Marketplace seller software market size in England: method

This article sets out an evidence-review method for assessing marketplace seller software market size in England. It connects legal entities, software products, accounting periods and transactions attributed to England; it does not report a market valuation. Without that chain, a reported total cannot be checked against its intended scope.

A records-only review should apply an explicit England allocation rule and record each entry as supported, excluded or unresolved. The resulting register can show which revenue entries are supported without turning the review into a market valuation.

Define scope for the review

Define the measure as revenue earned by legal suppliers from the agreed marketplace seller software products, attributable to England customer establishments during the stated accounting period. This fixes the product, supplier, geography and time scope before any evidence is reviewed.

Keep that measure separate from merchants' marketplace sales, the value of orders processed by software, software account counts and seller adoption. None establishes supplier income. A seller can use a product without evidence showing what its supplier earned from that use, so usage records do not substitute for revenue records.

An eligible-seller count may provide context, but belongs in a separate schedule. The retained figure concerns seller counting, not evidence for an entry in the revenue calculation. Keep the records distinct so that a contextual count cannot be mistaken for supplier income or used to fill a gap in the revenue evidence.

Request the calculation's supporting records, not just its final spreadsheet. Every included entry should have an evidence identifier and a status of supported, excluded or unresolved. Missing evidence is not evidence of zero revenue, so keep gaps visible rather than entering a zero or unsupported estimate.

Match products to legal suppliers

Linnworks and Veeqo are real multichannel products used to manage marketplace listing, stock and order records. Their names identify products for investigation, but do not establish an England revenue figure or necessarily identify the legal entity whose financial records should support the proposed entry.

Start with the entity shown on the relevant contract or invoice. Match that entity to the accounts or transaction records supporting the proposed revenue entry. A website domain or trading name alone is not a sufficient match, so retain the documents linking the product, contracting party and financial evidence.

For a registered company, Companies House can help establish its legal identity and company number. It also provides access to filed accounts where available. Neither a company's registered address nor the presence of accounts establishes England-attributed product revenue, so treat them as identity and reporting evidence only.

Keep an entity record containing:

If the evidence concerns a corporate group, check whether the relevant product's income can actually be separated. Do not assign consolidated group revenue to one product merely because the product belongs to that group. Record the unresolved split where the evidence does not support product-level attribution.

Check what financial records support

Filed accounts can anchor the reporting entity and accounting period, but may not isolate the software product or customer geography. An aggregate revenue line is a starting point for reconciliation, not an automatic England software allocation. Keep the distinction between a reporting total and the claim's narrower scope explicit.

Contracts, itemised invoices and supporting transaction records can provide detail connecting income to the agreed product scope. Record whether each line concerns software, implementation, managed work, another product or a combined offering. For combined offerings, require evidence for the split, since a marketing description alone does not support an allocation. Apply the same product scope throughout.

An itemised contract or supplier revenue record may support an allocation, but leave mixed revenue unresolved when the records cannot separate it. Also distinguish recognised revenue, invoiced sums and cash receipts, which can differ because of accounting treatment and payment timing. An accountant should confirm which revenue basis the claim uses and reconcile it to the supporting records.

Keep credits, refunds and other adjustments traceable. VAT collected is not supplier revenue, so VAT record-keeping needs an appropriate separation before the records support the calculation. If different currencies appear, retain the original currency and document the conversion basis rather than silently combining unlike values.

Apply the England allocation rule

Attribute revenue to England only where the contractual customer has a verified operating establishment in England that owns the software purchasing decision, and transaction evidence connects the income to that establishment. Apply the same test to each proposed allocation and retain evidence supporting its result.

Apply this rule to the customer transaction, not the supplier's headquarters. A supplier based outside England can serve an England customer, while an England-based supplier can earn revenue from customers elsewhere. Supplier location therefore does not resolve customer attribution and should not be used as a substitute for transaction evidence.

For each proposed allocation, retain the customer or contract identifier, establishment evidence, relevant period and reason the transaction meets the rule. Keep identifiable customer details in controlled working records rather than reproducing them in the published schedule, so the published evidence summary does not expose those details.

Handle ambiguous cases consistently:

An address field is evidence to assess, not a reason to change the rule between suppliers. Apply the same standard to each customer transaction, and record why the available establishment evidence supports inclusion or leaves the allocation unresolved.

Test evidence with a hypothetical example

Consider a hypothetical review exercise using real product names. It does not describe Linnworks' or Veeqo's actual disclosures, contracts or revenue. The exercise tests how records should be handled without implying that either named supplier has made a particular disclosure or earned a stated amount.

Suppose a proposed schedule contains a row labelled "Linnworks, England software revenue" and the attached evidence consists only of accounts for a corporate group. Separately, an England seller confirms that it uses Veeqo. Those records concern different evidence questions and do not, by themselves, support revenue entries.

Neither item is ready to become an included revenue entry. Work through the evidence in this order:

The outcome may remain "unresolved", even though both products are genuine and relevant. That is a completed review decision, not a reason to insert an assumed value. Record the evidence gap and its effect on the proposed entry rather than filling it with an unsupported figure.

Where the records support inclusion, combine only evidenced, in-scope England revenue entries after documented adjustments. Where they do not, record the missing link instead of manufacturing a contribution. A supported entry and an unresolved entry should remain distinguishable in the schedule.

Keep a review register

Use a register that preserves the reason for each decision. A supplier-name column and a total cannot show whether an entry passed the entity, product and geography checks. Retain the evidence and decision fields together, so another reviewer can follow how each proposed amount was treated.

Keep exclusions distinguishable from coverage gaps. A documented product outside scope is an exclusion; a relevant supplier whose product revenue cannot be established is unresolved coverage. Preserve those evidence limits in the published wording rather than presenting reviewed revenue as the total England market.

Review accounting and coverage separately

A named statistician and accountant should approve the method before a figure is published. Give them different review questions rather than asking both to sign the same undifferentiated total. Separate approval makes clear which checks concern accounting treatment and which concern the reach of the evidence.

Ask the accountant to check entity matching, product-income separation, accounting periods and adjustments. Where resellers or group entities appear, the review should also test whether the aggregation counts the same commercial activity twice. The check should follow the evidence from contracting party to financial records.

Ask the statistician to check which suppliers the evidence covers, how unresolved entries affect the claim and whether the proposed wording exceeds that coverage. Correct accounting for the entries examined does not establish complete market coverage. Keep the coverage decision separate from approval of the calculations for the entries reviewed, as set out in the coverage review.

Use a bounded label such as "documented England-attributed supplier revenue within the reviewed scope". Do not replace it with "England market size" unless the wider coverage is independently supported. The wording should make the scope of the reviewed evidence clear and avoid implying that unresolved suppliers have been measured.

Retain the approved version alongside its evidence. Reopen affected entries when an entity relationship, financial record, product allocation or customer-location record changes. Publish the supported result and unresolved coverage together, so the stated figure remains attached to its limits and the records supporting it.