Cash on delivery in Eastern Europe: reconciling courier payouts

In much of Central and Eastern Europe, cash on delivery is still how many customers prefer to pay online. For a store, COD brings more orders and a quiet accounting problem: the money is collected by someone else, arrives days later, bundled with hundreds of other parcels, minus fees, sometimes in another currency.

This article explains where COD reconciliation goes wrong and how to set up a routine where every parcel’s money is accounted for.

A delivered parcel is not a paid order

The courier hands over the parcel and takes the cash. At that moment your order is delivered, but you have not been paid. The money travels through several steps:

1. Collected by the driver or the locker payment.
2. Remitted by the courier, usually in a batch covering many parcels, often once a day or a few times a week.
3. Landed in your bank account, as one transfer, sometimes with fees deducted.

Only the last step is money you have. Tracking statuses such as “cash transferred” describe what the courier says it did. They’re a useful signal, but they aren’t proof.

How couriers report the money

Each courier gives you a different kind of evidence:

• Sameday and FAN Courier provide reports of the COD amounts they have collected and transferred, per waybill, which can be downloaded or read through their systems.
• GLS sends COD settlement reports by email, as a daily file listing the parcels behind a transfer.
• Your bank statement shows one line per transfer, with a total and a short reference.

To reconcile, you need to connect all three: parcel → courier report line → bank transfer.

Where it goes wrong

The report doesn’t cover everything

Courier reports are not always complete. Cross-border parcels, for example, may be settled through a different entity or reported separately from domestic ones. If you reconcile only from the domestic report, those parcels simply never appear, and nothing tells you they are missing.

Marking orders paid too early

It’s tempting to mark an order paid when the courier says the cash was collected or transferred. If the transfer never arrives, or arrives short, you’ll only find out much later, if at all. The order looks settled, the invoice looks paid, and the money isn’t there.

Batches and fees

One bank transfer can cover hundreds of parcels. If the courier deducts fees, the transfer won’t match the sum of COD amounts. You need the gross, the fees and the net for each payout, and the parcels behind it.

Currencies

If you ship COD to several countries, the courier may pay you in several currencies: lei for Romania, euros for Bulgaria since it joined the euro area in 2026, forints for Hungary. Each currency needs its own matching, and mixing them hides gaps.

Returns and refused parcels

A refused COD parcel produces no money, but it may still cost you shipping. Returns after a COD order produce a refund to a customer who paid in cash. Both need to be tracked separately from the payouts.

A reconciliation routine that holds up

1. Record the COD amount on every waybill. Know exactly what each parcel should bring in.
2. Put your own reference on each parcel, such as the order number, so every courier report line can be matched back without guessing.
3. Collect every courier report, from every courier and every country, as soon as it’s available.
4. Build payouts: group report lines into the transfer they belong to, with gross, fees and net.
5. Match each payout to a bank line. Only then mark the orders in it as paid.
6. Chase what’s left. Delivered parcels with no report line, or report lines with no bank transfer, after a reasonable delay, are your list for the courier.

It works by hand with a spreadsheet at a few dozen parcels a week. At hundreds, it stops happening.

How Opvelo handles it

In Deliver & Take Back and Get Paid & Know Your Numbers:

• Shipping booked for you. Waybills are created with Sameday, FAN Courier or GLS, for home delivery, lockers or pickup points, with the COD amount set from the order.
• Every courier’s money in one view. Payouts from each courier sit next to card payments and marketplace settlements, with gross, fees and net for each, and every currency kept separate.
• Each payout matched to its bank transfer. Opvelo reads your bank statements and matches each incoming transfer to its payout.
• COD is marked paid only when the money reaches your bank. Nothing is assumed from a tracking status, and nothing is forgotten. A courier payout then marks its orders paid in your books.
• Gaps are flagged, never quietly adjusted. When a parcel is delivered but its money hasn’t landed, or a payout doesn’t match what happened, you’re told, with the evidence.

The payoff

Cash on delivery doesn’t have to be a month-end mystery. With every parcel tied to a report line and every report line tied to a bank transfer, you know each day which orders are paid, which money is on its way, and which parcels to ask your courier about.