How to Read the eBay Transactions Report for Your Books (UK)

Every month the same thing happens to a new eBay seller. The bank shows a deposit from eBay, the sales list shows a different total, and the spreadsheet shows a third. None of the three is wrong: they measure what buyers paid, what eBay kept, what was refunded and what reached your account. The Transaction report in Seller Hub lets you join those up, one row at a time.

This guide explains the Transaction report as eBay UK's help pages describe it, how it differs from the Earnings report, the monthly financial statement and the invoice, and a repeatable way to turn them into clean books. It is written for UK sellers and was checked against eBay UK help pages and GOV.UK in October 2026. eBay changes its screens and columns from time to time, so confirm labels in your own account.

1. What the Transaction report is, and how to get it

eBay UK's help page on reconciling your sales transactions describes the Transaction report as a detailed breakdown of all your account activity for a specific date range. It is in CSV format, so it opens in Excel or Google Sheets, and it shows details including transaction date, order number, buyer name, payout date and fees. The steps eBay gives are:

1. Go to the Payments tab in Seller Hub.
2. Select Reports from the menu on the left.
3. Select Transaction report from the download section.
4. Choose the transaction Type, the start date and the end date.
5. Select Create report.

eBay says it will email you when the report is available. It also warns that the times in the report may not match the times in your own records because of international time zones, which can cause discrepancies with other reports. This matters at month end: an order at 11:30pm on the 31st can land in a different month depending on whose clock is used.

Customising the columns

The default report may have more columns than you need. Under Customise column settings you can select or deselect columns in five groups: Transaction details, Payout details, Shipping details, Item details and Buyer details. Your choices are saved and apply to all future transaction reports, and Reset to default settings reverses them. eBay notes the report includes customisable columns for viewing your fees, so make sure the fee columns are switched on before you download. For bookkeeping, the transaction and payout groups plus the fee columns are enough. Buyer names and addresses are personal data, so leave them out if your books only need amounts and order numbers.

2. The columns that matter

eBay's help page lists the details you may find in the report that "individually or combined" help with reconciliation. Here they are, grouped by what each helps you do.

Single and multi-item orders

This is the trap that causes the most double counting. eBay's help page says that for an order with a single item, the order and item details appear on a single row. For an order with multiple items, the first row includes the order details and the following rows include the item details, and an order with multiple quantities of the same item shows as one line item. If you sum a column without checking which rows carry the order total and which carry item detail, a multi-item order can be counted twice.

3. Reading the fee lines

eBay UK's business seller fees page, last updated on 30 September 2026, describes the transaction fees this way. The final value fee is a variable percentage of the total amount of the sale, which includes item price, postage and any applicable taxes, plus a per-order fee. For orders of £10.00 or less the per-order fee is £0.30, and for orders over £10.00 it is £0.40. The variable percentage depends on the category, so look it up for yours rather than assuming one figure. The regulatory operating fee is 0.35% of the total amount of the sale, again including item price, postage and taxes. Where the delivery address is outside the UK and your registered address is in the UK, an international fee also applies, at rates that depend on the destination region. A £14 dispute fee applies when you are found responsible for a chargeback or other disputed amount. Our guide to every eBay UK selling fee has the detail.

For the books: fees are calculated on the whole sale including postage, and they are deducted from your proceeds before the payout, so a bank statement never shows them separately. If you record sales from bank deposits alone, you understate both income and expenses by the same amount. Book the gross sale and the fees separately.

4. One order, followed from sale to books (illustrative)

These figures are made up to show the arithmetic. The 10% variable rate is a placeholder, not eBay's rate for any category; the £0.40 per-order fee and 0.35% regulatory operating fee are the figures from eBay's fees page.

• Item price £50.00, postage charged to the buyer £4.00, no seller-collected tax and no discount.
• Total amount of the sale (gross): £50.00 + £4.00 = £54.00.
• Variable final value fee at the placeholder 10%: £54.00 x 0.10 = £5.40, plus the £0.40 per-order fee = £5.80.
• Regulatory operating fee: £54.00 x 0.0035 = £0.189, shown here as about £0.19.
• Total fees: £5.80 + £0.19 = £5.99.
• Net amount in the Transaction report: £54.00 - £5.99 = £48.01.

Now the postage label. Say you bought a label through eBay for £3.20 using eBay funds. The Earnings report, which works per order, then shows:

• Gross amount £54.00, expenses £5.99 + £3.20 = £9.19, refunds £0, so order earnings = £54.00 - £9.19 = £44.81.
• Cross-check: net amount £48.01 less the label £3.20 = £44.81.

If the buyer later receives a £10.00 partial refund, the Earnings report generated afterwards shows refunds of £10.00 and order earnings of £34.81, ignoring any fee credits. eBay's help page makes the timing point explicitly: if you choose an order period of May, the earnings reflect expenses and refunds linked to those orders that were incurred in June or later. In a Transaction report for May, that refund would not appear at all, because it happened in June. Two reports, two correct answers, different questions.

Then the supplier's cost, which eBay cannot see. If you paid your supplier £28.00 for this item, your profit on the order is £44.81 - £28.00 = £16.81 before any other business costs. Keep that supplier line in your own sheet keyed on the order ID.

5. The Earnings report, and when it is the better tool

eBay UK describes the Earnings report as a breakdown of your earnings for each order after expenses and refunds have been deducted from the gross amount. You can download it from the Payments tab in Seller Hub by choosing Earnings, picking an order creation date range and generating a CSV. Its columns, per eBay's page, are:

• order creation date, order ID and item subtotal (the listing prices before seller discounts);
• postage and handling collected from the buyer, seller-collected tax and any discount;
• gross amount (item subtotal plus postage and handling plus seller-collected tax, excluding taxes or fees eBay collects from the buyer);
• expenses (fees and fee credits tied to the order, plus postage labels and donations);
• refunds (for returns, cases, cancellations, requests and disputes, not including fee credits); and
• order earnings (gross amount less expenses and refunds).

Two limits to know. To access it you need to complete at least 5 orders in a given month, after which it is permanently accessible from your account, and eBay says eligible sellers can view it. Second, charges and credits for postage labels bought with methods other than eBay funds, such as PayPal, are not included in the report or in the order earnings calculation. Parcelforce labels bought through eBay are paid with PayPal only, according to eBay's postage label help page, so a seller who uses them will need to add those costs themselves.

When to use which: the Earnings report answers "how much did each order make?", which is useful for spotting loss-making products. The Transaction report answers "what happened in this period, and how does it tie to my bank?", which is what bookkeeping needs. Use both and treat them as two views of one set of facts.

6. Tying the report to your bank

Reconciliation means every pound in the bank maps to specific rows in the report. The key is the Payout ID.

eBay UK's page on getting paid for items you've sold explains how business sellers are paid. Fees and other costs are deducted from sale proceeds automatically, the proceeds show as Processing funds, and it typically takes 24 hours from confirming the buyer's payment for them to appear as Available for payout, unless the transaction is on hold. By default, payouts are initiated daily, and you can choose weekly, fortnightly or monthly. eBay gives the schedule as:

Once a payout is initiated, eBay says it can take up to 4 business days to clear in your bank account, depending on your bank. That gap explains why the deposit date and the payout date in the report can differ, and why a payout initiated on the last day of the month may reach your bank in the next. Decide in advance which date you book against and stick to it.

A four-step reconciliation

1. Pick one bank deposit from eBay and find its payout in Seller Hub, under Payouts. eBay says you can open the payout ID to see a breakdown of each transaction in it, with status, amount and fees.
2. Filter the Transaction report by that Payout ID and total the net amounts. Sales add, refunds and claims subtract.
3. Compare to the deposit. A difference usually means a refund or label charge falling in a different payout, or a timing gap.
4. Mark the rows as reconciled in your own sheet.

A small illustration (made up): a payout contains three sales with net amounts of £48.01, £22.40 and £15.75, and one refund of £10.00. The total is £48.01 + £22.40 + £15.75 - £10.00 = £76.16. If the bank deposit is £76.16, the payout reconciles.

Payout statuses and holds

eBay lists payout statuses as Created, In progress, Funds sent, Returned, Blocked and Cancelled. Only Funds sent means a payout succeeded; for Cancelled, eBay says the balance has been added back to Available funds. Funds can also be On hold, for example when an order has an open claim. eBay's page on payments on hold says holds are normally lifted when it can confirm the order arrived, using end-to-end tracking, or when a case is resolved in the seller's favour, and that a hold will usually be resolved within 30 days, though in rare circumstances it can take longer. New business sellers typically receive funds within 31 days, according to the same page. In your books, held money is a sale you have made but have not been paid for, so it belongs with money owed to you, not with income received. See our guides on how eBay actually pays you and Managed Payments.

7. Statements, invoices and credit notes

eBay publishes three other documents that sellers often confuse with the Transaction report.

• Financial statement. A PDF summary of your monthly account activity, with a detailed view of transactions including orders, claims, refunds, disputes, payouts, fees and credits. eBay emails you at the start of each month. Statements can be downloaded for 10 years from the date of issue and only cover payments processed by eBay. eBay states plainly that the statement is not an invoice and does not replace existing reports.
• Invoice. Issued for services rendered, covering seller fees and other costs. The summary is a PDF and the detailed view is a CSV. It shows the applicable taxes on fees and other costs already deducted from your Available, Processing and On hold funds. If you sell on multiple eBay sites, fees and taxes are grouped by currency.
• Credit note. When seller fees, charges or taxes are reversed, eBay issues a credit note with a PDF summary and a CSV of details.

eBay recommends you consult a financial adviser for financial reconciling of this information. For when you must register for VAT, see our guide to VAT for UK dropshippers.

8. A monthly routine that takes about an hour

1. Download the same set each month: the Transaction report for the calendar month, the Earnings report for orders created that month, the financial statement and the invoice. Name them consistently, for example with the year and month first.
2. Save the originals untouched and work on a copy.
3. Reconcile payouts as in section 6.
4. Book sales gross and fees separately, using the Final value fee, Regulatory operating fee and Other fees columns so your fee costs are visible by type.
5. Add what eBay cannot see: supplier costs, postage bought outside eBay, packaging and software. Our guide to what counts as a business expense lists the usual candidates.
6. Back up the folder. See backing up the records your business depends on.

For the bigger picture of what the books should contain, bookkeeping for a dropshipping shop goes through the whole system, and a free eBay fee calculator helps you sense-check that a row's fees look right for its price.

9. What HMRC expects, and why eBay's HMRC figure may differ from yours

GOV.UK says sole traders and partners must keep records of business income and expenses for their Self Assessment tax return. The records you need include all sales and income, all business expenses, VAT records if registered for VAT, and records about your personal income. You do not send them in, but must keep them to work out your profit or loss and to show HMRC if asked. Proof can include receipts for goods and stock, bank statements and sales invoices. You must keep records for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year: if you sent your 2022 to 2023 return online by 31 January 2024, GOV.UK's example is to keep records until at least the end of January 2029.

GOV.UK also explains accounting methods. From the 2024 to 2025 tax year, cash basis is the default method of accounting, with the option to opt out. Under cash basis you record income and expenses when money is received or paid. Our guides to Self Assessment for eBay sellers and avoiding a tax surprise go further.

eBay also reports to HMRC

eBay UK's page on UK digital sales reporting says that from 1 January 2024, digital platforms are required to comply with UK digital sales reporting legislation, and that eBay will report your sales transactions and certain personal or business information to HMRC if you meet either of two thresholds in the calendar year: total sales equal to or more than £1,707 after deducting fees and commissions or taxes, or 30 or more sales transactions (cancelled transactions are not included). eBay reports each January for the previous year and gives you a copy.

The key detail for your books: the amount eBay reports excludes shipping label costs bought through eBay, VAT collected and remitted by eBay, VAT charged on fees, and amounts deducted for fees, coupons, cancelled orders and returns. eBay says the amount it reports may therefore differ from the total payments you actually received. Keep your own reconciled totals, so that if the two figures differ you can explain why. eBay is also clear that the reporting does not change your tax obligations.

10. Common mistakes

• Booking income from bank deposits only, which hides the fees and understates both sales and costs.
• Double counting multi-item orders because order and item rows were both summed.
• Mixing report types. The financial statement is not an invoice, and the Earnings report is not a substitute for the Transaction report.
• Forgetting labels bought outside eBay funds, which the Earnings report excludes.
• Using the order date for some figures and the payout date for others in the same month.
• Treating held funds as income received.
• Not saving the originals.

Sources and how we checked

Facts in this guide were checked against these official pages in October 2026. Rules and figures change, so confirm anything that affects a decision. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.

• Reconciling your eBay sales transactions (eBay UK)
• Earnings report (eBay UK)
• Using the Payments tab in Seller Hub (eBay UK)
• Getting paid for items you've sold (eBay UK)
• Payments on hold (eBay UK)
• Fees for business sellers (eBay UK)
• UK digital sales reporting (eBay UK)
• Buying and printing postage labels (eBay UK)
• Business records if you're self-employed (GOV.UK)
• What records to keep (GOV.UK)
• How long to keep your records (GOV.UK)

Questions people ask