D2C accounting that follows
the money, not the bank balance.

No. Section 52 makes an e-commerce operator collect tax at source only on supplies made through it by other suppliers. When you sell your own goods on your own site you are the supplier, so there is nothing to collect on someone else's behalf. You register as a normal taxpayer, not as a Tax Collector. The catch is that there is also no credit coming back to you — on a marketplace some tax is already sitting with the government in your name, whereas on your own store the entire GST liability is yours to fund.

Usually yes, and it surprises people. If the invoice comes from a foreign entity with no Indian GSTIN, it is an import of service, and you pay 18% IGST on it yourself under the reverse charge mechanism. The same applies to most paid apps and a lot of foreign SaaS. Check whose entity is on the invoice — some vendors bill through an Indian arm and charge GST directly, in which case reverse charge does not apply.

No, and this is the part that catches people out. RCM has to be paid in cash through the electronic cash ledger. You cannot settle it with accumulated ITC. You then claim it back as input credit in the same return, so the net cost is usually nil — but the cash has to leave your account first, and you need a self-invoice on file to support the claim.

Probably not, for two separate reasons. Inter-state supply of goods requires registration from the first order under section 24 — the 20 or 40 lakh threshold does not apply once you ship to another state. And anyone liable under reverse charge must register regardless of turnover, which a single foreign SaaS invoice can trigger. Most D2C brands are registrable on day one, whatever their revenue.

Because they are three different numbers. Shopify reports what was ordered. The gateway pays out what was captured, minus its fee and the GST on that fee, net of refunds and chargebacks, on its own settlement cycle. Your bank shows what arrived. Books built on the bank statement understate revenue and hide every cost in between.

COD is where D2C margin quietly disappears. The courier collects the cash and remits it later, minus a COD handling fee, and any RTO is charged back to you with freight in both directions on an order that earned nothing. We reconcile the courier remittance against the orders it covers, so RTO sits against the SKU and the channel that caused it instead of vanishing into a single logistics line.

Yes, and it is the normal case. Each channel is reconciled on its own terms — a marketplace settlement and a gateway payout behave nothing alike — and then consolidated, so you get one set of books and can still see which channel actually makes money after fees, returns and ad spend.

If your stock is stored there, yes. Goods held in a warehouse make it a place of business, which means registration in that state with the warehouse as an Additional Place of Business. If you have no premises there, a virtual place of business supplies the address. We handle the registration and the returns that follow.

Yes. The backlog is quoted separately and cleared before the monthly cycle starts, so you are not paying an ongoing fee for months nobody has touched. Most cleanups take two to four weeks depending on order volume.

It depends on order volume, how many channels and gateways you run, and how far behind the books are. You get a fixed monthly figure in writing after a free review. We do not bill by the hour.