By the end of this lesson you will know the rhythm of European filings, what records you are required to keep and for how long, and what your accountant needs from you each month.
American bookkeeping for an Amazon business is mostly one annual event with a bank reconciliation behind it. European bookkeeping is a calendar. Returns fall due on fixed dates in several places at once, and the penalty for missing one is rarely dramatic but always compounding. The work is to make the calendar boring.
Two streams of filings
After lesson 4 you have some combination of two things: a One Stop Shop registration that covers your cross-border sales to consumers, and local VAT registrations in every country where your goods are stored. They file separately, on different schedules, and neither substitutes for the other.
| One Stop Shop return | Local VAT return | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Cross-border sales to consumers in other member states. | Everything connected to the country itself, including sales from stock stored there. |
| How often | Quarterly in the Union scheme; monthly in the import scheme.1 | Set by each country — monthly, quarterly or annual, sometimes depending on your turnover there. |
| When | By the end of the month following the period covered.2 | Each country sets its own deadline. They do not line up. |
| If you sold nothing | You still file. A period with no supplies and no corrections requires a nil return.2 | Usually the same, but confirm per country. |
| Input VAT on your costs | Not reclaimed here. The OSS return declares output VAT. | This is where local costs and local recoverable VAT belong. |
That last row is the one that costs money when it is misunderstood. The One Stop Shop is a mechanism for declaring and paying VAT you collected, not for recovering VAT you paid. If you have real costs in a country — a prep service, a freight agent, storage — those belong to a local registration or a separate refund procedure, and an adviser should tell you which.
Paying, and in what currency
Payment is made when the return is submitted, and it counts as made when it reaches the bank account of the member state where you are identified — not when you instruct the transfer.2 International transfers take days. Build that into when you press send.
The return itself is made out in a single currency, generally the euro; a member state of identification outside the eurozone may require its own currency instead.2 Your sales, meanwhile, arrive in several currencies, and Amazon converts some of them for you. This is why the reconciliation below matters: the number you owe and the number in your bank are computed differently.
Reconciling payouts
A disbursement from Amazon is a net figure. Inside it are sales, refunds, fees, advertising, storage, reimbursements and currency conversion, in several currencies, across several marketplaces. Treating the disbursement as revenue is the mistake that makes a year's books unusable.
The working routine is the same every month:
- Download the settlement report for each marketplace and each settlement period.
- Post the gross components separately — sales, refunds, fees, advertising — rather than the net total.
- Record the currency conversion as its own line, because it is a cost.
- Reconcile the net of those lines against the money that actually landed.
- Keep the report file alongside the entry, so the number can be defended later without regenerating anything.
A tool can do most of this. Whether you use one or not, the principle holds: your books are built from settlement reports, not from bank statements.
The VAT inside a European sale passes through you. It is not revenue, it is not margin, and the quarter in which you spend it is the quarter you discover you owe it. Separate it in the books from the first sale, the way lesson 4 described.
Records, and how long you keep them
For transactions covered by the One Stop Shop, records must be kept for ten years from the end of the year in which the transaction was made, and must be made electronically available on request to the member state of identification or any member state of consumption without delay.3 The Commission also publishes a standard audit file for the scheme, known as SAF-OSS, which a trader can use with the assurance that all member states will accept the format.3
Ten years and “without delay” together decide your storage policy. Reports that live only in a Seller Central account you might one day lose access to are not records. Export monthly, store somewhere you control, and keep the folder structure predictable enough that a request in year eight is answered in an afternoon.
Separately, each country where you hold a local registration has its own retention rules, and they are not all ten years. Ask your adviser for the number in each country you are registered in, and keep to the longest.
What you will need for this lesson
- Documents
- Settlement reports per marketplace, VAT registration certificates, and purchase invoices with your VAT number on them.
- Money
- Accounting software or a bookkeeper, plus an adviser in each country where you hold a local registration.
- Time
- A few hours each month, and a fixed slot in the month after each quarter ends.
- Systems
- Storage you control, holding exports for ten years, organised by country and period.
What your accountant needs from you
Most of the friction between sellers and their accountants is a request repeated every quarter for something the seller could have sent automatically. Send, each month, without being asked: settlement reports per marketplace, a VAT transactions report if your provider offers one, purchase invoices for stock and services, freight and customs documents, and a note of any country where you turned on storage. That last one matters most, because it is the change that creates a new obligation, and your accountant cannot see the setting you changed.
Mistakes
- Booking disbursements as revenue. The net figure hides refunds, fees and conversion costs.
- Skipping a nil return in a quarter with no sales.
- Paying on the deadline and discovering the transfer arrived after it.
- Trying to reclaim input VAT through the One Stop Shop. It does not work that way.
- Leaving records inside Seller Central when the obligation runs for ten years.
- Turning on a storage country without telling your accountant, and filing nothing there for two quarters.
- Assuming local deadlines match the OSS one. They do not.
Checklist before lesson 10
- I have one written calendar with every filing deadline: OSS plus each local registration.
- My books are built from settlement reports, with gross components posted separately.
- Currency conversion appears as its own cost line.
- VAT collected is separated from revenue in the books.
- Reports are exported monthly to storage I control, organised by country and period.
- I know the retention period in each country I am registered in, and keep to the longest.
- My accountant is told the same month whenever I enable a new storage country.
Next
Lesson 10 leaves the European Union: the United Kingdom is a separate market with its own registration, its own customs border and its own rules, and it deserves a lesson of its own.
Sources
- European Commission, The One Stop Shop — “The VAT return is submitted quarterly in the non-Union and in the Union scheme and monthly in the import scheme.” vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu Checked 11 September 2026.
- European Commission, Declare and pay in OSS — the return is submitted “by the end of the month following the end of the tax period covered by the return”; a period with no supplies and no corrections requires a nil return; payment “is considered being made when it reaches the bank account of the Member State of identification”; the return “has to be made out in one single currency”, generally the euro. vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/one-stop-shop/declare-and-pay-oss_en Checked 11 September 2026.
- European Commission, Record Keeping and Audits in OSS — records “must be kept for 10 years from the end of the year in which the transaction was made” and “have to be made electronically available, on request, to the Member State of identification or any Member State of consumption without delay”; the SAF-OSS standard audit file is accepted by all member states. vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/one-stop-shop/record-keeping-and-audits-oss_en Checked 11 September 2026.
- Amazon Seller Central, settlement and payments reports. sellercentral-europe.amazon.com Requires a seller account to view.
Educational content, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Laws and Amazon policies change; verify with the official source and a licensed professional.