Earlier, what retail stores were to us and few years back what malls were to us, in the same way today MARKETPLACES are to us. If we compare to malls, marketplaces are one- stop destination for all our needs. One not needs to worry about the products to sell online. Whatever are the products you will surely find its market.    Marketplaces are no more a new and complex word for the buyers. By now, everyone is present at marketplaces. To increase sales and revenue, you must sell at marketplaces. In India, few of the most popular marketplaces are Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Jabong and list continues. When we come to accounting and taxation of marketplaces and sellers on such marketplaces, we wonder what are the tactics that differentiate marketplaces from traditional online website. Here, with traditional online website we mean specific website of particular shop or brand. In the traditional e-commerce, we find a single point for selling the product, management of stock, pricing of products, advertisement and all other related work. Here, seller has to take registration for VAT/ Sales Tax and Service Tax. The seller only has to take care of duly TDS, VAT and service tax payment and their respective return. Stock valuation has to be done on timely basis. In marketplaces, two parties are mainly involved in the field of providing services. Firstly, Seller and secondly, marketplace. Marketplace provides an area where sellers can sell their respective goods. Maintenance of said area and making advertisement lies with such marketplace whereas, maintenance of stock and price is in the hand of sellers. Only sellers have the power to decide about the selling policies like discounts and free gifts on their product. In this competitive world, sellers are moving from traditional e-comm to marketplace. Basically, in marketplace concept, burden of maintenance of website and promoting the same shifts from seller to marketplace. Due to this benefit, sellers feel relief and able to concentrate on their product and its pricing. In addition, cost on the part of seller decreases. However, it is to be noted that as marketplace provide an area to sellers to sell their products, commission is charged from them. To start with marketplaces, mark the steps for sellers to register:

1. Register your business with specific documents in place.
2. Apply for PAN
3. Apply for VAT Registration – it is a mandatory if your turnover exceeds certain specified limit. However, if your purpose is just selling on commission basis through your website then register it after the specified limit but if you want to register on Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon etc. then it is necessary without any limit.
4. Get Current Bank Account – Provide your vat certificate and pan card then simply a current account is open in the name of your business.
5. Apply for TAN
6. Go to Website
7. Upload and Verify Documents

When a buyer purchases product, all costs charged to them are credited to sellers and not to marketplaces. Marketplaces only receive commission from sellers and in return they have to maintain and promote website. Thus, they just have to go for Service Tax Registration for providing services to sellers. Here, issues like logistics, payment gateway, effective packaging system etc. that need to be address to get products online on own store. Online marketplaces extend all these facilities to their sellers, with an overhead charge, so that the sellers only have to be concerned about their inventory and let marketplaces take care of the technicalities. In addition to this, marketplace has also extended their role of work by providing space to sellers to maintain their stock in the warehouse of marketplace. Through this service, a major burden of stock handling also shifted from sellers to marketplace. Under all these conditions, now, sellers are relieved of many responsibilities. In other words, we can say that all the responsibilities relating to sale is shared by seller and marketplace. However, every marketplace has its own method of listing products. If products are sold on single marketplaces then you need to update the inventory, manage orders, and handle dispatches etc. only on a single dashboard, which is pretty manageable. But what if products are targeted to be sold on multiple marketplaces? In such cases, one needs to do the exact same thing individually for different marketplaces. In addition, every marketplace has its own method to list the products; therefore, juggling between multiple dashboards at the same time becomes exceedingly tedious and also leads to confusion and errors. In that case it is advisable to switch to multi-channel sales management software. These marketplaces have undoubtedly changed the retail landscape of India. Retailers from nearly every category are huddling to list themselves on these marketplaces. However, still we can find very few retailers who are away from marketplace. To name, one who perfectly fits to this is Future Group’s CEO Kishore Biyani. He has excluded himself from the concept of marketplace and has already forged a partnership with Amazon to distribute Future’s apparel labels on Amazon’s platform (as per various sources from internet). Along with so many facilities to sellers, marketplace has also reduced the accounting workings of sellers. Marketplace today, is at a hike and high competition among them leads to improvement and more compatibility among marketplace and sellers. ____________________________________________________________________________