Your B2B portal wallet: month-end reconciliation and a ceiling

A B2B portal wallet reconciliation is the monthly check that tells your desk what three or four portals actually owe you, not the screen's number. Agents keep wallets topped up on TBO, TripJack, Riya and similar portals so tickets issue instantly for clients, but that balance usually understates what's owed once refunds, incentives and top-ups in transit are counted.

This post gives you the daily three-list check, the nine lines on a portal statement, a month-end match that ages what's left, and a one-page sheet with a ceiling on what any portal should hold. In the worked example below, the screen said ₹1,04,082; true exposure was ₹2,37,268.

Your wallet balance is money you have lent the portal

A balance you can spend only with the portal that holds it, with no cash withdrawal, matches RBI's description of a "closed system" prepaid instrument. RBI says issuing one needs no approval or authorisation, so such instruments are not regulated or supervised by RBI (RBI Master Direction on Prepaid Payment Instruments, para 2.1). The escrow rule in the same direction (para 12) applies to authorised non-bank issuers, not to a closed-system balance. That describes the category, not any particular portal's wallet; read your portal's own terms for that.

Careful: A plain bank deposit is insured only up to ₹5,00,000 per depositor per bank (DICGC's guide to deposit insurance, as of October 2026). A portal top-up isn't a bank deposit, so none of that cover applies.

On a consolidator's books, money paid in advance for services not yet delivered is a liability, something it owes back in tickets or cash. TBO Tek's audited standalone balance sheet at 31 March 2026, for instance, showed contract liabilities of ₹70.3 crore, alongside trade receivables (money owed to it) of ₹496.3 crore (TBO Tek FY26 results). Those are ordinary audited entries, not a safety verdict; the point is that your top-up is a claim on a private company, not cash in your account.

A similar market structure shows the worst case: three online travel agencies in Bangladesh collapsed between August and October 2025, taking hundreds of crores of taka from customers, many of them small and medium-sized travel agents, after heavy discounts, advance payments and cashback promises (TBS News, Dhaka). It is not an Indian case and says nothing about any Indian portal; the warning signs belong to the model, not the brand.

Three lists, matched every morning

Run three lists against each other every morning, for yesterday: the portal's issuance/refund report, your invoices, and your bank or UPI receipts. Four mismatches matter: issued but not invoiced, refunded but not passed back, paid but not issued, voided but still billed. Give each an owner, close within 48 hours; this matters for GST too. Time of supply for your fee is the earlier of the invoice date and the payment date, but only if the invoice goes out within thirty days of the service; if it's later, the earlier of the service date and the payment date counts (CGST Act s.13(2); Rule 47).

Where the portal allows sub-users, give each staff member their own login so a mismatch traces to a person. If a wallet shows an unexplained credit, report it, don't spend it: Cyberabad police arrested five agents of a bus-ticketing and wallet platform in 2025 who, between May and July, repeatedly recharged their wallets, booked bus tickets and cancelled them; a software error credited both the refund and the original balance, and they took over ₹3 crore (The Hans India). That ran the other way, agents defrauding the company, but a wallet is a ledger, and glitches are a fraud surface either direction.

What's actually on a portal statement

Every portal statement, however labelled, is some version of the same nine lines: an opening balance, seven things that move it, and a closing balance that is only the portal's own number for today.

Line type	Direction	Must match	Common miss
Top-ups credited	+	Bank/UPI UTR	Debited, not yet credited
Tickets/services issued	−	PNR, invoiced	Billed twice, or uninvoiced
Cancellations/refunds	+	Refund logged pending	Never credited
Reissue/date-change fees	−	Billed to client	Never billed onward
Portal fees (incl. GST)	−	GST invoice, for ITC	No invoice for credit
Incentives/PLB	+	Incentives log, net of TDS	Promised, never credited
ADMs and other debits	−	Traced to a PNR	Booked before checking cause
Opening/closing balance	start/end	Last closing, carried forward	Treated as real exposure

Month-end: match both ways, then age what's left

Run this per portal, once a month.

1. Pull the statement and tick every line against your register.
2. List portal lines with no matching sale, and sales with no matching portal line.
3. Age every refund pending; flag anything open past fourteen working days. That's the time DGCA gives airlines to complete refunds on tickets bought through an agent or portal; it binds the airline, not the portal's wallet credit date, so treat it as a chase flag (DGCA CAR, Section 3, Series M Part II, effective 26 March 2026). What you owe the client once it lands is covered in airline refunds in your portal wallet.
4. List incentives promised versus credited and expect them late: even a consolidator's own supplier incentives accrue over a calendar or financial year and are paid in the first half of the following year, per TBO Tek's CFO on its Q1 FY27 call (transcript). On the same call, air was described as roughly a 1% gross-profit business, so one missed incentive is material (see net fares and incentives explained).
5. Trace a top-up debited but missing on the portal: if a UPI or card payment failed, RBI's 2019 failed-transaction rules require auto-reversal within five days of the transaction, with ₹100 a day in compensation for any delay after that; if it succeeded and only the credit is missing, it's the portal's ledger to fix.
6. Add it up: your true exposure, not the screen balance.

Example: A hypothetical agency runs one portal, "Portal A", through September 2026. The screen shows ₹1,04,082. The register tells more: a ₹7,300 ticket issued on the 24th was never invoiced; a ₹1,00,000 top-up debited on the 30th hasn't shown up yet; two refunds, ₹21,400, are pending, one past the fourteen-working-day flag; one PNR was debited twice for ₹8,650; and a July incentive of ₹3,136 (net of TDS), promised in writing, was never credited. Add it back and true exposure is ₹2,37,268, more than double the screen balance. At five working days of September's average issuance (₹5,39,750 of genuine tickets over 26 working days, about ₹20,760 a day), the ceiling is about ₹1,03,800, so exposure runs about 2.3 times it.

TDS on portal incentives: tie it out before you file

If a portal treats an incentive as commission, it deducts 2% when it credits or pays it, whichever is earlier, even if the credit only goes into your wallet, once the year's total from that portal exceeds ₹20,000. For credits from 1 April 2026 that's Section 393(1), Table serial 1(ii), Income-tax Act 2025; FY 2025-26 credits fell under Section 194H of the 1961 Act, at the same 2% and ₹20,000, and Section 536(2)(c) keeps the 1961 Act applying to proceedings for tax years that began before 1 April 2026.

The paperwork changes names too, so go by what each document is rather than its form number. The portal's quarterly TDS return for Jul-Sep is due 31 October 2026, and its TDS certificate to you is due about two weeks after that; the deduction should also show in your AIS (TaxGuru). For FY 2025-26 credits, agencies whose accounts must be audited now have until 21 November 2026, extended from 31 October, to file the AY 2026-27 return (CBDT Circular 07/2026).

Don't assume every rupee above net fare is "commission", or that a markup never is; it depends on the relationship. The Supreme Court held airlines liable to deduct tax on the extra amount agents charged over net fare in an IATA agency setting (Singapore Airlines v. CIT, 2022). Read the row the portal reports a credit under, on your TDS certificate or AIS, and ask your CA where it's unclear.

Set a ceiling, and get it confirmed in writing

Add up what one portal really holds: wallet balance, refunds pending, disputed debits, incentives receivable net of TDS, and any top-up in transit. That's your exposure. As a rule of thumb, not a regulation, cap it at some fixed number of working days of average issuance (five is a reasonable start), and never top up past it for a cashback offer. Across every portal, don't exceed what you could absorb without missing payroll or a supplier payment.

Sweep refunds back out weekly instead of letting them sit as "spare" credit, and watch for the warning signs above: heavier discounting, new cashback offers, slower support, changed settlement terms. None of that proves trouble alone, but it's worth asking before adding another lakh. Compare against a bank-guarantee or FD-lien-backed credit line instead, where your money stays with your bank rather than in a portal's ledger; see the credit ladder for a growing agency.

Collect a written confirmation every month: an acknowledgment of what's owed, signed before the limitation period runs out, starts a fresh period for recovering it (Limitation Act 1963, s.18), so it beats a screenshot. Whether a system-generated statement or a plain email counts as signed is a question for a lawyer; a signed letter from the account manager is the safest form. Buying from a portal to resell is a commercial purpose, which the Consumer Protection Act 2019 excludes from "consumer", so a wallet dispute is generally a commercial recovery matter; ask a lawyer before you file.

The month-end kit, ready to copy

Four sheets and a note. Run the register daily; the rest, monthly.

DAILY SALES REGISTER (one row per ticket or service)
Date
Client
Portal
Staff/sub-user ID (whose login issued it)
PNR or booking ref
Sector
Cost per portal (Rs)
Sell to client (Rs)
Your fee (Rs)
Client invoice no.
Paid by client? (date, UPI/bank ref)
Status: issued / void / cancelled / reissued

PORTAL RECONCILIATION (one sheet per portal per month)
A  Opening balance
B  + Top-ups credited (count, total, with bank UTR)
C  - Tickets issued (count, total)
D  + Refunds credited (count, total)
E  - Reissue/date-change charges
F  - Portal fees incl. GST (invoice nos., for ITC)
G  + Incentives credited (gross, TDS, net)
H  - ADMs and other debits
I  = Closing balance (A+B-C+D-E-F+G-H; must equal the portal's own figure)
J  + Top-ups in transit
K  + Refunds pending (from the refunds log)
L  + Disputed debits (duplicates, wrong fares)
M  + Incentives receivable, net of TDS
N  = True exposure (I+J+K+L+M)
O  Ceiling (average daily issuance x chosen number of days, e.g. 5)
P  Over/under ceiling (N-O), and the action it triggers

REFUNDS PENDING LOG
PNR:
Cancelled on:
Filed with the portal on:
Expected amount (Rs):
Working days open (flag past 14):
Credited on / amount:
Client repaid on:

INCENTIVES RECEIVABLE LOG
Period:
Basis promised in writing (slab/segments):
Expected gross (Rs):
Credited gross (Rs):
TDS shown on portal statement (Rs):
TDS reflected in TDS certificate / AIS (Rs):
Gap and action:

Row I is a check, not an estimate: if it doesn't equal the portal's own figure, something above it is wrong. Rows J to M are what the screen leaves out; row P should change your behaviour. Chase these in each portal's own terms before you rely on the wallet:

• Can you withdraw a wallet balance to your bank, how long does it take, and is there a fee?
• Can the portal set off an ADM or disputed debit against your wallet without asking first?

Subject: Closing balance confirmation and open items, [Agency name], [month/year]

Hi [Name],

Please confirm in writing:
1. Our closing wallet balance as on [date].
2. Status of pending refunds/disputes: [PNRs and reference numbers].
3. The [period] incentive computation, and which TDS section/row it was reported under.

Thanks,
[Your name]

Common questions

Portal ka hisaab kaise milaye?

Run the daily three-list match every morning, then once a month tick the statement against your sales register line by line: list what's on each side but not the other, age every refund pending, and add it into one exposure number.

B2B portal safe hai kya, wallet mein kitna paisa rakhe?

This post doesn't rate any portal, but no wallet balance is insured like a bank deposit. Cap what any portal holds to a few working days of issuance, and sweep refunds out instead of letting them pile up.

Why is the portal's TDS different from what I call my commission?

Because "commission" for TDS depends on the relationship, not the label. Check the row the credit was reported under on your TDS certificate or AIS, and raise any mismatch with the portal and your CA.

The short version

• A wallet you can spend only with the portal is an unsecured advance: RBI's escrow rule doesn't cover it, and there's no deposit insurance.
• Match three lists every morning (issued, invoiced, received); chase gaps within 48 hours.
• A portal statement is nine lines; the closing balance isn't your real exposure.
• Add refunds pending, disputed debits, incentives receivable and top-ups in transit for true exposure, monthly.
• Cap what any portal holds in working days of its own issuance; get the balance confirmed in writing.
• Tie TDS out before filing: the portal's quarterly TDS return (Jul-Sep 2026) is due 31 October 2026; audited AY 2026-27 returns move to 21 November 2026.