You Can Sell a Reconciliation Service to Local Delivery Restaurants

The problem is more complex than commission rates

On September 21, 2026, a meeting for businesses selling through online platforms was held at a small business association in Yeongdeungpo-gu (영등포구), Seoul. Representatives from food service, accommodation, and real-estate brokerage raised concerns not only about brokerage commissions and advertising fees, but also settlement cycles, refund and return costs, and unilateral penalties.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (중소벤처기업부), the Korean government ministry responsible for small businesses and startups, said it would examine the total burden of brokerage commissions, advertising fees, and delivery fees. It also said it would pursue ways to assess how well platforms and their listed businesses coexist. Measures that would let listed businesses properly receive and use their own transaction data are also under consideration.

The money a store actually pays cannot be explained by a single brokerage commission rate. Delivery fees, payment fees, coupon and discount contributions, advertising fees, value-added tax, and adjustments for cancellations and refunds may all be deducted separately.

In an example presented by the National Assembly Budget Office (국회예산정책처), a restaurant in the top 35% by sales in Seoul received a KRW 20,000 order through a delivery app and paid KRW 6,116 in combined brokerage commission, payment fee, delivery fee, and value-added tax. Nearly one-third of a single order was gone before calculating ingredient costs, labour, or rent.

Baemin's official settlement guidance also says that brokerage fees, delivery fees, coupons, customer delivery-tip discount costs, payment settlement fees, and value-added tax are deducted from sales. Amounts such as preferential-fee refunds, advertising support payments, and partial refunds may later be added or deducted. That makes it hard to tell from the bank deposit alone whether the calculation is correct.

Start with one chicken restaurant in Yeongdeungpo-gu

Consider an owner running a chicken restaurant in Yeongdeungpo-gu with four employees and using two delivery apps. After closing, the owner must open the store's order records, each app's settlement statement, advertising usage records, and bank deposits separately.

One app may organize records by order date, while another may show the expected payout date first. The owner copies the order value, brokerage commission, payment fee, delivery fee, store-funded discount, refund, and adjustment amounts into a ledger, then compares them with the actual deposit.

The problem does not end with a same-day calculation. If a commission difference is refunded at month-end or the cost of a cancelled order is reflected later, the owner must reopen the previous month's records and find which order the money relates to.

If you narrow this work to delivery restaurants in Yeongdeungpo-gu, the first service does not need to be a large accounting system. It can be a screen where an owner uploads settlement files from two apps and bank deposit records, then sees a single line from order revenue to the actual payout.

The screen should separate deductions into brokerage commission, payment fee, delivery fee, discounts, advertising fees, refunds, and taxes. It only needs to flag orders that appear to have higher deductions than the contracted rate, amounts that have passed their expected payout date without arriving, and refunds that need checking in the next month.

A narrower area also simplifies how you sell. Start by receiving real settlement files from nearby restaurants and matching their item names. Then ask for introductions to other stores through the same tax accountant or merchant association. Compared with handling every industry and platform format nationwide from the start, this makes it easier to see where customers get stuck and fix it directly.

Some work still belongs to people. The owner or staff member must decide who is responsible for a refund—the customer, the store, or the delivery rider—raise objections with the platform, and interpret contract terms. The service should not make the final decision. It should focus on collecting the orders and evidence that need checking first.

Restaurants outside Korea are already reconciling settlement files

UrbanPiper in India: reconciling delivery orders

UrbanPiper provides a service for restaurants using delivery apps such as Zomato and Swiggy to reconcile order records with payment reports. The Pizza Bakery, a customer in its published case study, operates 19 stores in India and Sri Lanka and was processing 38 delivery-app reports each week, or 152 each month.

Its accounting staff reportedly spent nearly half a day each week checking the reports, but changed to uploading files and reviewing discrepancies after adoption. This is a supplier-published customer case, so the results need separate verification. Still, it shows that a service can operate by combining settlement files from different apps into one reconciliation workflow.

RanceLab in India: challenging excess deductions

RanceLab reconciled daily orders and bank deposits across four order channels for Yum Chum, a multi-brand delivery kitchen in Bengaluru. It compared the commission rate stated in contracts with the actual deduction rate and, when it found a difference, created supporting evidence and an objection record.

According to the supplier, a review task that had taken eight to ten hours a day fell to 30 minutes, and approximately KRW 10.88 million in excess deductions was recovered in the first 90 days. A service for small local restaurants does not need to build all of these functions at once. But this case is useful because it shows that the reason to pay becomes stronger when a service continues from finding discrepancies to preparing objections and tracking recovery results.

Four things to sell first in one area

1. Delivery-app expected payout board

This is a service for local restaurants that use two or more delivery apps but have no settlement staff. It reconciles order revenue, deductions, expected payout dates, and actual deposits on one screen. Deductions split across multiple items and later refunds make it difficult to confirm the final amount from the bank account alone. The first screen should show, by app, money due today, actual deposits, and unexplained differences still remaining.

2. Accommodation cancellation-cost ledger

This is a service for small motel or pension operators that list rooms across several booking platforms. It groups cancellation and refund amounts with whether each platform reflected them in settlement, reservation by reservation. Accommodation operators also raised refund-cost and settlement issues at the meeting, so they need a place to check how cancelled reservations affected actual payouts. The first screen should show cancelled reservations, customer refund amounts, the accommodation's share, platform compensation, and cases that are not yet resolved.

3. Platform objection package

This is a service for delivery restaurants that want to challenge a refund or deduction. It combines order details, receipts, cooking completion time, customer-support messages, and settlement statements into one document for each case. Evidence is currently scattered across the order device, mobile phone, and settlement screen, making it easy to give up when the amount is small. The first screen should show potentially challengeable cases, required evidence, submission deadlines, and recovery status.

4. Local real-estate office advertising-cost guard

This is a service for real-estate brokerage offices with one or two employees that use several advertising products on property-listing platforms. It collects monthly advertising costs and changes by product. As businesses in the field have raised the problem that advertising fees function like a practically mandatory expense, they need to find products whose costs remain unchanged even when listing volume or enquiries decline. The first screen should show this month's advertising cost, changes from last month, products nearing expiry, and billing items that need review.

Call three restaurants today

Call three nearby delivery restaurants and ask only whether they download settlement files by app, whether they reconcile them against actual deposits, and whether they have experienced an unexplained difference. If two or more can obtain the files but do not properly reconcile them, and even one can show a recent discrepancy, it is worth building the first screen. If all of them only check bank deposits or are reluctant to share records, rethink how to earn trust before adding more features.

Why this matters where you are

Korea's platform rules, government response, and delivery-platform settlement structure are Korean conditions, so they may not transfer directly to your market. But you can check whether local restaurants receive separate order, deduction, and payout records from multiple platforms, and whether delayed adjustments make those records hard to reconcile. If they do, begin with one type of business and one local area rather than trying to support every platform at once.