Zomato Payout Deductions: What Every Line Means

Your Zomato payout lands as one bank credit, and the statement behind it lists a dozen deduction heads with names that explain nothing. This is a line-by-line decode of that statement. Two of those lines are wrong on most of the guides you'll find, including specialist reconciliation sites, and one of them is costing restaurants real money in mis-filed tax credits.

Key takeaways

• Your settlement is order value minus commission, GST on that commission, payment fees, TDS, and adjustments.
• TDS under Section 194-O is 0.1 percent, not 1 percent. It was cut on 1 October 2024 and plenty of guides never updated.
• TCS should not appear at all on restaurant orders. If it's on your statement, query it.
• "Amount received in cash" is not a penalty. It's Zomato netting off money you already collected on self-delivery orders.
• The platform fee both apps raised is charged to the diner, not deducted from you.

The deductions that should be there

These are legitimate and will appear on nearly every statement.

Commission. The big one, charged as a percentage of order value, and it varies by city, format and your agreement. Note it's computed after platform-funded discounts, which is why the effective rate people quote never matches the headline. We've done that maths in what Zomato and Swiggy commission really costs.

GST on the commission, at 18 percent. Zomato invoices you for its service and charges GST on it. This one matters: that 18 percent is input tax credit you can claim, so it should be booked as a recoverable, not written off as cost. Restaurants on the 5 percent no-ITC scheme cannot claim it, which is a real and often unnoticed cost.

Payment gateway or processing charges. Small per-order amounts on prepaid orders.

Ad spend or promoted listing fees. Only if you opted in. If you see this and never ran a campaign, that's a support ticket.

Refunds and cancellation adjustments. These often land in the cycle after the order, which is the single most common reason a week looks short for no visible reason.

TDS under Section 194-O. Covered below, because the rate is where guides go wrong.

"Amount received in cash": the line that confuses everyone

If you do your own delivery and take cash orders, your statement carries a line along the lines of amount received in cash on self-delivery orders, and it is subtracted from your payout.

This is not a penalty and nothing has gone wrong. On those orders your rider already collected the full amount from the customer at the door. Zomato is netting off money that is physically in your till, so it doesn't pay you twice. Your true earnings for that order are the cash you hold, minus the commission and taxes on it.

The reason it feels wrong is timing. The cash arrived on Tuesday and the deduction shows up in a settlement report the following week, so it reads as a mystery subtraction rather than as an adjustment to something you already banked.

Check it the obvious way: total your own cash-on-delivery orders for the cycle and see whether that figure matches the line. If it doesn't, you have either a rider collection problem or a reconciliation error, and both are worth chasing.

Two lines that are wrong more often than not

Here's where most content on this topic, including sites that sell reconciliation software, will mislead you.

TDS under Section 194-O is 0.1 percent. It was 1 percent originally. The Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 cut it to 0.1 percent with effect from 1 October 2024, and the rate has stayed there since. Guides published or copied since then still routinely say 1 percent. On ₹5 lakh of quarterly platform sales that's the difference between ₹500 and ₹5,000 of TDS, so if you're reconciling against the wrong figure your books will never tie out. The provision itself sits on the Income Tax Department's site. It's withheld against your PAN and adjustable against your income tax, so it isn't lost money, it's a prepayment.

TCS should not be on a restaurant statement at all. Since restaurant service was notified under Section 9(5) in January 2022, Zomato pays the GST on those orders as the deemed supplier. CBIC's Circular 167/23/2021 confirms the operator is liable for GST on restaurant services and is not required to file GSTR-8 for them, and no TCS is collected on supplies notified under 9(5). TCS under Section 52 continues to apply to other things sold through a platform, which is why the confusion persists, but not to your food orders.

If your statement shows a TCS line against food orders, raise it. And if an accountant is claiming TCS credit in your GSTR-3B for aggregator food sales, that's worth a conversation, because the credit may not exist.

The same Section 9(5) rule is why you don't remit GST yourself on aggregator orders. We cover that in do you need GST to sell on Zomato and Swiggy.

One more that isn't yours. Both apps raised their platform fee in March 2026. That fee is charged to the customer at checkout. It is not a restaurant deduction and shouldn't reduce your payout.

The order-level breakup

The summary report gives you cycle totals. Underneath it there's an order-level breakup listing earnings, deductions and payout per individual order, and that's the view worth downloading.

Use it in this order. Check the cycle total against your own order count first, because if the counts agree and the money is right, you're done in two minutes. Only drop into the order-level file when the cycle total is off, then find the orders whose deductions don't match the pattern. Every deduction should trace to a specific order ID. Anything that doesn't is your support ticket.

Working the other way round, order by order, is how people lose an entire evening and still miss the problem.

When the money lands

Zomato settles weekly by default, with a daily option offered to smaller partners. The report generally arrives after the money, not before, which is part of why reconciliation gets skipped.

The full picture on timing, cycle dates and how to reconcile a week without losing your evening is in our guide to the Zomato and Swiggy payout cycle. If you're not listed yet, registering on Zomato and Swiggy covers what you'll need first.

What to do when it doesn't add up

Three checks, in this order, and stop at the first one that explains the gap.

1. Cycle-date mismatch. Orders near the cutoff fall into the next cycle. This explains most "missing" money.
2. Refunds from last week. They land late and against a cycle where you're no longer looking for them.
3. Funded discounts. If you agreed to co-fund a promotion, your share comes off the top, and the effective take can run far above the headline commission rate. That gap is why knowing your real restaurant profit margin per channel matters more than the headline rate does.

If none of those explain it, you have a genuine query, and now you have the order IDs to raise it with.

FAQ

What is "extra cash adjusted" on a Zomato payout?

It's Zomato netting off money you already collected. On self-delivery orders paid in cash, your rider took the full amount from the customer, so that sum is deducted from your bank settlement to avoid paying you twice. Match it against your own cash-on-delivery total for the cycle.

What is the TDS rate on Zomato payouts?

0.1 percent under Section 194-O. It was reduced from 1 percent with effect from 1 October 2024 by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024. Many guides still quote the old 1 percent figure. The deduction is made against your PAN and is adjustable against your income tax liability.

Should TCS be deducted on my Zomato orders?

No. Restaurant service is notified under Section 9(5) of the CGST Act, so Zomato pays the GST as deemed supplier and no TCS is collected on those supplies. CBIC's Circular 167/23/2021 also confirms operators need not file GSTR-8 for restaurant services. A TCS line against food orders is worth querying.

Why is my Zomato payout less than my order total?

Because the settlement is order value minus commission, 18 percent GST on that commission, payment charges, 0.1 percent TDS, and any refunds or funded-discount shares. Cash collected on self-delivery orders is netted off too. Effective deductions commonly land well above the headline commission rate.

Can I claim the GST Zomato charges on its commission?

If you're GST-registered on the regular scheme, yes, the 18 percent on the commission invoice is input tax credit. If you're a standalone restaurant on the 5 percent no-input-credit scheme, you cannot, and it's a real cost that should sit in your margin calculation.

What to do next

Pull one settlement report and one order-level file this week and check three things: that the TDS line reads 0.1 percent, that no TCS appears against food orders, and that any cash adjustment matches your own self-delivery cash total. Those three take fifteen minutes and are where the errors actually live.

Then look at what the exercise tells you. Every rupee on that statement is a deduction from a sale you already made, on a channel where somebody else controls both the transaction record and the settlement. An order taken at your own table settles at menu price, on the night, with nothing to reconcile. Book a short dineomAI demo and see what the channel you control fully is worth alongside the one you don't.