Reconciliation: the boring habit that finds money.
Nobody enjoys checking a settlement line by line. It is also the only reliable way to discover that you have been charged for returns that never arrived. Here is the method, and an honest note on when it stops working.
- Reconcile every cycle, not quarterly — claim windows close long before a quarterly review happens.
- Order by order, never totals. Offsetting errors hide perfectly inside a plausible total.
- You need three records: the settlement, your order log with weights, and your returns inward record.
- Short on time? Check exceptions only — returns, oversized deductions, unreferenced adjustments.
- Robnu does the full per-order pass every cycle automatically. Free while we figure out pricing.
This guide describes how to reconcile properly by hand. It works, it finds real money, and it becomes impossible to sustain past a certain volume. Both halves of that are worth being straight about.
Payment reconciliation is the boring habit that finds money. This guide covers how to reconcile a marketplace settlement by hand — the four checks per order, the errors worth chasing, and an honest account of the point where manual reconciliation stops being viable — because it is the only reliable way to discover you have been charged for returns that never arrived.
The method: four checks per order
For each order in the settlement period, ask four questions in sequence, ordered so the cheapest checks eliminate the most orders first. Is it there at all — missing orders are the least-noticed error because an absence does not draw the eye. Is the sale value right? Is each deduction justified — commission at the right rate, shipping on the right weight, returns only where a parcel actually came back? And is it charged once, since duplicates split across two cycles are invisible unless you look for them. The record most sellers lack is the dispatch weight, which is what unlocks the most valuable check. See weight discrepancy.
The five recoverable errors
Reconciliation finds, in rough order of frequency: shipping charges computed on the wrong weight, returns or RTOs charged where the parcel never arrived back, duplicate deductions across periods, orders missing from the settlement entirely, and penalties applied to orders dispatched on time. All five are claimable when caught in the window. Comparing totals instead of checking every order is the shortcut that defeats the whole exercise, because a total within your expected range can contain an overcharge on one order offset by a missing deduction on another. See the deductions glossary.
When manual reconciliation stops working
Reconciling properly takes a few minutes per order, manageable at low volume and untenable somewhere in the range of a few dozen orders a day — not because the work gets harder, but because the total time exceeds what any small team can give it consistently. The failure mode is skipped cycles, not sloppy ones, and a skipped reconciliation means an entire settlement period of errors passed unchallenged and unrecoverable. If you are short on time, check the exceptions only — every return, every oversized deduction, every unreferenced adjustment — which contains the large majority of recoverable errors. Our reconciliation runs the full per-order pass every cycle automatically, holding your order log and dispatch weights as a by-product of running operations.
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:
Four checks, every order
For each order in the settlement period, ask four questions in sequence. They are ordered so that the cheapest checks eliminate the most orders first.
- Is it there at all? Compare your dispatched orders against the settlement. Missing orders are the least-noticed error because an absence does not draw the eye.
- Is the sale value right? Against what you listed and what the customer paid.
- Is each deduction justified? Commission at the right rate, shipping on the right weight, returns only where a parcel actually came back.
- Is it charged once? Duplicates split across two cycles are invisible unless you look for them specifically.
The five recoverable errors
Ranked by how often they appear in a typical small-seller settlement.
Wrong shipping weight
Freight billed on a weight above what you dispatched. See weight discrepancy.
Phantom return
Charged for a return that never physically arrived. You lose stock, sale and freight together. Needs your inward record to detect.
Duplicate deduction
The same shipment charged in two cycles. Only findable by searching the shipment ID across periods.
Missing order
Dispatched and delivered, absent from the settlement. Requires comparing against your own log, not reading the report.
Unwarranted penalty
An SLA penalty on an order you handed over on time. Your manifest is the counter- evidence.
Unclaimed TCS
Not an error, but money left behind. It is a credit you can claim at filing, and most small sellers never do.
The same checks, every cycle, without you
Nothing above is difficult. It is just relentless — the same four questions against every order, every cycle, forever, while also running the business. The realistic outcome is not bad reconciliation; it is reconciliation that stops happening.
Robnu is an agentic OMS. It holds the order log and dispatch weights as a by-product of running your operations, so when a settlement arrives it already has both sides of the comparison. It runs the full per-order pass, flags every line that does not reconcile, and prepares the claims — a rare approval click while fully-autonomous filing rolls out.
You sell. Robnu runs the rest — and makes sure every rupee is paid correctly.
Reconciliation, answered
It is the process of checking that what a marketplace paid you matches what it should have paid, order by order. That means confirming each sale appears, each deduction against it is justified, and the net figure is arithmetically correct. It is bookkeeping, but it is bookkeeping that routinely finds money.
Every settlement cycle, without exception. The argument is not thoroughness — it is claim windows. Dispute deadlines are short, so an error found during a quarterly review is frequently past the point where it can be raised. Reconciling late costs the same effort and recovers nothing.
Three records: the settlement report from the marketplace, your own order log including dispatch weights, and your inward record of returns actually received. The second and third are the ones sellers typically lack, and without them you can only verify that the marketplace's arithmetic is internally consistent — not that it is correct.
In rough order of frequency: shipping charges computed on the wrong weight, returns or RTOs charged where the parcel never arrived back, duplicate deductions across settlement periods, orders missing from the settlement entirely, and penalties applied to orders that were dispatched on time. All five are claimable when caught in the window.
No, and this is the most common shortcut that defeats the whole exercise. A total within your expected range can contain an overcharge on one order offset by a missing deduction on another. Both are errors, the total looks fine, and you find neither. Reconciliation only works order by order.
Roughly a few minutes per order if you are being honest about the checks. That is manageable at low volume and becomes untenable somewhere in the range of a few dozen orders a day — not because the work gets harder, but because the total time exceeds what any small team can give it consistently.
Check the exceptions rather than everything. Pull every order that involved a return or RTO, every order where the deduction looks unusually large relative to its value, and any adjustment without a clear order reference. That subset contains the large majority of recoverable errors for a fraction of the effort.
When the time it takes reliably exceeds the time you actually have — which shows up as cycles you skipped rather than cycles you did badly. A skipped reconciliation is not a small loss, because it means an entire settlement period of errors passed unchallenged and unrecoverable.
Related seller guides
More on the operations, money and claims that decide whether a marketplace catalogue actually makes money.
Amazon India settlement reports explained
Referral fees, closing fees, shipping, refund reversals — reconcile order by order, spot the wrong-rate and duplicate errors, and find the refund reversals worth a SAFE-T claim.
Myntra Partner Payment Cycles Explained: Settlement Timing, Deductions & Reconciliation
How Myntra settlement works — the lead time from delivery to payout, every deduction that lands on a remittance, why payments get held, and how to reconcile a settlement against your orders.
Meesho RTO charges: exactly what you are billed
There is no flat rate — weight and lane drive the number. What determines your RTO charge, why similar orders differ, and the three checks that catch errors.
Payout Reconciliation: How to Match Every Rupee a Marketplace Owes You
Marketplace payouts arrive net of a dozen deductions, and some of those deductions are wrong. Here is the discipline of matching every payout to the orders and charges behind it — so no rupee slips through.
Flipkart Settlement Reports Explained: Read Yours Line by Line
Every Flipkart settlement is order value minus a stack of deductions. Here is what each line means, which fees are wrong often enough to check, and how to reconcile a payout to the rupee.
Meesho payment cycle: when you actually get paid
The settlement timeline, every deduction applied before payout, and why your bank credit never matches your order value — plus how to tell a normal gap from a wrong one.
Decode your AJIO settlement statement line by line
Reconcile order by order, never by totals. What each section covers, the discrepancies that hide inside a plausible-looking total, and which mismatches to raise.
RTO order deduction: the line item that eats your margin
One number, several charges stacked inside it. How to read the RTO line on your settlement and find the inflated, duplicated or phantom portion you can claim back.