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The UTR is the join: matching marketplace payouts to your bank statement
Matching payouts by amount breaks the day two marketplaces pay you at once, which is most days. The settlement reference number the marketplace remits under is the UTR, and it is printed in your bank narration.
Reconciliation is three checks: every dispatched order has a settlement line, every line matches the rate card, and every settlement batch reached the bank. The third is the one most sellers do by eye, by amount, and it is the one that fails quietly.
Why amounts do not work
Two payouts of similar size on the same day are routine when several marketplaces, or several settlement cycles of one marketplace, land together. A partial payout, a payout netted against a recovery, or a bank charge changes the figure by a few rupees. Amount matching either pairs the wrong batches or leaves both unmatched, and nobody looks again.
The key that is already there
- The settlement reference number the marketplace remits under is the UTR of the transfer.
- The bank prints the UTR in the narration. On Flipkart's settlement report it is the settlement reference number; in the bank statement it is the NEFT or IMPS id.
- Join on it and a batch is either in the bank or it is not. A batch with no bank line after the expected lag is a missing payout, which is a claim, not a mystery.
Doing it by hand, and not
By hand: export the bank statement, extract the UTR from each marketplace credit's narration, and look each one up in the settlement reports for that month. It is tedious but exact. ezmarketplaces matches each payout batch on the UTR as bank credits arrive; a batch that stays unmatched past the channel's usual lag is flagged on the Recovery ledger. Bank statement ingestion is one UTR at a time today; file ingestion is on the roadmap.