How to read your eBay Transaction report

What the Transaction report is, and is not

eBay gives sellers several downloads, and each answers a different question.

• Transaction report. Every transaction in a date range, one row each: orders, refunds, shipping labels, fees, claims, disputes, holds, adjustments and payouts. Each row carries a gross amount, the fees and a Net amount. This guide is about this one.
• Payout reports. One line per payout to your bank. Use them to match a deposit to the orders inside it.
• 1099-K details. Shown when eBay has issued you a Form 1099-K, listing the gross payments behind the form’s total.
• Orders in Seller Hub. Order and shipping details, without the fee lines.

The Transaction report is the only one with fees broken out per order, which is why it is the one to use for net.

How to download it

eBay’s steps, from its help page on reconciling sales transactions:

1. In Seller Hub, go to the Payments tab.
2. From the menu on the left, select Reports.
3. Select Transaction report from the download section.
4. Select the transaction type and the start and end date.
5. Select Create report.

eBay lets you know when the report is ready, and you download it as a CSV file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or any spreadsheet. Pick calendar months for the dates: they are the easiest ranges to match against bank deposits later.

You can add or remove columns. On the same Reports page, select Customize column settings, pick a section (transaction, payout, shipping, item or buyer details), tick the columns you want and select Save. The change applies to every report after it, and Reset to default settings puts it back.

The columns that matter

A default report has more than 30 columns. Header names differ slightly by country and by your column settings, so match on meaning, not exact spelling. These are the ones you need for net.

About the transaction

• Transaction creation date. When eBay created the row. For an order this is the sale, not the ship date or the payout date.
• Type. What kind of row it is. Filter on this column first.
• Order number. Several rows can share one order number: the order itself, its shipping label, a later refund. That shared number is how you tie them together.
• Item ID, Item title and Custom label. What sold. Custom label is your own SKU, if you set one.

About the money

• Gross transaction amount. eBay’s definition: the total payment for a transaction before any fees or credits are applied. On an order it includes the item, the shipping the buyer paid and any sales tax the buyer paid.
• Item subtotal and Shipping and handling. The item price and the shipping the buyer paid you, without tax.
• Final value fee, fixed and Final value fee, variable. eBay describes the final value fee as a percentage of the total amount of each sale plus a fixed amount on each sale. The two columns are those two parts.
• eBay collected tax. Sales tax eBay collected from the buyer and pays to the state itself. It sits inside Gross and comes back out before Net. It never reaches you.
• Net amount. eBay’s definition: the total payment for a transaction after any fees or credits are applied. On an order row, that is gross less the fees and tax on that same row, and nothing else.

About the payout

• Payout date, Payout ID, Payout method and Payout status. Which bank payout the row landed in, when, and to which account. Payout ID groups every row behind one deposit.

Row types

The Type column tells you what each row is. The ones you will see most:

• Order. A sale, with its gross, fees and Net.
• Shipping label. A label you bought through eBay. Negative, and tied to the order by order number.
• Refund. Money you gave back to a buyer. Negative.
• Other fee. eBay fees that are not part of the final value fee, such as ad fees, listing upgrades and subscription fees.
• Claim and Payment dispute. Money taken back through eBay’s Money Back Guarantee or through the buyer’s bank.
• Hold and Adjustment. Funds held while eBay resolves an issue, and charges or credits eBay initiates.
• Payout. Money moving to your bank. It is not a sale.

How to find net per order

Here is the part most sellers miss. The Net amount on an order row is gross less the fees and tax on that one row. The shipping label is a separate row. Ad fees can be a separate row. A refund is a separate row. And what you paid for the item is not in eBay’s data at all.

So net per order is the order row’s Net amount, plus every other row with the same order number (labels, refunds and other fees, all negative), less what the item cost you from your own records.

Two things to watch:

• Payout rows are not results. Payout, hold and transfer rows move money that is already counted. Adding them in counts the same sale twice, which is the most common mistake.
• Gross includes tax. If you work out eBay’s fee as a share of the sale, use Item subtotal plus Shipping and handling, not Gross transaction amount, or the share will look wrong.

Why a 1099-K shows gross

If eBay issues you a Form 1099-K, box 1a is a gross figure. The IRS instructions to the companies that file the form say to enter the gross amount of reportable transactions for the year, without regard to adjustments for credits, discounts, fees, refunded amounts, shipping amounts or any other amounts. eBay says the same from its side: the figure does not include any adjustments for credits, discounts, fees or refunds, it leaves out sales tax that eBay collects and remits, and it is based on when eBay processed the payment, not when you were paid.

That is why the form shows more than your deposits. The Transaction report is how you get from one number to the other: the difference is mostly the fees, labels and refunds listed row by row. For 2025 and later, the federal reporting threshold for companies like eBay is more than $20,000 in gross payments and more than 200 transactions, and some states set lower ones. What any of this means for your own return is a question for a tax professional.

A spreadsheet recipe

1. Open the CSV and turn on filters.
2. Filter Type to Order, Shipping label, Refund and Other fee. Leave out Payout, Hold and Transfer.
3. Sort by Order number.
4. Make a pivot table: rows are Order number, values are the sum of Net amount.
5. Add a column for what each item cost you, from your own records, and subtract it.

Other fee rows without an order number, such as a monthly store subscription, belong to the month rather than to one sale. Keep them as a separate line.