Invoices, receipts and VAT on marketplace orders
Marketplaces are built for buying, not for bookkeeping. These guides cover what the platforms actually give you, what an accountant or a tax office needs instead, and the specific places those two things come apart.
How to get an invoice for an AliExpress order
Why there is no download button, what your accountant needs instead, and the collapsed price breakdown that quietly breaks the figures.
Downloading an Amazon order receipt as a PDF
Where the real figures live, why printing the page disappoints, and four fields people routinely record wrong.
VAT on marketplace purchases
Import VAT and supplier VAT are different taxes. Only one is reclaimable, and the document that proves it is usually not the order page.
Invoice or receipt — which do you need?
One asks for money, the other confirms it arrived. Which one depends entirely on who is asking, and the fields matter more than the title.
Exporting orders to CSV for bookkeeping
The columns a bookkeeper actually wants, and the encoding detail that turns every non-English product title into mojibake in Excel.
Invoicing without exposing your supplier
Two transactions, two documents. What leaks, where it leaks from, and what your own invoice has to carry.
Who writes this
We build OrderVault, a free Chrome extension that turns a marketplace order page into a clean PDF invoice or receipt with your own company details on it. It works entirely inside your browser — no account, no server, and your order data is never uploaded anywhere.
Everything here is general information rather than tax advice. Rules differ by country and change often; check anything that matters with your own accountant.