Marketplace accounts for Kolkata sellers

Marketplace account management in Kolkata often means running Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Myntra and Ajio for a wholesale business: hosiery by the dozen, kidswear by the set, sarees by the bundle. We run the panels from Gandhi Nagar, New Delhi; the stock stays with you.

The accounts are registered to you, and we work through the permissions you grant. Packing, dispatch and the receiving of returns stay with your people in Kolkata and Howrah; prices, listings, claims and settlements are ours to run.

How Kolkata sellers share stock between two trades

When a Kolkata business sells wholesale and online, both trades draw on one stock. A retailer from Patna buying by the dozen at the haat and a shopper in Pune buying a single pack are reaching for the same shelf.

The marketplace knows nothing about the haat. If a wholesale order empties a style that is still live online, the next online order becomes a seller cancellation, and cancellations count against your account health.

• An online share per style, set as a number, synced to every marketplace, and changed only with your say.
• A warning line, so we hear from you before a large wholesale order draws that share down.
• A daily figure from whoever keeps your stock book, on a schedule we agree.

The money moves differently too. Wholesale buyers may pay on account; marketplaces pay out after delivery, less commission, fees and TCS. The weekly report shows what the marketplaces owe you as plainly as your ledger shows what the haat buyers do.

Hosiery multipacks and the stock count

A multipack is counted in pieces, not packs. A pack of three vests and a pack of five from the same bin are two listings sharing one pool; if each keeps its own count, one will sell stock already gone.

• Count singles. Stock is kept in single pieces by size and colour, and every pack listing draws from that count.
• Use bundle logic. Where you use an inventory connector, packs are set up as bundles or kits of the single SKU, so a pack of three removes three pieces.
• Fix the assortment. Assorted-colour packs need their colours stated, or swapped-colour complaints turn into returns.
• Declare it once. The net quantity on the pack and on the listing is the number of pieces, and it reads the same on every marketplace.

Sizes compound it. A pack listing in five sizes is five stock counts, and a pack returned because the size was wrong brings back every piece in it. We read return reasons by pack and size, and move the size note before returns pile up.

Thermal sets work the other way round: an upper and a lower sold together are two different pieces, so each keeps its own count and the set draws one of each.

On Meesho, where value packs meet price-led buyers, a pack’s price has to carry commission, shipping and returns at once, so we work out what each pack leaves before it goes live.

Innerwear returns, swaps and claims

Innerwear returns are fewer where marketplaces restrict them and harder to judge where they do not. Your staff check each one the day it arrives, on video, because the claims we file rest on what that check records.

• A different garment in the pack: another brand’s vest, or an older piece swapped for a new one.
• Signs of use: washed fabric, stretched waistbands, missing tags.
• A short pack: two pieces back from a pack of three.
• An empty or resealed packet in an RTO parcel that should never have been opened.

Each becomes a claim with the unboxing video attached, inside the time limit the marketplace sets, and stays in the weekly report until it closes. Each marketplace’s rules on innerwear returns are read afresh before a pack is priced, because they differ and they change.

Getting the accounts ready before Mahalaya

Online, Puja buying gathers around the marketplace festive events, which usually fall close to the Pujas and take their submissions well before them. So the panels have to be ready earlier than a counter would be.

• Deal and event submissions made from the stock you can promise, with floor prices agreed for every pack and style.
• Listings checked for suppression and for missing sizes, since a Puja listing without its middle sizes draws buyers it cannot serve.
• Red-and-white sarees, panjabis and kidswear given the deepest online share, because the season asks for those first.
• Delivery promises checked against what your own dispatch can meet in the busiest weeks.

On Flipkart, event planning and Puja planning become one plan, drawn up in August. Labels on Myntra need new styles approved and catalogued earlier still, since a style still in review cannot sell in Puja week.

When your packers take the Pujas off

Your packing room may close from Saptami to Dashami; the marketplaces do not. Orders placed in those days still count against your dispatch times, so the panels change before the holiday begins, not during it.

• Handling times lengthened on self-shipped listings for the days your dispatch is shut.
• Stock set to zero on lines nobody can pack, instead of orders taken and cancelled.
• Holiday settings, where a marketplace offers them, switched on and off on fixed dates.
• Stock in a fulfilment programme, such as Fulfilment by Flipkart, left live, because the marketplace dispatches it.

To keep selling through the five days, that stock has to be inside a marketplace programme before Mahalaya, which means planning the inbound shipments in August alongside the rest of the Puja plan.

After Bijoya Dashami the Puja returns arrive together, many of them kidswear bought by age. They are checked and claimed over the following weeks, while Kali Puja and Diwali orders are still going out.

Everything comes back on a fixed date from a checklist, so Bijoya Dashami is not followed by a week of listings still marked slow to ship while the rest of India buys for Diwali.

Chaitra, 31 March and haal khata

Kolkata’s trading calendar puts the year’s accounts in one season. The Chaitra sale clears stock through March, the financial year closes on 31 March, and Poila Baisakh in mid-April opens new books with haal khata, when wholesale customers traditionally settle their dues.

That makes spring the time to bring the marketplaces to the same close. We work through the year’s loose ends before Poila Baisakh:

• Claims still open, pushed to a decision or written off with a reason.
• Short payments and unmatched settlement lines, raised as tickets while they can still be chased.
• TCS, the tax marketplaces collect at source under GST, summarised by marketplace and month, so your accountant can match it with the GST records before claiming it.
• Chaitra sale prices taken off on an agreed date, so the new year’s lines are not listed at clearance prices.

Your accountant files and advises; we hand over reconciled figures rather than raw downloads from the panels. Our guide to GST for online sellers explains how TCS works.

Reading RTO and claims across the east

Orders bound for Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam and the North-East travel further, and more of them come back undelivered. The account work is to see where that happens and recover what the marketplace owes along the way.

• RTO by pin code, taken from the marketplace reports, so you can see which areas send parcels back.
• Reverse shipping charges on each RTO checked against the current fee schedule every month.
• Lost and damaged RTO parcels claimed with the evidence your staff record on receipt.

Where a product keeps failing in one region, the fix usually lies in the listing or the price, not the panel: a delivery promise set too short, or a cheap pack that cannot carry the freight. We bring you the pattern with its numbers.

Handloom sarees and leather goods in the panels

Handloom sarees sell one piece at a time and leather goods one design at a time, and both bring account work of their own.

• Tant, jamdani and Baluchari listed with a place name only where the saree was woven there, since several Bengal weaves are registered geographical indications and a wrong name invites complaints.
• Handloom irregularities written into the description, so a “defective” return reason can be answered from the listing itself.
• Leather bags, belts and wallets listed with dimensions, leather and lining, and claims raised for pieces that come back scuffed or missing hardware.

Our apparel and fashion page covers clothing across India; for bags and wallets, see luggage and travel.

The handover, run from Gandhi Nagar

You add us as a user on each marketplace and keep the owner login, the registered mobile and the bank details. Then we read before we change anything.

1. The read: listings, account health, open claims, unmatched payouts and returns, with anything near a time limit first.
2. The stock rules: the online share per style, the pack logic, and who sends the daily figure.
3. The calendar: Puja submissions, holiday settings and the spring close, written into the plan.
4. The routine: a weekly report and call, and a monthly settlement check.

Sellers who keep their stock book on paper can send a photographed count instead of a sheet; that works, as long as it arrives on schedule.

A handover in July or August puts Puja readiness first; one in winter puts the spring close first. Either way, the first month asks more of your time than the months after it.

The full service is on our marketplace account management page, and our Kolkata page covers the rest of our work in the city.

If you also buy readymade garments for online stock, see wholesale garments for Kolkata retailers. To begin, tell us how your stock is shared.