eBay accounting software
eBay accounting software that that syncs to QuickBooks & Xero
BeanHawk is the accounting software that connects eBay to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Every eBay Managed Payments payout becomes a summarized journal, final value fees, per-order fees, Promoted Listings, refunds, and marketplace facilitator tax each split into their own account and reconciled to your deposit.
Posts straight into your ledger
eBay → QuickBooks Online & Xero
Pick your ledger. The integration is already built and mapped.
Why eBay books break in a generic ledger
Managed Payments nets everything out
eBay payouts net final value fees, per-order fees, ad fees, and refunds into one deposit. Each needs its own account, a lump 'eBay income' line hides what you actually earned.
Facilitator tax isn't revenue
eBay collects and remits sales tax as a marketplace facilitator in most states. It must stay out of your revenue and land in a liability account, or your income and tax figures are wrong.
Promoted Listings swing monthly
Promoted Listings fees only hit on attributed sales, so they move month to month. They deserve their own expense line to keep your true margin visible.
See it in BeanHawk
Every settlement becomes one clean journal
BeanHawk parses each marketplace payout line by line and posts a single summarized journal to QuickBooks or Xero — sales, fees, refunds, facilitator tax, and reimbursements mapped to the right accounts, balanced to the penny.
- ✓Debits equal credits or it won't post — no more deposits booked as revenue
- ✓Marketplace facilitator tax routed to a liability account, out of your income
- ✓The net deposit lands in a clearing account that matches your bank feed exactly
How the sync works
- 1
Connect eBay
Secure, read-only authorization in about 60 seconds. Multiple accounts and marketplaces supported.
- 2
Connect QuickBooks or Xero
OAuth connection with professional default account mappings you, or your accountant, can adjust once and reuse.
- 3
Review the first journal
BeanHawk parses each payout line by line and builds one summarized journal that must balance to the penny, or it won't post.
- 4
Reconcile in one click
The net deposit lands in a clearing account that matches your bank feed exactly. Every payout, accounted for.
How a Managed Payments payout is assembled
Since eBay brought payments in house, the buyer pays eBay and eBay pays you. Between those two events, selling costs are taken out of the order proceeds, and what's left is scheduled for payout to your linked bank account on daily or weekly terms depending on your settings and account standing. New sellers and accounts with open cases can see funds held until the transaction is confirmed as delivered or the case closes.
The consequence is that a payout is a slice of many orders rather than a batch of whole ones. Some of the money in today's payout belongs to orders from several days ago, and some of today's orders will pay out later or partly later. Recording revenue when the payout lands scatters sales across dates that have nothing to do with when you sold.
BeanHawk takes revenue on the order date, sends it through a clearing account, and then posts the payout journal with each deduction split out. The bank deposit clears the payout, the clearing account returns to zero, and held funds sit visibly as a receivable instead of looking like sales that never happened.
Two kinds of eBay fees, and only one comes out of the payout
Transaction costs are deducted from order proceeds: the final value fee charged as a share of the total amount of the sale, a fixed per-order amount on top of it, and additional charges that apply in specific situations such as sales above or below certain thresholds, international transactions, or categories with their own rates. These reduce what you're paid, so they appear inside the payout.
Account costs work differently. Store subscriptions, listing and insertion fees beyond your allowance, and optional listing upgrades are billed to your account and settled against your payment method or netted from proceeds depending on your setup. They show up on your seller invoice rather than as a clean per-order deduction, which is why sellers who only reconcile payouts end up with expenses missing from the books entirely.
Post them to separate accounts. Final value and per-order fees move with sales and belong beside revenue as variable cost. Store subscription is fixed and belongs with your other software and platform costs. eBay revises its fee schedule and category rates regularly, so read the current schedule for actual rates rather than relying on a number you remember.
Promoted Listings behave like two different expenses
The general ad model on eBay charges when an ad leads to a sale, which means the cost only appears on orders the campaign is credited with and shows up as a deduction against those specific sales. Cost per click campaigns work the other way and accrue as buyers click, whether or not anything sells, and get billed on their own cycle.
Mixing them into one line makes ad spend impossible to read. One moves with revenue by definition and always looks efficient. The other can run for a week with no sales attached to it and will never appear on any order. Keeping them in separate expense accounts, both distinct from your fee accounts, is what makes an honest advertising cost of sale calculation possible.
It also affects margin by listing. A SKU with heavy attributed ad spend can look identical to an unpromoted SKU on gross margin and be much worse after ad cost. BeanHawk keeps ad charges out of your fee accounts so that comparison stays available.
Refunds, returns, cancellations, and payment disputes
eBay gives buyers several routes back to their money and each has a different accounting shape. A cancellation before shipment reverses the sale cleanly. A return brings the unit back, so inventory goes up at cost while revenue comes down. A refund without a return reduces revenue with no inventory movement, which is worth watching because it's the most expensive kind.
Payment disputes are the awkward case. The buyer goes to their card issuer rather than to eBay, the funds get pulled from your proceeds while the dispute runs, and there may be an additional charge if it's resolved against you. Holding disputed amounts in their own account rather than netting them into fees means you can see how much is in flight and how much you eventually recovered.
Whether fee credits accompany a refund, and how much, depends on the refund type and on eBay's current policy, so verify against the live policy rather than assuming symmetry with the original charge. What stays constant is the accounting principle: refunds reduce revenue, returns restore inventory at cost, and fee credits are their own line.
Facilitator tax, cross-border sales, and currency
eBay collects and remits sales tax as a marketplace facilitator across most US states, and applies equivalent collection for VAT and GST regimes on qualifying international transactions. That money moves through your order data in both directions and it isn't yours at any point. It belongs in a liability account that clears, never in revenue.
Selling internationally adds two more wrinkles. Orders denominated in another currency need to be recorded at the rate that applies, with the difference between that rate and the rate you actually receive booked as a foreign exchange gain or loss rather than as extra or missing sales. Cross-border programs that handle shipping for you also introduce their own charges, which belong with fulfillment cost.
None of this is exotic once each piece has an account. It only becomes painful when a year of international orders, collected tax, and conversion differences have all been added into one eBay income line and someone has to take them apart at tax time.
Getting set up
Connecting eBay so the books actually reconcile
- 1
Link your eBay seller account
Authorize BeanHawk to read orders, transactions, and payout data from Managed Payments. Read access is all it needs, and multiple eBay accounts can connect to the same ledger.
- 2
Map fees to accounts that match how they're charged
Separate final value and per-order fees from store subscription and listing costs, and keep both apart from Promoted Listings. The mapping takes a few minutes and it's what makes your eBay cost of sale readable later.
- 3
Create an eBay clearing account and a funds-on-hold account
Clearing matches order revenue to payouts. The holds account carries proceeds eBay hasn't released yet, so month end shows them as an amount due to you instead of leaving a gap between sales and cash.
- 4
Point collected tax at a liability account
Marketplace facilitator tax on US orders, and VAT or GST collected on qualifying international orders, route to liability and clear as eBay remits. Confirm your own registration obligations separately with current guidance.
- 5
Add your seller invoice to the reconciliation
Costs billed to your account rather than deducted from orders won't appear in payout data. Bring the invoice in so store subscription and listing fees land in the books instead of being silently missing.
- 6
Reconcile one payout end to end, then automate
Pick a payout that's already cleared, match it against the orders and deductions inside it, and confirm clearing hits zero. After that, payouts post as they arrive and only unrecognized charge types need review.
Common questions
Does BeanHawk connect eBay to QuickBooks?
Yes. BeanHawk syncs eBay Managed Payments to QuickBooks Online, posting each payout as a summarized journal with fees, refunds, and facilitator tax split out. See the eBay + QuickBooks integration.
What's the best accounting software for eBay sellers?
The best fit is a tool that understands eBay's Managed Payments payouts and marketplace facilitator tax and posts them into QuickBooks or Xero correctly, which is exactly what BeanHawk does, alongside your other channels.
Does BeanHawk work with Xero for eBay?
Yes, the eBay + Xero integration posts the same penny-accurate journals into Xero, with a clearing account matching each payout to your bank feed.
How much does BeanHawk cost?
Start free with a reimbursement audit, then flat pricing from $19/mo with every channel included, no per-marketplace fees. Compare on the pricing page.
Get eBay books syncing
Start with the free reimbursement audit, then flat all-channel pricing from $19/mo. No per-channel fees.