Do you know where your orders leave and where they arrive? Especially if you sell through Amazon, this is important. In this article we explain why it is so important to have insight into your flow of goods. But especially why it is so dangerous if you don’t have insight into it!
Selling on different marketplaces
Say you are an online entrepreneur and sell through Bol.com and Shopify. You see your sales growing rapidly, and start selling to Belgian customers as well. You choose to declare your VAT via the One Stop Shop. This is relatively simple: you can retrieve files from Excel via the two sales platforms. From these you can read off the difference between the Netherlands and Belgium, and process it in your One Stop Shop declaration by making it an item. For example:
- Netherlands → Belgium €5,000.
Sales are going so well that you want to expand to yet another platform. And that platform is Amazon. You would like to enter the German market, and also place stock in Germany. Even though you file a declaration via the One Stop Shop, you need a German VAT number for this. Because your stock is in Germany, you sell from your German stock across other borders. So your German stock ends up with French, Spanish and Italian customers, for example.
What’s the problem?
Now the One Stop Shop declaration gets a little trickier. Earlier it was easy, because you only delivered to Belgian customers via Bol.com and Shopify, from the Netherlands. But now, through Amazon, you sell your German stock in different countries.
Where each order goes and what that means for your VAT, you have to get from Amazon’s exports. You can do that, but this is a hugely time-consuming and difficult job. And then you have to process it in your One Stop Shop declaration. This is tricky for both you and your accountant, and then it becomes impossible to fill out your OSS return properly!
The solution
Therefore, what you want is an overview of your transactions including departure and arrival country. You can link our Staxxer software to your One Stop Shop declarations and sales platforms. This allows you to load your data easily, conveniently and fully automatically. This gives you a complete overview of your flow of goods, and you can see how much VAT you need to pay. You can then process this information in your VAT returns!
Staxxer offers 100% insight into your flow of goods. Even if you sell through multiple marketplaces (Bol.com, Shopify and Amazon), the software offers an overview of all your VAT matters on one dashboard.
Moreover, you can automate your One Stop Shop declaration via Staxxer – if you want less administrative VAT burden, you can leave it to us.
Want to give it a try? Or just get to know us?
Schedule a no-obligation consultation, then we will look at which European VAT matters we can help you with. Even if you already have an accountant: Staxxer works well with them!