What does an AJIO settlement statement actually show?

An AJIO settlement statement shows, for one payout period, every order and return that affected your balance, the fees and taxes deducted against each, and the net amount paid. Think of it as the bridge between your sales report and your bank statement.

Column names change with your business model and with updates to AJIO Seller Central, so treat the list below as a map of what kind of information to look for, not as AJIO’s official column headers. Download your own export from the payments area of Seller Central and label each column against this map once; after that, every month gets faster.

The building blocks of an AJIO settlement statement

The single most useful habit is to keep one row per order line in your own working sheet. A summary view that only shows totals hides the two or three styles that cause most of the deductions. When the AJIO settlement statement is broken down by style code, finance can hand catalogue a short list instead of a vague complaint that “returns are high”.

Where the AJIO settlement statement sits in your month

For most AJIO sellers the statement is the third document in a chain: the sales or order report tells you what was sold, the returns report tells you what came back, and the settlement statement tells you what AJIO paid for the net of the two. Reconciliation simply means proving that chain closes. If an order shows as delivered but never appears in any settlement, or a return is deducted twice, the chain breaks and you have a claim to raise.

Keep a short notes column beside each line for anything unusual: a damaged return, a size exchange, a delayed dispatch. These notes become your evidence later, and they make the next month’s AJIO payout reconciliation much faster because the same issues tend to repeat.

How does the AJIO seller payment cycle work for each business model?

The AJIO seller payment cycle depends on the business model in your agreement: marketplace, sale-or-return or outright. Each model changes who owns the stock, who carries unsold risk and when cash arrives, so the settlement statement looks different for each.

AJIO, run by Reliance Retail, onboards sellers through the Reliance supplier portal and evaluates the brand before opening catalog access. That evaluation also decides which models are open to you. Payment timelines quoted on blogs vary a lot, and we have not found an official public page that fixes them for every seller, so the only reliable source is your signed terms sheet. Read it with the settlement statement open beside it.

Marketplace model: order-level settlement

In the marketplace model you hold inventory and ship against each order, so every forward shipment and every customer return is its own line. This is where most AJIO seller deductions show up, and where a clean order-level sheet pays off fastest. A delivered order with no matching credit, or a return reversed against the wrong size, is easy to catch when your sheet uses the same order reference as the statement.

Sale-or-return and outright: stock and documents first

Under sale or return, the question shifts from “which order?” to “which units are still with AJIO, and which have been sold or sent back?”. Reconcile your placed-stock quantity against sold and returned units before you look at money. Under outright, payment follows purchase orders, so the documents to check are the PO, your invoice, and any debit or credit notes raised after inward QC. A debit note for short or rejected units deserves the same scrutiny as a return deduction.

Whatever the model, write down three dates per payout: the period covered, the date the AJIO settlement statement was generated, and the date the money landed. After two or three cycles you will know your real cash rhythm, which is far more useful for planning than a figure copied from a forum. If you are still choosing a model, the business-model section of the AJIO hub is the place to compare them before you sign.

How do you reconcile an AJIO settlement statement line by line?

Export the AJIO settlement statement, your order report and your return report for the same period, join them on order reference and style code, then compare expected net value with actual net value for every line. The differences are your list of questions.

This is the method we recommend because it is easy to repeat every cycle. It works in a spreadsheet; you do not need accounting software to start, although it helps once volumes grow.

1. Fix the period. Use the exact start and end dates printed on the settlement, not the calendar month.
2. Export three files. Settlement statement, orders for the period, returns for the period, all from Seller Central.
3. Build one key. Join on order reference plus style code or EAN, so size exchanges do not collapse into one row.
4. Calculate expected net. Sale value minus the fee and logistics rates in your agreement, minus TCS and TDS.
5. Compare with actual net. Put the statement’s net beside your expected figure and flag any line where they differ.
6. Sort the gaps. Group flagged lines into fees, returns, taxes and unexplained adjustments.
7. Check missing orders. Find delivered orders that are absent from every settlement so far.
8. Raise tickets in batches. One ticket per issue type, with order references listed, is easier to resolve than fifty single tickets.
9. Close the loop. Mark resolved lines and carry open ones to next month’s sheet.

Notice that the example ends with two different actions. The missing orders are a finance issue and go to AJIO as a ticket. The three styles with colour and size returns are a catalogue issue, and no ticket will fix them. That split is the real value of AJIO payout reconciliation: it tells you which problems to chase with the marketplace and which to fix in your own listing.

Which AJIO seller deductions appear on the settlement statement, and how do you check each one?

The usual AJIO seller deductions are the marketplace fee or commission, logistics charges, return reversals, taxes withheld (TCS under GST and TDS under income tax) and occasional adjustments or penalties. Each one has a different source document to check it against.

The fee percentages and logistics slabs differ by category and business model and are fixed in your agreement, which is why we do not quote them here. What we can do is show what to check each deduction against, and where the tax figures come from, because those two are set by law rather than by AJIO.

How to verify TCS on your AJIO settlement statement

E-commerce operators collect GST TCS under Section 52 and file it monthly, after which it reflects for the seller on the GST portal, where you accept it and it moves to your electronic cash ledger. Compare the TCS total on your statements with what AJIO has reported; a gap usually means a GSTIN mismatch or a timing difference between months.

How to verify TDS deducted from your AJIO payout

TDS deducted on e-commerce sales should appear against your PAN in Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement on the Income Tax e-filing portal. Note that the Income-tax Act, 2025 applies from 1 April 2026, so the section number your CA uses for this deduction may differ from older guides; the check itself stays the same.

Commission and logistics need a closer look on return lines. When a customer sends a kurta back, check whether the fee charged on the original sale was reversed, partly reversed or retained, and whether a reverse logistics charge was added. Your agreement decides which is correct. The point is not to assume an error, but to know which outcome the agreement promises and to flag lines that do not follow it. One recurring difference across many lines is worth a single, well-documented ticket, and that is the approach the Ckstudio team suggests to every brand that asks.

Why do AJIO return deductions eat into net payout, and how do better images reduce them?

Every customer return reverses the sale value and can carry its own fees, so a high return rate drains net payout twice: once through the lost sale and again through return-related charges. In fashion, many returns come from colour, fit and fabric surprises that the listing could have prevented.

When we read return reason codes alongside a brand’s listings, the same three causes come up again and again: the colour on screen did not match the garment, the size chart did not match the actual measurements, or the fabric looked heavier, shinier or softer than it really was. None of those is a finance problem, yet each one shows up on the AJIO settlement statement as a return deduction.

This is where images do the heavy lifting. If shoppers keep sending a style back because the colour looked different, a reshoot of that style with calibrated ecommerce photography removes the cause instead of treating the symptom. For drape and fit questions, honest on-model fashion photography with front, side, back and detail frames gives the shopper the information a fitting room would.

The clip below shows how a marketplace apparel shoot captures fit and fabric in motion, which answers the questions that still frames sometimes leave open.

For a deeper look at the link between listings and returns across platforms, read our guide on reducing returns with better product images. It covers the shot list we recommend for apparel, footwear and accessories.

How do you raise a dispute when the AJIO settlement statement does not match?

Raise a ticket from AJIO Seller Central with the order references, the line values you expected, the values you received and your evidence attached. Group similar issues into one ticket so the support team can resolve them in one pass.

Disputes go faster when the evidence is ready before the ticket is opened. For a missing settlement, that is proof of delivery and the order reference. For a wrong return deduction, it is your warehouse receipt, inward QC photos and, ideally, an unboxing video recorded when the return parcel was opened. For a fee mismatch, it is the clause or rate card from your agreement and a calculation for each affected line.

Evidence checklist for AJIO payout reconciliation disputes

• Order reference and style code exactly as printed on the statement.
• Expected versus actual net value, with the calculation shown.
• Return proof: date received, condition notes, photos or unboxing video.
• Agreement reference for any fee or logistics disagreement.
• Previous ticket numbers if the same issue has come up before.

Wrong or damaged returns deserve special attention. If the parcel that came back is not your product, or arrives used or damaged, the claim process and its deadlines are set by AJIO’s policies for your account, so check the current window in Seller Central and file inside it. A return accepted into stock without a photo is very hard to dispute afterwards.

That same Ckstudio naming discipline helps in disputes. If AJIO’s QC rejected a style or flagged an image, you can show which file was live on which date. It also helps when you compare a style’s return rate before and after a reshoot: the style code ties the old frames, the new frames and both months of settlement lines together.

What are the most common AJIO payout reconciliation mistakes, and how do you fix them?

The most common mistakes are reconciling totals instead of lines, using calendar months instead of settlement periods, ignoring size-level codes, and treating every return as a finance problem. Each has a simple fix.

• Mistake: matching only the bank total. Fix: reconcile at order-line level so individual gaps cannot hide inside a net figure.
• Mistake: using the calendar month. Fix: use the exact period printed on each AJIO settlement statement; orders near month-end often fall into the next cycle.
• Mistake: joining on style code only. Fix: add size or EAN to the key, otherwise a size exchange looks like a duplicate.
• Mistake: assuming every fee on a return is wrong. Fix: read the agreement first, then flag only lines that do not follow it.
• Mistake: not accepting TCS on the GST portal. Fix: review and accept TCS credit every month so it reaches your cash ledger.
• Mistake: ignoring TDS in Form 26AS. Fix: match TDS on statements with Form 26AS and AIS before filing your return.
• Mistake: filing tickets one order at a time. Fix: group by issue type and attach a single sheet.
• Mistake: never telling catalogue. Fix: share the top return styles every month with whoever owns images and size charts.

The last mistake is the expensive one. A finance team can recover a missing payout with one ticket, but a style with a misleading first image will keep generating return deductions every cycle until someone reshoots it. In our experience at Ckstudio, the brands that improve fastest treat the settlement statement as a catalogue feedback report as well as a finance document.

Another mistake is skipping the return reason codes because they feel vague. Even broad codes such as “size”, “colour” or “quality” become meaningful when you count them per style. If one co-ord set has most of its returns tagged “colour”, while a similar set in the same fabric does not, the difference is almost always in how the two were photographed or edited. Sellers who already follow the AJIO seller image guidelines for ratio and fill can still lose margin if the colour drifts between shoots.

How do you build a monthly AJIO seller finance routine around the AJIO settlement statement?

Set a fixed day after each payout to download the statement, run the line-by-line match, accept tax credits, file grouped tickets and send a short return report to the catalogue team. Thirty to sixty focused minutes per cycle is usually enough once the sheet is built.

A routine beats a heroic year-end clean-up. Settlement data is freshest in the days after a payout, return parcels are still in the warehouse, and claim windows are still open. Here is the order we suggest to the brands we shoot for.

1. Download the AJIO settlement statement, order report and return report for the same period.
2. Paste them into your template and let the formulas flag mismatches.
3. Review flagged lines and tag each one: fee, logistics, return, tax or unexplained.
4. Accept TCS on the GST portal and note the month’s TCS and TDS totals.
5. Raise grouped tickets with evidence attached.
6. List the five styles with the most return value and their main reason codes.
7. Send that list to catalogue with a decision: reshoot, re-edit, fix the size chart, or leave as is.

Some return causes can be fixed without a full reshoot. If the original frames were sharp and well lit but the colour drifted during editing, colour-accurate image editing against the physical sample is often enough. If the frames themselves are weak, a reshoot is the cleaner option.

The clip below follows a marketplace product shoot from setup to final frames, which is the stage where most colour and detail problems are prevented.

Questions about your own catalogue? Call or WhatsApp +91-8700258773, or email [email protected] with a list of your highest-return style codes, and the Ckstudio team will tell you which ones look like an image problem.