Before the close
- Confirm all marketplace accounts and report periods are in scope.
- Collect order, settlement, return and adjustment records.
- Preserve source filenames and ingestion dates.
- Confirm contract versions and mapped fee rules.
- Identify missing cost and advertising inputs.
During reconciliation
- Resolve incomplete identifiers and duplicated imports.
- Review forward and reverse entries across periods.
- Separate invoice-to-payout from contract-based exceptions.
- Apply approved tolerances consistently.
- Investigate unmapped rows before reporting recoverable value.
At the recovery review
- Assign an owner to each actionable difference.
- Record evidence and the marketplace ticket reference.
- Distinguish claimed, accepted and recovered amounts.
- Review rejected and partially recovered cases.
- Carry unresolved items forward with age and next action.
At sign-off
Tie summary totals to the filtered underlying rows. Explain timing differences, incomplete sources and unresolved cases. Keep the reconciliation package alongside its calculation basis so the next review starts from evidence rather than a new spreadsheet reconstruction.
Questions and answers
What should a marketplace month-end close include?
Complete source imports, order matching, return and reversal review, commission and fee checks, assigned recovery cases and totals tied back to source rows.
How do I handle orders still inside the return window?
Keep them open and carry them forward with their age, rather than treating their settlement as final.