In this short video, we talk you through why we think every e-commerce business should have a specialist e-commerce accountant.
Video Transcript
Hi guys, I’m Oliver from Elver E-commerce Accountants. And today I’m going to be telling you why every e-commerce business should have a specialist e-commerce accountant on board. So to me, there are three really important reasons as to why you want a specialist e-commerce accountant.
Reason No. 1 – An Accountant that understands your business
There is a lot to understand about e-commerce, and a general accountant simply won’t have the time to understand how e-commerce works like an e-commerce specialist accountant does. They’ll be asking you questions like, “How can I get your Amazon sales”? or “Can you run some reports for me for your websites”? The great thing about an e-commerce accountant is that if they’re doing your bookkeeping for you, they will ask very little of you. This is because they will automate and integrate everything they possibly can to make your accounting process as efficient as possible. That means you can spend more time focused on running your business and not helping an accountant that doesn’t understand e-commerce.
Reason No. 2 – Getting your accounting for your platform and marketplace payouts right
One of the things that many accountants struggle with is unpicking and reconciling marketplace or platform payouts. A single Amazon payout can potentially be made up of thousands of different types of transactions. Not only that, but if you’re selling worldwide, it’s likely that you’ll have multiple VAT registrations in different countries. So, it’s really important that they’re getting the accounting for your payouts right, as without that, they won’t be getting your VAT returns right. So, to do all of this properly, you really need to be using a specialist e-commerce accounting app, like A2X. By the way, A2X is an amazing tool to Amazon and Shopify sellers. I’ll drop a link to that in the video description below.
Reason No. 3 – Guiding you on your VAT/GST registrations in other countries
For a traditional UK business selling to other businesses, the chances are they’re never going to need to register for VAT anywhere other than the UK. E-commerce businesses are much more likely to have VAT registrations in other countries. An e-commerce accountant will be able to connect you to a VAT service that will deal with all your EU VAT returns. They’ll also have partners in the other big markets like the US, Australia and Canada to help with GST returns there too.
So, to sum up, having an e-commerce accountant on board is going to save you time and money. They’re going to make sure you’re getting your payout accounting right and that all your GST and VAT responsibilities are met. Thanks for watching guys. If you have any suggestions for e-commerce, tax and accounting topics that you’d like to see on our next video, please drop them in the comments below. If you liked this video, please, subscribe to our channel to keep up to date with all the things that are e-commerce, accounting and tax.
[00:03:27] [END OF VIDEO]