all the people who have purchased your products via the e-commerce platform. That seems like quite a task, though (thankfully) there are handy solutions!
Is the customer a private person?
Assume standardly that your customer is a private person, unless they specifically request an invoice with a company number.
- You register the income via daily receipts.
- Enter the full amount of income! And not just what is paid out, as costs may already have been deducted from that. You record these costs separately (see ‘Costs’).
- The (invoice) date shown on the summary is the date on which you also fill in the daily receipts. So we do not look at the payment date.
Of course, you only receive such a summary occasionally, for example every month. Between those dates, you must also fill in something in your daily receipts; in that case, choose “nothing sold via daily receipts”. Unless you have actually sold products or services via your daily receipts.
Are you subject to VAT? Then you simply need to charge the applicable Belgian VAT rate. The amount you receive will then include VAT.
Is the customer a company?
For companies, you create a separate sales invoice using their company number.
Make sure you do not fill in the turnover in the daily receipts ledger and then create a sales invoice on top of that. This leads to double turnover in your accounts, which is obviously not the intention.
If someone requests a sales invoice retrospectively, whilst you have already filled in the daily receipts? You can fill in negative daily receipts for this. You will then remove the turnover from your daily receipts, but subsequently re-enter it via a sales invoice.
Attention! If you sell a lot via an e-commerce platform!
‘A lot’ here means: more than €10,000 in sales per year to private individuals in other EU countries. Here are a few examples:
- Have you sold €15,000 worth of goods annually to Belgian private individuals via an e-commerce platform? No problem at all; the limit does not apply to Belgian private individuals.
- Have you sold €4,000 worth of goods annually via an e-commerce platform to Dutch private persons, a further €4,000 to French private persons and another €4,000 to German private persons? Then you must use the OSS scheme.
This €10,000 annual threshold for private persons in other EU countries determines whether you can still charge Belgian VAT or must switch to the local VAT rate where your buyer resides.
- Below the €10,000 threshold: You charge the Belgian VAT rate, regardless of the customer’s location.
- Above the €10,000 threshold: You switch to an OSS return (One Stop Shop). In this case, you charge the VAT rate of the country where the buyer resides. You must then switch to an OSS return, a kind of European, overarching VAT declaration.
The OSS scheme was introduced to combat VAT abuse. If these rules did not exist, it would be advantageous for an e-commerce company to establish itself in the country with the lowest VAT rate. It could then sell to private individuals across Europe from that country, always at that low VAT rate.
The OSS scheme prevents this. Because as soon as your annual sales to private persons in other EU countries exceed €10,000, you must still apply the VAT rate of the country where the private person resides.
Are you selling to a European company? This turnover does not count towards the €10,000 threshold. The standard rules always apply here.
OSS return & Dexxter?
Dexxter does not (currently) support OSS returns.
After all, it is rather exceptional for a sole proprietor to sell more than €10,000 worth of goods to private individuals in other EU countries.
Do you still make sales of more than €10,000 worth of goods to private individuals in other EU countries on an annual basis? That’s great, but you are then also required to use the OSS return.
You cannot create such a return in Dexxter, but you can always take a look at our advisors page! You might find an advisor there who can assist you with the OSS scheme.
