Selling on the Bunnings Marketplace: Tax Invoices, GST and Bulk Invoicing

Your role as a Bunnings marketplace seller

On the marketplace you list your own products, at your own prices, from your own stock. Bunnings provides the platform, the traffic and the trust that comes with the best-known hardware brand in the country. What it does not provide is your tax invoices.

You are the one selling to the customer, so you issue the invoice under your own trading name and business details, and you account for the tax.

Two document flows, kept apart
• Your tax invoice to the customer: you create it.
• The platform's commission invoices to you: those are purchases, not sales.

Treating commission statements as if they reduced your sales figure is a common error and produces a turnover number that will not reconcile. See our guide to making an invoice for the basics.

What a valid Australian tax invoice contains

If you are registered for GST, a GST-registered customer who asks for a tax invoice is entitled to one, and you generally need to provide it within the timeframe set by the tax office. In the hardware category that request is routine, because trade buyers are a large part of the audience.

The required details
• That the document is intended as a tax invoice.
• Your identity as the seller and your ABN.
• The date the invoice was issued.
• A description of the items sold, including quantity where applicable.
• The GST amount payable, or a statement that the total price includes GST.
• The extent to which each sale is taxable.
• For sales above the prescribed threshold, the buyer's identity or ABN as well.

The exact thresholds and wording requirements are set by the Australian Taxation Office and are worth checking against the current guidance, since they are updated from time to time.

As with every other marketplace, the practical approach is to generate an invoice automatically for every order. That way a trade customer asking for a tax invoice three weeks later is a lookup, not a task.

GST on hardware and garden products

The rate
Australian GST is a single rate of 10%, applied to most goods and services. Tools, timber, garden products, outdoor furniture and storage all fall within it. Unlike European VAT systems, there is no separate reduced rate for general merchandise, which makes the calculation itself simpler.

If you are an Australian business
You register for GST once you meet the registration turnover threshold, charge 10% on taxable sales, claim credits on your business purchases and report through your business activity statement.

If you are an overseas seller
Goods sent to Australian customers from abroad are imports. Two regimes matter here:
• Low value imported goods: for consignments at or below the prescribed customs value threshold, GST is generally collected at the point of sale, and online marketplaces are commonly the ones responsible for collecting and remitting it.
• Above the threshold: GST and any duty are typically collected at the border from the importer.

That means an overseas seller's invoice for an Australian order can look different from the invoice for a domestic European sale, and it matters who is treated as collecting the GST. Confirm the position with an adviser familiar with Australian GST before your first order, not after your first quarter. For the European side of your business, see our OSS VAT scheme guide.

Currency, returns and bulky goods

Invoicing in another currency
Selling into Australia usually means invoicing in Australian dollars while your books are kept in another currency. Record the exchange rate used and the date it applied, so that your accounting export reconciles. See our multi-currency invoicing guide.

Delivery charges
Hardware is heavy. Delivery charges on bulky items are significant and normally follow the treatment of the goods themselves. Show them as a separate line so the customer can see what they are paying for.

Part shipments
Large orders often ship in stages. Invoice each delivery for what was actually supplied, referencing the overall order, with each partial invoice taking its own unique number.

Returns
Every return should produce a credit note referencing the original invoice, correcting both the amount and the tax. For partial returns, credit only the lines that came back. See our credit note guide.

Handle credit notes in the same system as invoices. Automating one and leaving the other manual is how returns quietly fall out of your figures.

Bunnings alongside Amazon, Shopify and WooCommerce

Suppliers on Bunnings rarely sell there alone. The typical mix is an own-brand store on Shopify or WooCommerce, Amazon for reach, and one or more specialist retail marketplaces for the category audience. Sellers based in Europe often add bol.com for the Netherlands and Belgium, and DIY marketplaces such as Praxis, Brico or Hornbach.

Each channel exports orders in its own format, with its own order numbers, its own currency and its own tax regime. Without a central process, month-end becomes a reconciliation exercise across several spreadsheets.

What to centralise
• One continuous invoice number sequence across all channels, with the platform order number as a reference.
• Tax logic driven by destination and customer type, never by the channel.
• Revenue tracked per country and currency.
• One accounting export in UBL or CSV. See our guide to multichannel bookkeeping automation.

Running your own store as well? See Shopify invoice automation or the WooCommerce invoice plugin comparison.

Invoicing every channel in one batch

Bulk invoicing turns a whole set of orders into invoices in a single operation. Beyond a few dozen orders a month, it is what keeps invoicing a fifteen-minute task rather than a recurring half-day.

The process
1. Orders arrive from Bunnings, Amazon, Shopify or WooCommerce.
2. Each order gets the correct tax treatment based on destination and customer type.
3. Every invoice takes a unique number from one shared, continuous sequence.
4. Part shipments become partial invoices; returns become credit notes.
5. You export everything as UBL or CSV into your accounting system.

For channels without a direct integration the same process runs on an order file import and an invoice export: same result, one extra step.

Conclusion

The Bunnings marketplace gives hardware and garden suppliers access to the largest DIY audience in Australia and New Zealand. The commercial case is easy; the administrative case holds up only if your invoicing is built to be channel- and country-agnostic.

The essentials: you are the seller of record, so you issue the tax invoice. GST is 10% and a valid tax invoice must show your ABN. If you sell in from overseas, check the low value imported goods rules and who is treated as collecting the GST.

Add one continuous number sequence, tax logic based on destination and customer type, and bulk invoicing across every channel, and a new marketplace stays what it should be: a commercial decision.