eCommerce ERP Consultant, UK

Where the money goes between basket and bank

A UK online order passes through more hands than most owners realize. The shopper pays by card, wallet or a pay-later provider. The web shop platform or a payment processor holds the money for a while, takes a fee and pays out in batches. A marketplace sale is paid on the marketplace's own cycle, net of selling fees, fulfillment fees, advertising and refunds. A pay-later provider pays you upfront minus its charge and carries the customer's instalments itself.

Each route needs its own clearing account in the ERP. The order posts the gross sale and VAT to that account, the payout statement posts fees and refunds, and the bank receipt clears what is left. Without this, the bookkeeper ends up matching lump-sum deposits to hundreds of orders by eye, or posting a single net figure that hides the true cost of each channel.

The questions I settle early are practical:

• Which system is the record of a refund: the shop, the payment processor or the ERP?
• How are pay-later refunds handled when the customer has already paid instalments?
• Are marketplace fees invoiced with VAT, and where do those invoices come from?
• Who investigates a payout that does not clear, and within what time?

These answers become the reconciliation rules in the design, and the test scripts for ERP integration.

VAT across your own shop, marketplaces and overseas buyers

VAT on online sales is not one rule. For your own web shop, you account for VAT on UK sales in the usual way. For some marketplace sales, particularly where goods are sold by overseas sellers or arrive as low-value imports, the marketplace itself can be treated as the supplier for VAT. Sales to customers in Northern Ireland and the EU follow their own arrangements, and EU consumer sales may involve schemes for registering and reporting VAT in the destination country.

I am not a tax advisor, and these rules change, so the treatment of each sale type should be confirmed with your accountant. What I can do is make sure the ERP captures enough to apply that advice reliably:

• Channel and fulfillment origin on every order line.
• Delivery country and region, not just billing address.
• A tax code per scenario that your accountant has signed off.
• Marketplace fee invoices posted with the correct input VAT.

Because VAT returns go through Making Tax Digital compatible software, the data has to be right at source. I test each scenario during UAT with real orders and compare the VAT report against expected figures before go-live. The UK ERP consultant page covers MTD and wider VAT design for the business.

Cancellations, refunds and consumer rights for distance sales

UK consumer law gives online shoppers cancellation rights for most distance purchases, with set expectations on how quickly refunds are made and what can be deducted. Faulty goods carry separate rights again. Your policies and their legal wording belong with your advisor, but the ERP has to make those policies workable at volume.

I design the returns process as a sequence of recorded steps:

1. Return requested, with reason captured as a coded field.
2. Parcel received and inspected, with condition graded.
3. Outcome decided: restock, refurbish, return to supplier or write off.
4. Refund issued to the original payment method, or an exchange created.
5. Accounting entries posted for revenue, VAT, stock and any carriage cost.

Timing matters. A refund that waits for the warehouse to process a full cage of returns can drift past what customers are entitled to, so I define which events trigger a refund and who can approve exceptions.

Returns data also feeds commercial decisions. When reason codes are reliable, buyers can see that a product line comes back for sizing rather than quality, and marketing can stop promoting items whose refunds wipe out their margin. Return rate by product and channel is one of the first reports I specify.

Fulfillment houses, carriers and margin per parcel

Many UK online brands outsource storage and dispatch to a fulfillment house. That brings an invoice full of small charges: receiving per pallet or carton, storage per location, pick per line, packaging, carriage by service level and returns handling. If those charges arrive as one monthly total, the cost of serving each order stays invisible.

I specify how fulfillment house data reaches the ERP: order release, dispatch confirmation with carrier and tracking, stock receipts, stock adjustments and charge lines that can be tied back to orders or channels. Where per-order charges are not available, I agree an allocation method with finance and write it down.

Margin per order then becomes a defined calculation: sales income net of promotions and refunds, minus the landed cost of goods, minus fulfillment and carriage, minus card, marketplace and pay-later fees, minus an agreed share of advertising. The advertising layer is where my paid marketing work meets the ERP. Free delivery thresholds, promotion depth and campaign targets can be tested against real margin, not just conversion rate.

Stock held by the fulfillment house and in marketplace warehouses should sit in separate locations. My Odoo Inventory page for UK warehouses covers the stock side in more depth.

Customer data, platform choice and moving off Xero plus apps

Online retail runs on customer data: addresses, order history, marketing preferences and sometimes saved payment references held by your processor. UK GDPR and the rules on electronic marketing shape how that data is collected, how consent is recorded and how long it is kept. I build those requirements into the design so consent travels with the customer record and the ERP holds only what the business needs.

A common starting point is Xero with a web shop, a marketplace integration app, a summary connector and a returns tool. When choosing what comes next, I score options on order volume handling, settlement imports, VAT scenario coverage, fulfillment house integration and reporting. The trade-off is often between staying on Xero with a stronger order management layer and moving to a full ERP.

Migration covers products and bundles, open orders, customer accounts, gift card balances, unsettled marketplace funds and stock counted at each location close to switchover. I plan the cutover well away from Black Friday and Christmas.

Workshops run remotely within UK hours. See the UK hub and the eCommerce industry page for wider context.