编辑文章

Gross 利润率 (%) = (营收 – COGS) ÷ 营收 × 100

This formula looks simple on a dashboard. But for platform sellers, the term revenue is no longer a clean signal—it is an overloaded variable that depends on how far down the settlement pipeline you 测量 it.

平台 sellers run a multi-stage deduction pipeline. Each order passes through commission fees, transaction fees, platform support fees, affiliate commissions, ads, vouchers and seller-funded promotions. TikTok 商店 马来西亚, for example, publishes category-based commission, a 3.78% transaction fee and RM0.54 platform support fee per completed order. Shopee 马来西亚 runs a similar stack: commission, a 3.78% transaction fee and platform support fee. (TikTok 商店)

技术栈 all of these together and the effective deduction rate on some campaigns can approach 40%.

A seller may see RM100 in gross sales on the front-end dashboard, but only RM60 may settle in the bank. The remaining RM40 never hits the account and is therefore unavailable for payroll, inventory replenishment or reinvestment.

Under IFRS 15, revenue recognition depends on whether the business acts as a principal or agent. A principal generally recognises gross revenue and books platform fees as separate operating expenses. An agent recognises only its fee or commission. So remapping your accounting revenue directly to the platform settlement amount is not always technically sound. (IFRS 基础)

But from an operational 系统 standpoint, relying on gross GMV alone gives management a distorted signal.

A seller can show strong top-line revenue but weak cash retained. 内部 reports then look like margin failure, when in fact a large slice of the value was siphoned off by the platform before settlement.

In my view, 中小企业 need two distinct telemetry channels:

会计 营收 = Gross sales recognised under the applicable accounting treatment

实际 Seller 营收 = GMV – refunds – platform charges – seller-funded promotions

然后 you calculate an internal margin from the cash-side signal:

Seller 利润率 (%) = (实际 Seller 营收 – COGS) ÷ 实际 Seller 营收 × 100

The bottleneck is not just the margin calculation.

工程 and operations teams have to download settlement reports, split fee types, match each order, reconcile refunds and build tax-ready records. That is a lot of manual ETL work just to answer a basic operations question—how much cash did the seller actually retain?—pulling resources away from product improvement and demand generation.

马来西亚’s tax authority confirms that e-commerce income is taxable, but tax is generally assessed on taxable business income—not the raw marketplace GMV shown on the dashboard. Proper records of income and deductible business expenses are still required. (lampiran2.hasil.gov.my)

This is not an argument that platforms should work for free.

The engineering ask is transparency.

Every marketplace should expose a single, standardised settlement statement with clear data lineage:

GMV → Refunds → 平台 费用 → 促销 Costs → Net Settlement

Without that, an 中小企业 can look healthy on the sales dashboard while the bank statement tells a completely different story.