How to verify a Flipkart settlement report (five checks)
The bank credit matches the report total — and the report can still be wrong. Riya verifies a 76-column Flipkart settlement in five checks: NEFT, fees, weight, returns, coverage.
“The report agreeing with itself is not verification.”
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The total will always match — it's computed from the same rows. Verifying the report means checking what the total can't tell you. There are five things. You need eleven of the seventy-six columns.
A settlement report is the marketplace grading its own homework. Your job is to be the external examiner.
“One NEFT ID. One bank credit. To the rupee — or stop here.”
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First: filter the report to one NEFT ID and sum Bank Settlement Value. It must equal the bank credit to the rupee. This check doesn't catch overcharges — it proves you're looking at the whole file.
Sellers skip this because it always passes. Until the week it doesn't, and every downstream number that month is fiction.
“'Marketplace Fee' is not a fee. It's a bundle of fifteen.”
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₹214 this cycle. The same seven-row pattern, every cycle, is ₹5,000 a year — and rate drift doesn't fix itself. Check the Commission Rate column against your rate card, not against your memory.
Nobody disputes a ₹30 line. That is precisely why it works.
“The two places a settlement quietly leaks: what you shipped, and what came back.”
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Check three: the weight you're billed follows the chargeable slab — eleven rows got re-slabbed to volumetric this cycle. Check four: a return should give back the commission it took. Two of Sameer's five didn't.
A settlement leaks at the edges — the shipment's dimensions and the return's reversals. The middle of the file is usually fine.
“The settlement can only lie about orders that are in it. Check the ones that aren't.”
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The total matching was check zero. The report earns trust at the row level — five checks, eleven columns, ₹618 to recover, nine orders on a clock. That's a verified settlement.
Verification isn't proving the report right. It's finding out where it's wrong, in rupees, with a list.
The longer take
To verify a Flipkart settlement report, run five checks: one, filter to a single NEFT ID and confirm the Bank Settlement Value column sums exactly to the bank credit; two, decompose the Marketplace Fee roll-up and audit the Commission Rate on every row against your category rate card; three, check the chargeable weight — dead versus volumetric slab — against what you actually shipped; four, confirm every returned row reversed the commission it originally charged; five, join the orders report back to the settlement so every delivered order either appears in a NEFT or lands on a watch list. Those five checks cover roughly eleven of the report's seventy-six columns, and they are the difference between a settlement you've read and a settlement you've verified.
The reason verification matters is uncomfortable but simple: the report's headline total proves almost nothing. Bank Settlement Value is defined inside the workbook as the sum of the row's own fee and adjustment columns — so the report's total will tie to the bank credit whenever all the rows are present, regardless of whether any individual row is correct. A settlement report is the marketplace grading its own homework. 'It matches' is check zero: it establishes you have the complete file for that NEFT, nothing more. If the sum and the bank credit disagree, stop and fix that first — rows are missing from your export, two NEFTs landed the same day, or a recovery was netted at bank level. Every downstream check assumes a complete file.
Check two is where the recurring money hides. The Marketplace Fee column is a roll-up of many named components — commission, fixed fee, collection fee, shipping fee, reverse shipping fee, pick-and-pack, cancellation fees — plus GST on those fees under the Taxes column. The one to audit per row is Commission Rate. Category misclassification, a tier change applied incorrectly, or a promotional rate that quietly expired all produce the same signature: a handful of rows at a higher percentage than your rate card. In Sameer's cycle it was seven rows of 212 at 15% instead of 12% — ₹214, invisible at row level, ₹5,000 a year if the pattern persists. Rate drift is disputable, but only if you detect it; nobody disputes a ₹30 line they never saw.
Checks three and four cover the two physical edges of the settlement. Weight: the shipping fee follows the chargeable weight, which is whichever of dead weight or volumetric weight hit the higher slab. When rows re-slab from 0.5 kg to 1.0 kg on packaging that hasn't changed, that is a dispute — and it's winnable, because you can measure your own carton. Returns: a returned order should give back what it took. Commission reversal on return is not always automatic; reverse shipping should be within your rate card's allowance; the refund on the row should tie to a credit note in your books. Two of Sameer's five returns kept their commission — ₹118 that would have silently stayed gone.
Check five inverts the direction of every other check: instead of asking whether the settlement's rows are right, it asks which orders never made it into a settlement at all. Join the orders report — delivered orders for the period — against the settlement's order IDs. Whatever is in no NEFT belongs on a clock: inside the cycle SLA it's a watch item; past the SLA it's a follow-up with the AWB attached. The settlement cannot lie about orders it doesn't contain, which is exactly why the orders it doesn't contain are where verification ends. The output of the whole exercise is a verdict list, not a reassurance: ₹618 recoverable across three findings, nine AWBs awaiting settlement, re-run next cycle. Fee drift is recurring by nature — verification is a cadence, not a one-time audit.