Doing your online shop's bookkeeping yourself without the headache: what to record, what evidence to keep, which apps work

Whenever you hear the word “bookkeeping,” a picture pops into your head: you need to have studied accounting, you need to know debits and credits, you need expensive software. So many sellers never get started. Their sales are scattered across banking apps, chats and a box of receipts that never gets opened, and when tax day comes they’re up all night tracing everything back.

Honestly, for a shop trading as an individual, it’s much easier than you think. One spreadsheet, one bank account and 15 minutes a month, and you’re off.

Note: The information on this page is general information for shops trading as individuals that aren’t yet VAT-registered. If you’re a company or already VAT-registered, there’s a lot more accounting work, and it’s better to have an accountant help.

Do online sellers really have to keep accounts?

Quick Answer: Yes. The Revenue Department requires people with income from trading (Section 40(8)) who aren’t VAT-registered to keep a daily report of income and expenses, or cash receipts and payments report, with entries recorded within 3 business days.

Under the Director-General of the Revenue Department’s Notification No. 161, the main points are just these:

• Keep a report of income and expenses on a daily basis
• Record entries within 3 business days from the date of the income or expense
• Keep it in Thai, or if you use another language, with Thai alongside

But it’s not just a duty. This simple bookkeeping helps you in 3 more ways: your tax filing has the right numbers, you know whether your sales are getting close to 1.8 million baht (the VAT threshold), and you know whether the shop is really making a profit or the money is just passing through your hands.

Which columns should your income and expense sheet have?

Quick Answer: Just 6 to 7 columns are enough: date, item, channel, income, cost of goods, other expenses, and evidence number. You can do it straight away in Google Sheets or Excel.

Here’s an example of one week for a kids’ clothing shop:

Date	Item	Channel	Income (baht)	Cost of goods (baht)	Other expenses (baht)	Evidence
1 Oct	Sold 12 kids’ shirts	Shopee	3,480			Shopee sales report
1 Oct	Platform fees	Shopee			420	Shopee statement
2 Oct	Bought 50 shirts for stock	Pratunam wholesale shop		7,500		Cash bill no. 0231
3 Oct	Sold 5 kids’ shirts	LINE (bank transfer)	1,450			Transfer slip
4 Oct	Mailing bags, bubble wrap, tape	Packaging supply shop			380	Receipt
5 Oct	Advertising	TikTok			500	Online receipt
6 Oct	Sales at a market stall	Cash	2,100			Daily sales record
	Total		7,030	7,500	1,300

This week looks like a loss, because you bought 50 shirts of stock at once but have only sold 17 so far. Don’t panic. Look at the overall picture monthly and yearly instead.

Small tricks that help a lot:

• Separate cost of goods from other expenses. The Revenue Department’s cash receipts and payments report form separates them like this too, and it makes gross profit easy to calculate
• Record the full sale amount, then record platform fees as a separate expense. Don’t record only the amount the platform transfers into your account
• Cash sales must be recorded too. You can record the total at the end of the day
• Include an evidence column. On the day you need to find a receipt, you’ll find it in a minute

Which apps can you use for bookkeeping?

Quick Answer: Google Sheets or Excel is good enough for a small shop. If you want a free accounting app, choose one that can export data to Excel and can record in Thai.

Option	Who it suits	Watch out for
Google Sheets	You want to record from your phone and share with your husband or an assistant	Set sharing permissions carefully
Excel	You’re comfortable on a computer and like making your own formulas	Back up the file somewhere else too
Free accounting apps for shops	You want to snap a photo of a receipt and attach it to an entry	Check you can export your data, in case you stop using it or the app shuts down one day
The Revenue Department’s cash receipts and payments report form	You want to use the official form	Download it from the Revenue Department website

We’ll say it plainly: the tool matters less than consistency. A plain spreadsheet you update every week beats a clever app you open once a month, by a mile.

What evidence do you need to keep?

Quick Answer: Keep evidence for both sales and purchases: platform sales reports, transfer slips, and receipts for goods, shipping, packaging, advertising and fees. Keep them for at least 5 years.

Income side

• Monthly sales reports from Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop (download and save them every month)
• Slips or incoming transfer records for sales via LINE and Facebook
• Daily cash sales records

Expense side

• Bills or receipts for goods and materials, ideally with the seller’s shop name, date, items and amount
• Fee statements from platforms
• Receipts for shipping and packaging supplies
• Receipts for online advertising

Keeping it tidy

• Photograph each receipt as soon as you get it and save it in a folder by month, such as “2569-10” (October 2026 in the Thai calendar)
• Keep the originals in one envelope or file per month
• Name the files to match the evidence column in your sheet

If you choose to deduct actual expenses when you file taxes, this is the evidence that backs up your numbers. To decide between the flat deduction and actual expenses, read Filing taxes online for sellers, step by step

Why should the shop have its own bank account?

Quick Answer: Because it keeps the shop’s money in and out separate from household money, makes bookkeeping many times faster, and if the Revenue Department asks about incoming transfers, it’s easy to explain.

• Open one new savings account, used only to receive money from customers and platforms
• Pay for goods, shipping and advertising from this account
• Pay yourself a salary: transfer from the shop account to your personal account once a month, instead of dipping into it bit by bit
• Money that relatives transfer to you, or money from selling secondhand household items, goes into your personal account, not mixed with the shop’s

We stress this because banks must send data to the Revenue Department when an account receives 3,000 or more transfers, or 400 or more transfers totaling 2 million baht or more, in a year. The details are in Do online sellers in Thailand have to pay tax? If your accounts are clearly separate, you can sleep easy.

What does the 15-minute monthly routine involve?

Quick Answer: During the month, record entries within 3 business days (2 to 3 minutes each time). At the end of the month, spend 15 minutes checking totals, summing up profit, and comparing your year-to-date sales to the VAT threshold.

During the month (every 2 to 3 days)

• During your child’s daytime nap or after bedtime, sneak a look at your sheet, record entries and photograph receipts

End of the month (15 minutes)

1. Download sales reports from every platform and compare them with the figures in your sheet (5 minutes)
2. Compare the balance in your shop bank account with what you’ve recorded. If it doesn’t match, find which entry is missing (5 minutes)
3. Sum up 4 numbers: this month’s sales, cost of goods, other expenses and profit (3 minutes)
4. Check your year-to-date sales. If you’re getting close to 1.8 million baht, read When do you need to register for VAT? (2 minutes)

Your monthly profit figure also makes other decisions easier, such as whether your prices are worth it or whether you should cut back on ads.

When should you hire an accountant?

Quick Answer: When you’re VAT-registered, when you’ve registered as a company or a limited partnership (หจก.), or when you have so many entries a month that bookkeeping takes more time than you have.

• Once VAT-registered, you must keep purchase and sales tax reports and file form P.P.30 (ภ.พ.30) every month
• As a juristic person, you must have a bookkeeper as required by law and an auditor. Read Register a company or stay a sole trader for now?
• If you’re still a small shop but really don’t have time, hiring a freelance accountant to sum things up once a year is perfectly fine

Your accounts don’t have to be pretty or perfect from day one. Just start recording today, and a year from now you’ll know your own shop so much better.