The marketplace selling glossary.
RTO, SLA, SPF, TCS, breaching soon, volumetric weight — the jargon of Indian marketplace selling, defined plainly. Nearly every term here maps to a charge, a deadline, or a claim, which is why knowing them is knowing your own money.
- Most marketplace jargon maps directly to money — a charge, a deadline, or a claim.
- RTO, weight discrepancy and SLA penalties are the terms that cost sellers the most.
- TCS is the term worth knowing on the upside — it is your money, claimable back.
- Each term below links to the guide that goes deeper where one exists.
- Robnu turns the whole vocabulary into handled operations. Free while we figure out pricing.
Marketplace panels assume you already speak their language. This glossary is the translation layer — plain definitions for the terms that appear on your settlements, your order statuses and your penalty notices.
Marketplace panels assume you already speak their language. This glossary is the translation layer — plain definitions for the terms that appear on your settlements, your order statuses and your penalty notices. Nearly every term here maps directly to money: a charge, a deadline, or a claim.
Why the vocabulary is worth learning
Every term in this glossary exists because a marketplace made you responsible for understanding it. RTO, SLA, SPF, TCS, breaching soon, weight discrepancy — each corresponds to a specific event that either costs you money or entitles you to reclaim some. Misunderstanding one usually means paying something you did not owe or forfeiting something you could have recovered. The vocabulary is not academic; it is the interface to your own settlement, and fluency in it is fluency in your own margin.
The terms that cost the most
A few terms deserve special attention because of how much money rides on them. RTO is the biggest silent cost in most catalogues — freight both ways with no sale. Weight discrepancy is small per shipment but substantial per year, and frequently wrong. SLA penalties compound daily and can demote your catalogue in search. And on the upside, TCS is the term worth knowing because it is your own money, reclaimable at filing — the one line that is a deduction but not a cost.
You should not need a glossary to get paid correctly
The deeper point behind this whole glossary is that the burden of understanding all this jargon falls on the seller by default, and that is precisely the burden Robnu is built to remove. As an agentic OMS for AJIO, Meesho and Amazon sellers, it runs the operations these words describe, reconciles the charges they represent against what you actually shipped and sold, and files the claims they entitle you to — so the vocabulary becomes something handled rather than something you have to master and police yourself. Learn the terms so you can check the work; let the system do the checking at scale. See the deductions glossary for every settlement line decoded.
The bigger picture for your catalogue
Whatever the specific status, charge or process, the underlying reality of selling on Indian marketplaces is the same. The platforms are built to move enormous volume, their interfaces speak in operational shorthand rather than plain language, and the money at stake hides in charges that arrive as silent settlement deductions requiring no approval from you. The sellers who stay profitable are not the ones who avoid every problem — that is impossible at scale — but the ones who understand what each event means, know which charges are genuinely owed, and reconcile every settlement so the wrong ones are caught and reclaimed while the claim window is still open.
That discipline is simple to describe and hard to sustain by hand, because it is precise, repetitive work layered on top of actually running the business. It is exactly the kind of task that a two-person team does inconsistently under volume and that software does reliably every cycle. Robnu exists to close that gap: it runs the daily operations these guides describe, reconciles the charges they represent against what you actually shipped and sold, and files the claims you are entitled to — so the vocabulary becomes something handled rather than something you have to master and police yourself. You sell; Robnu runs the rest, and makes sure every rupee is paid correctly.
Sources & further reading
Charges, policies and processes vary by marketplace and category and change over time. The details here are drawn from official documentation and reputable industry sources; always confirm current specifics against your own seller panel and settlement reports:
AWB
Air Waybill — the tracking number assigned to a shipment. Your reference for tracing a parcel and for any claim on it.
Breaching soon
A Meesho warning that an order is close to its dispatch deadline but has not missed it yet. A countdown, not a penalty.
Read the full guide →Breached
An order whose dispatch window closed without a handover. Carries a penalty and often auto-cancellation.
Read the full guide →COD
Cash on Delivery — the buyer pays at the door. Carries far higher return rates than prepaid because refusing costs nothing.
Read the full guide →Commission
The marketplace's share of each sale, deducted before your payout. Predictable, and rarely the cost that breaks unit economics.
Dead weight
The actual physical weight of a parcel, as opposed to volumetric weight. You are billed on whichever is greater.
Deduction
Any amount subtracted from your settlement before payment. Because it needs no approval, it often goes unexamined.
Read the full guide →DTO
A customer-initiated return flow, where a buyer who received the product sends it back. Distinct from RTO.
Read the full guide →Forward freight
The cost of shipping an order out to the customer. On an RTO you pay this and never earn revenue against it.
GSTIN
Goods and Services Tax Identification Number — your tax registration, required to sell on most marketplaces.
Lost in transit
A shipment that stops moving and never arrives. Claimable, but only if you notice the absence in time.
Read the full guide →Manifest
A document listing packages handed to a courier, signed on pickup. Your evidence that a handover happened, for SLA waivers.
Prepaid
An order paid for before dispatch. Returns at a small fraction of COD rates.
Read the full guide →Reverse freight
The cost of bringing a returned or undelivered parcel back to you. The core of an RTO charge.
Read the full guide →RTO
Return to Origin — a parcel that could not be delivered and is sent back. A double freight hit with no sale.
Read the full guide →RTV
Return to Vendor — goods sent back to a supplier, an inventory movement rather than a consumer return.
Read the full guide →SLA
Service Level Agreement — your promise to dispatch within a set window. Missing it triggers penalties.
Read the full guide →Settlement
The periodic report of what a marketplace paid you and what it deducted. Reconcile it order by order.
Read the full guide →SPF
Seller Protection Fund — Flipkart's mechanism for reimbursing losses outside the seller's control.
Read the full guide →TCS
Tax Collected at Source — deducted by the marketplace against your GSTIN. Not a cost; a credit you can claim back.
Read the full guide →Volumetric weight
A weight derived from a parcel's dimensions, pricing the space it occupies. Bulky light goods lose here.
Read the full guide →Weight discrepancy
A charge raised when the courier's measured weight exceeds the booked weight. Small, frequent, often wrong.
Read the full guide →You should not need a glossary to get paid correctly
Every term here exists because a marketplace made you responsible for understanding it. Robnu is an agentic OMS for AJIO, Meesho and Amazon sellers — it runs the operations these words describe, reconciles the charges they represent, and files the claims they entitle you to, so the vocabulary becomes something handled rather than something you study.
Common terms, answered
RTO stands for Return to Origin — a parcel that could not be delivered to the customer and is sent back to the seller. It is a delivery failure that costs the seller freight in both directions with no sale to show for it, which is why it is the defining economics problem in Indian marketplace selling.
SLA is the general term for Service Level Agreement. On marketplaces it usually refers specifically to dispatch SLA — the window within which you must hand an order to the courier. Delivery SLA is a separate, customer-facing promise about arrival, driven mostly by the courier network rather than by you.
TCS is Tax Collected at Source, deducted by the marketplace and deposited against your GSTIN. It is not a cost — it is your money held with the tax authority, and it is claimable as credit when you file your returns. A striking number of small sellers never claim it, turning a temporary deduction into a permanent loss.
It is a warning that an order is close to missing its dispatch deadline but has not yet. Nothing has been charged — it is a countdown giving you time to act. The common and expensive mistake is reading it as 'already breached' and de-prioritising an order that was still saveable.
SPF stands for Seller Protection Fund, Flipkart's mechanism for reimbursing sellers where an order goes wrong outside their control — lost in transit, damaged, or a return that comes back wrong or damaged. Claims are decided largely on evidence specification and deadlines rather than on the underlying facts.
Because most of it maps directly to money. Nearly every term here corresponds to a charge, a deadline, or a claim, and misunderstanding one usually means paying something you did not owe or forfeiting something you could have recovered. The vocabulary is the interface to your own settlement.
Related seller guides
More on the operations, money and claims that decide whether a marketplace catalogue actually makes money.
How to Sell on Flipkart in 2026: The Full Seller Guide
Onboarding, category approval, the fee stack, and the RTO reality of selling on Flipkart in 2026 — a plain guide for early-stage Indian sellers, with no fluff and no jargon.
How to Sell on Amazon India in 2026: The Full Seller Guide
Onboarding, FBA versus Easy Ship, the fee stack, and the returns reality of selling on Amazon India in 2026 — a plain guide for early-stage sellers, and how Robnu runs it for you.
Meesho seller charges & deductions: every line on your payout
Commission, shipping, SLA penalties, cancellation charges, return and RTO reversals, TCS and TDS — every charge on a Meesho payout, what each means, and which ones you can claim back.
One Screen for All Your Orders: The Case for Centralized Order Processing
Selling on three marketplaces means three dashboards, three SLA clocks and three ways to miss an order. Here is why a single order screen — an agentic OMS that runs them all — is the fix.
Dropshipping in India: The Honest Maths
The realistic economics of dropshipping on Indian marketplaces — the margins, the RTO problem, the deductions and the operational load nobody puts in the pitch.
Marketplace deductions glossary: every settlement term decoded
Every deduction on an AJIO or Meesho settlement in plain English — commission, GST on fees, RTO, weight adjustments, TCS, TDS, negative balance — with the disputable lines flagged.
GSTIN for marketplace sellers: what it is and why you need one
Your 15-character tax registration, decoded — its structure, why marketplaces require it, and how it connects to the TCS credit most sellers never claim back.
The 1% TCS every marketplace deducts — and how to claim it back
TCS is not a fee — it is your money, deposited against your GSTIN and reclaimable at filing. How it works, why most sellers forfeit it, and how to reconcile it across marketplaces.