Know your store's real numbers. Revenue looks great — but after Shopify fees, payment processors, ad spend and cost of goods, what's actually left? We give you clear margins, clean VAT and a tax bill with no nasty surprises.
“Sales are up but my bank balance isn't — where's the money going?”
“Do I need to register for VAT — and what if I sell to the EU or US?”
“Shopify, Stripe, Klarna, ad spend — my bookkeeping is a mess.”
We speak fluent ecommerce. Here's what we take off your plate.
Start with our guide: The Shopify VAT threshold: are you already over it?
Or work it out yourself: Reconcile a Shopify payout down to your real turnover
Shopify pays you net — fees and refunds are already taken out before the money lands. But HMRC measures the VAT threshold on your sales, not on your payouts. So the figure most sellers watch is the one figure that cannot tell them when to register. On £10,000 of sales in a month:
| Gross sales through the store | £10,000 | Counts toward the threshold |
| Less refunds | −£400 | Genuinely reduces taxable turnover |
| = Taxable turnover HMRC measures | £9,600 | The figure that matters |
| Less Shopify, Stripe and Klarna fees | −£290 | An expense — does not reduce turnover |
| = What actually lands in your bank | £9,310 | The figure most sellers watch |
At roughly 3% in platform and processor fees, payouts of about £87,300 already mean £90,000 of taxable turnover. You can be over the line — and late registering — while your bank statement still looks like £2,700 of headroom.
Once your UK taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months — or as soon as you expect it to pass £90,000 in the next 30 days alone. One important exception: if both you and your business are based outside the UK, there is no threshold — you must register as soon as you supply goods or services to UK customers. If you sell to or hold stock in the EU, VAT obligations can arise from your first sale there too, and the US has its own sales-tax rules — we'll map out exactly where you stand.
Yes — subscription and transaction fees, payment-processor charges, advertising, apps, shipping and your cost of goods are all allowable business expenses when recorded properly.
It depends on your profit and, more importantly, whether you need to take all the profit out — since recent NIC and dividend-tax changes, incorporating rarely saves tax on full extraction; the gains now come from retaining profit or pension planning. We'll run your numbers.
Your sales. Shopify pays you net of its fees, with refunds netted inside the same payout, so the bank figure is always lower than what you sold. Turnover on your accounts is the gross sales figure; the fees are expenses. It matters doubly because the £90,000 VAT threshold is also measured on sales — our Shopify VAT threshold guide walks through exactly this gap.
Book a free, no-pressure call and we'll show you where you really stand.
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