Record Keeping for Online Sellers: What to Track When You Sell on Multiple Platforms

If you sell on Vinted, eBay, Etsy, Depop or Amazon and have been meaning to sort out your records, the system you need is simpler than you think. Keep a record of every sale with the gross amount and the platform, every expense with a receipt or evidence, and your platform transaction reports downloaded quarterly. That is the complete record-keeping system for most online sellers under £50,000.

Jade had been selling on Vinted for two years. Her records lived in four places simultaneously. A notes app on her phone where she logged some sales but not all of them. Her Vinted wallet history which she accessed occasionally and screen shotted when she remembered. Her bank statements which showed payouts but not gross sales. And a spreadsheet she had started in January and abandoned by February.

When someone in her Facebook group mentioned the 5 October Self Assessment registration deadline, Jade sat down to work out what she actually owed, she could not. The records were not there in any usable form. Reconstructing a year from four disconnected sources took her an entire weekend and still produced a figure she was not confident in.

The record-keeping system in this post takes twenty minutes to set up and fifteen minutes per week to maintain. It would have saved Jade that weekend entirely.

What Records Do Online Sellers Actually Need to Keep?

Online sellers need to keep records of four things: gross income from every sale on every platform, platform fees and other deductible expenses, bank statements showing payouts and business costs, and the platform transaction reports that show what eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Vinted and Depop reported to HMRC. Together these four records produce the complete picture your Self Assessment return requires.

HMRC does not specify the format your records must take. A spreadsheet, a dedicated app, a paper ledger or a tax template all satisfy the requirement as long as the information is accurate, complete and held for the required period.

What HMRC does require is that the records are sufficient to support the figures on your Self Assessment return. If HMRC opens an enquiry and asks you to demonstrate how you calculated your gross income, you need to be able to show it. A bank statement showing net payouts after platform fees is not sufficient on its own because it does not match the gross figure the platform already reported to HMRC.

What Is Gross Income and Why Does It Differ from Your Payout?

Your gross income for tax purposes is the full amount the buyer paid before the platform deducted its fees. On eBay, Etsy and Amazon, fees are taken before your payout arrives so your bank receipts are always lower than your gross income. On Vinted there are no seller fees so your payout matches your gross income exactly.

The distinction matters because eBay, Etsy, Amazon and Depop all report your gross sales to HMRC automatically under DAC7 rules every January. The figure they report is the gross amount, not what landed in your account. If your records show only bank payouts, your declared income will be lower than what HMRC already received from the platform.

Jade's Vinted payout for a £12 item is £12. Her gross income is £12. No adjustment needed. Her eBay payout for a £35 item with £4.50 in fees is £30.50. Her gross income is £35. The fee is recorded separately as a deductible expense. If she records £30.50 as income, her declared income contradicts eBay's report by £4.50 on that single transaction.

Across a year of selling that discrepancy compounds significantly. Our post on why your bank balance is not your profit covers this in full, and the gross income trap post explains what happens when HMRC's platform data and your declared income do not match.

How Do You Set Up a Record-Keeping System in Twenty Minutes?

The simplest effective system for most online sellers has three components: an income record, an expenses record and a folder for supporting documents. All three can live in Google Drive for free.

Component one: Your income record.

Create one spreadsheet with five columns: date, platform, item description, gross sale amount and platform fees. One row per sale. The gross sale amount is what the buyer paid before fees. The platform fees column records what the platform deducted. Do not record the net payout. Record the gross amount and the fee separately.

If you sell across multiple platforms, keep all of them in the same spreadsheet with the platform column identifying the source. Do not keep a separate sheet per platform. Your tax position is calculated on your combined income across all sources and you need to see the total in one place.

Component two: Your expenses record.

A second spreadsheet tab or simple document recording every business cost. Date, category, description and amount. The categories that matter most for online sellers are: platform fees if not recorded in the income spreadsheet, postage and packaging, stock purchased to resell, mileage at 55p per mile for sourcing and posting, home storage proportion if you use a room for stock, and phone costs attributable to the business.

One line per expense with a brief description. The detail matters more than the format.

Component three: Your supporting documents folder.

A folder in Google Drive labelled with the tax year, for example "2025-26 Tax Records," containing three subfolders: Platform Reports, Expense Receipts and Bank Statements.

Platform Reports holds your downloaded transaction reports from every platform you sell on. Expense Receipts holds digital copies of receipts for significant purchases. Bank Statements holds your selling account statements for the year. If you use a personal account for selling, note the selling-related entries to make them identifiable.

How Do You Download Your Platform Transaction Reports?

Each platform stores your complete selling history as a downloadable report. These reports are the most important records you hold because they match what the platform already sent to HMRC. Download them quarterly rather than waiting until January.

Vinted: Go to your profile, select My Sales, choose the period and download the CSV. Since Vinted charges no seller fees, the amount received in each row equals your gross income exactly.

eBay: Log into Seller Hub, go to Reports, select Transaction report, set the date range and download as a CSV. The Total transaction amount column is your gross income. The Final value fee column is your deductible expense. Our eBay gross sales guide walks through every column and which ones matter for tax.

Etsy: Go to Shop Manager, select Finances then Payment account, choose the period and download. The order total including shipping is your gross income. The fees section shows every deductible charge. Our Etsy and Depop tax guide covers the complete fee structure.

Amazon: Log into Seller Central, go to Reports, select Payments then Transaction View. Set the date range and download as a flat file. The total column shows your gross proceeds per transaction before Amazon deducted its referral fee, FBA fees and any other charges. These fees appear as separate line items in the same report and are your deductible expenses. For FBA sellers, also download your FBA inventory and fee reports to capture storage fees and fulfilment costs, which are separately deductible.

Depop: Go to your profile, select Selling then Sales. Download your sales history for the period. Since Depop removed its selling commission for UK sellers in 2024, your gross income is your listing price. The only deductible fee is the payment processing charge of 2.9% plus £0.30 per transaction.

Download all platform reports at the end of each quarter. File each one in your Platform Reports folder immediately. Four downloads per year per platform is the maximum effort required.

What Records Do You Need to Keep for Expenses?

Every deductible expense needs sufficient evidence to support it if HMRC asks. The level of evidence required is proportional to the size of the claim. Bank statements alone are sufficient for small regular costs. Receipts and invoices are needed for larger or less obvious purchases.

For postage and packaging materials, bank statements and receipts from Royal Mail Click and Drop or courier accounts are sufficient. Note what each purchase was for if it is not obvious from the merchant name.

For stock purchased to resell, keep the original purchase receipts, invoices or PayPal payment records. If you buy at car boot sales or charity shops where no receipt is issued, keep a brief contemporaneous note of the date, location, items purchased and amount paid. A note made on the day is more credible than a reconstruction made months later.

For mileage, keep a log with date, starting point, destination, purpose and miles driven. A note on your phone immediately after each journey is sufficient. Do not reconstruct a year's mileage from memory in January. Our mileage guide covers the 55p per mile rate and what qualifies as a business journey.

For the home storage claim, keep a note of your room measurements, your total property floor area and your annual running costs for rent or mortgage, utilities, council tax and internet. One calculation note per year is sufficient. Our spare room expenses post covers the full calculation method.

What Does a Well-Organised Record-Keeping System Actually Look Like?

A well-organised online seller record-keeping system has one income spreadsheet covering all platforms, one expenses record with receipts filed digitally, quarterly platform transaction report downloads stored in a named folder, and a fifteen-minute weekly update routine. Everything needed for Self Assessment sits in one place and takes two hours to file rather than a weekend to reconstruct.

Jade now has one Google Drive folder labelled "2026-27 Tax Records" with three subfolders. Every Saturday morning she spends fifteen minutes updating her income spreadsheet with the week's sales, checking her expenses record and filing any receipts photographed during the week. On the first Saturday of each new quarter she downloads her Vinted and eBay transaction reports and files them in the Platform Reports folder.

Her income spreadsheet has 340 rows covering the current year to date. Her platform reports match her spreadsheet figures because she built the spreadsheet using the same gross amounts the platforms report to HMRC. In January she will transfer the figures from her spreadsheet to the self-employment pages of her return and file. The process will take approximately two hours rather than an entire weekend of reconstruction.

The free Google Sheets bookkeeping template gives Jade the income and expenses structure ready-built. Download it, make a copy and the columns are already there. For sellers who also need the tax calculation, trading allowance comparison and set-aside percentage alongside the income and expense tracking, the UK Online Seller Tax Template handles all of it in one place.

Get the UK Online Seller Tax Template, £14.99 per year →