The Takealot Stock Recon Report, explained — and how to claim back lost stock

TL;DR. Takealot generates a monthly Stock Recon Report listing every inventory adjustment its warehouses made to your stock. Where the warehouse marked stock down (loss, damage, miscount), Takealot owes you the value of that stock — but only if you file a Stock Loss Claim invoice within 60 days. After day 30 Takealot starts charging a R200 admin fee; after day 60 the claim expires permanently. Most Takealot sellers we work with leave R1,000–R20,000 a month on the table because nobody reads this report.

What is the Stock Recon Report?

The Stock Recon Report is a monthly CSV Takealot generates for each seller, reconciling what the warehouses should have on hand (based on inbound shipments minus outbound sales) against what they actually counted. Any gap is either an "up adjustment" (warehouse found more stock — Takealot keeps it) or a "down adjustment" (warehouse lost or damaged your stock — Takealot owes you).

Every Takealot seller gets one. It lives in Seller Portal → Reports → Stock Recon Report, refreshed once a month around the 5th–8th for the prior calendar month.

The report exists because South African VAT law requires both parties to a transaction to keep auditable records. The recon report is Takealot's audit trail of physical inventory movements — and the basis on which they're legally required to reimburse you for stock they lose.

Which columns actually matter?

The report has ~20 columns. Only a handful are load-bearing for a claim:

Column	What it means	Why it matters
tsin / product_label	The product identifier and title	Identify what was lost
closing_warehouse_quantity	What the DC had on hand at month-end	Reference only
warehouse_up_adjustments	Stock the warehouse found (positive)	Takealot keeps this — you don't claim it
warehouse_down_adjustments	Stock the warehouse lost or damaged (negative)	This is your claim line. Filter on warehouse_down_adjustments > 0
claim_value_per_unit	The unit value Takealot will reimburse	Already VAT-inclusive (15% included, 15/115 fraction)
total_claim_value	warehouse_down_adjustments × claim_value_per_unit	The line total you invoice for

Filter the report to rows where warehouse_down_adjustments > 0. Those are the only rows that produce a claim.

How does the claim process actually work?

Takealot doesn't pay automatically. You have to invoice them for the loss, the same way you'd invoice any other commercial customer who owes you money.

The process — exactly as Takealot's Seller Support team expects it:

1. Pull the Stock Recon Report for the month you're claiming on (Seller Portal → Reports → Stock Recon Report → select month → Download CSV).
2. Filter to warehouse_down_adjustments > 0. These are the claimable rows.
3. Sum the total_claim_value column across the filtered rows. This is the invoice total — VAT-inclusive, calculated using the 15/115 VAT fraction.
4. Generate a tax invoice in your business's name, addressed to Takealot's correct Bill-To entity (Takealot Online (Pty) Ltd, with the registered VAT number — confirm the current details with Seller Support before the first claim; they occasionally change).
5. Itemise the invoice line-by-line — one line per TSIN, showing units lost × claim value. Takealot's accounting team rejects lump-sum claims.
6. Submit via Seller Support as a "Stock Loss Claim" ticket, attaching the invoice PDF and the filtered CSV.
7. Wait for the credit to appear on your next weekly payout statement, usually within 10–14 days.

The whole thing is mechanical. The reason most sellers don't bother isn't difficulty — it's that they never read the recon report in the first place.

What are the deadlines?

This is where claims die. Takealot's policy is strict and not widely publicised:

Day	What happens	What you can still do
Day 0	Stock Recon Report published for the prior month	File the claim immediately
Day 1–30	Standard claim window	File. Takealot processes normally.
Day 30	R200 admin fee kicks in on unfiled claims	You can still claim — but R200 is deducted from the payout
Day 60	Claim expires permanently	Nothing. The money is gone.

The transitional rule for 2026: any pre-2026-06-01 undisputed Stock Recon Reports must be invoiced by 2026-12-01 or those claims also expire. Post-June 2026 reports follow the normal 30/60 cycle.

If you're reading this and you've never claimed: every recon report from the past 60 days is still claimable today. Past that, gone.

What's the most common mistake?

Three, in order of frequency:

1. Sellers issue a second VAT invoice for the same transaction. Takealot already issues a tax invoice on your behalf for normal sales (this is contractually required — VAT Act 1991, §2 of the Seller Agreement). Issuing a second one for the same sale is statutorily prohibited and triggers an automatic rejection. The Stock Loss Claim is the one exception — Takealot has not invoiced for the lost stock (because no sale happened), so the seller invoice is correct.

2. Sellers calculate VAT incorrectly. The total_claim_value is already VAT-inclusive. If you treat it as ex-VAT and add 15%, you overclaim by 15%, and Takealot rejects the entire invoice. Use 15/115 (≈ 13.04%) to extract the VAT portion if you need it shown separately.

3. Sellers wait. A claim filed on day 5 of the cycle is paid in ~10 days. A claim filed on day 45 attracts the R200 admin fee, takes longer, and has a higher rejection rate (Takealot's tone shifts when you're at the edge of the window).

Why doesn't Takealot just auto-pay?

The structural reason is VAT compliance. South African VAT law (Value-Added Tax Act 1991) requires the supplier of goods or services to issue the tax invoice. Stock that Takealot loses is, legally, your stock — so you're the supplier of the (lost) goods in the reimbursement transaction. Takealot can't unilaterally generate the invoice on your behalf because it would make Takealot the supplier, which it isn't.

The more candid reason is that the percentage of sellers who don't file is high enough that the unfilled-claim float matters. There's no inducement for Takealot to ping you with a "you have R8,400 in claimable stock losses this month" alert.

Frequently asked questions

How much do sellers typically claim back?

Across the ~100 sellers we work with, the median monthly Stock Loss Claim is R600–R3,000. The top decile claim R10,000–R30,000 per month consistently — usually higher-volume sellers shipping breakable or small-form-factor items that warehouses miscount or damage more often.

Can I claim for stock that arrived damaged at the customer (not at the warehouse)?

No — that's a different mechanism (return reimbursement / lost-in-transit claim). The Stock Recon Report only covers stock that was with Takealot in their DC and got lost or damaged there.

What if Takealot disputes my claim?

You have 30 days to file a counter-dispute from the date Takealot's reply lands. They have 60 days to reply to your counter. If they don't reply in 60 days, silence resolves in the seller's favour and the original claim stands. This same 30-file / 60-reply / silence-favours-seller pattern applies to inventory and return-decision disputes too.

Do I need a VAT number to claim?

No. Non-VAT-registered sellers can still claim — you just don't include a VAT line. The invoice total equals the total_claim_value sum (which Takealot already calculated assuming VAT-inclusive pricing; non-VAT sellers receive the full amount).

Can I automate this?

Yes. Gadjet has a built-in skill that reads your Stock Recon Report each month, generates the line-itemised tax invoice in Takealot's expected format, and sends it to Seller Support for you. We built it because we got tired of manually doing it for our own store. See Gadjet — but you don't need our tool to do this. The instructions above are everything.

What to do this week

If you've never read your Stock Recon Report:

1. Log into the Seller Portal
2. Reports → Stock Recon Report → download the last 60 days
3. Filter to warehouse_down_adjustments > 0
4. Sum total_claim_value
5. If the number is > R0, you have a claim worth filing today.

The full process — pulling the report, generating the invoice, submitting via Seller Support — takes ~30 minutes the first time, ~5 minutes once you've done it once.

This is the single highest-ROI 30 minutes a Takealot seller can spend in a month.