delivery-commission

---
name: delivery-commission
description: Takes your actual Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat statements and your menu, reads your own commission rate off your own remittance instead of assuming one, and works out what each order really nets after the fee, VAT, packaging and food cost, so you can see which dishes lose money on the apps and what the marketplace-versus-own-delivery decision is worth in pounds. Use when the apps feel busy but the bank balance does not move, or when you are about to sign, renegotiate or leave a platform.
---

# What the apps take, and what is left

You give me your last full statement period from each platform you are on, your menu with the app prices, and what a portion of each dish costs you to make. Photos of the remittance PDF, a CSV export, a printed invoice, a scribbled recipe card, all fine. You get back your real commission rate read off your own statement rather than off the internet, the VAT position on each line of the menu, the packaging cost the counter version never had, and a per-dish table showing what actually reaches your bank on every order. Then the two decisions worth money: which dishes should come off the app menu or change price, and whether your own delivery would beat the marketplace rate at the volume you actually do. It is a working document for you and your accountant, not a tax opinion.

## What it does

1. **Start from the remittance, never from the app dashboard or a figure someone quoted you.** Ask for the full statement covering one complete payment period per platform: the number of orders, gross order value, every fee line deducted, refunds and adjustments, promotion or offer costs, and the amount that actually landed in the bank. The dashboard shows sales; the remittance shows what happened to them, and the gap between the two is the whole subject of this skill. Deliveroo's own partner terms describe the deduction chain in a single sentence, and it is worth reading slowly because three separate things come off before you see any money: "We will pay you an amount equal to the GMV for your Delivery Orders during the relevant payment period, less the Delivery Service Fee, less any relevant adjustments for refunds paid to customers during the relevant payment period." Refunds are the line owners forget. A refunded order still cost you the food, the packaging, the gas and the twenty minutes, and it comes off the payment as if it never happened.

2. **Read your own commission rate off your own statement, because nobody publishes yours and every rate in circulation is somebody else's.** Divide the total fee deducted by the gross order value for the same period, then check that figure against a handful of individual order lines, because a blended rate can hide a different rate on pickup, on self-delivery, or on orders that came through a promotion. Do not accept a number from an article, a forum, a competitor or from me. Deliveroo's partner terms state the method and refuse to state the number: "Our service fee is calculated as a percentage of GMV (inclusive of VAT) per order, plus VAT at the prevailing rate." Uber's merchant terms do the same, sending the number to the contract you personally signed: "In consideration for the use of the Uber Eats Services, Uber UK will charge Merchant a 'Service Fee' for each specific Method as specifically set forth in the Order Form." The Competition and Markets Authority hit the same wall when it had statutory powers to demand the figures and still published them blanked: "On average, restaurants on the Deliveroo platform pay a commission rate of around []%, although the actual rates paid by restaurants listed on the platform range from []% to []%." A range wide enough to redact is a range wide enough that your neighbour's rate tells you nothing about yours.

3. **Check what the percentage is charged on, because the base moves the answer more than the rate does.** Deliveroo's terms say the fee is "calculated as a percentage of GMV (inclusive of VAT) per order" — that is, a percentage of a number that already contains the VAT you will hand to HMRC. On a hot meal sold at £24 the platform's percentage is applied to £24, not to the £20 that is genuinely yours, so a headline rate understates the bite on your own money by a fifth on every standard-rated line. Confirm the base from your statement rather than assuming it is the same on each platform or on each service type, and write the base down next to the rate, because the two numbers are useless apart. Then note whether promotions and discounts are deducted before or after the fee is calculated, which changes what a "buy one get one" actually costs you.

4. **Settle the VAT on each dish before you touch the margin, because this is where most owners' arithmetic quietly goes wrong.** The rule people carry in their heads — cold food is zero-rated — survives the counter and dies on the app. HMRC's Notice 709/1 states the takeaway position plainly: "Hot takeaway food and drink that meets certain tests set out below is standard-rated. Cold takeaway food and drink is zero-rated, as long as it's not of a type that's always standard-rated (such as potato crisps, sweets and some beverages including bottled water)." But the same notice lists, among the examples of catering in its ordinary meaning, "delivery of cooked ready-to-eat food or meals (with or without crockery or cutlery)", and says that if a supply meets any of those definitions "they're 'in the course of catering' and are standard-rated". Go line by line down the app menu and mark each one, using the notice's five tests for hot food: it is standard-rated if it is hot when handed over and it has "been heated for the purposes of enabling it to be consumed hot", "been heated to order", "been kept hot after being heated", "provided to a customer in packaging that retains heat", or "advertised or marketed in a way that indicates that it's supplied hot". That fourth test catches more delivery menus than any other, because insulated bags and lidded containers exist to retain heat, and the fifth catches a menu that promises food arrives hot. Mark anything you are unsure of as unresolved and send it to your accountant rather than guessing it; guessing here is how a business discovers an assessment two years later.

5. **Handle the delivery charge and the question of who is actually selling the food.** On the marketplace model the platform takes the customer's money, but you are the one making the supply, and Uber's merchant terms say so in terms that leave nothing to interpret: "Merchant is the 'retailer' or 'seller' of all Items (including delivery services related to such Items, if using the Aggregator Delivery Method)", and "The Retail Price for each Item will include VAT and Merchant is solely responsible for determining and setting the rate of applicable VAT to be charged to Customers for Items available on the Uber Eats App." So your VAT is due on what the customer paid for the food, not on the reduced amount that reached your account, and setting the rate is your job and your risk, not the platform's. Where you charge for delivery yourself, HMRC's Notice 700/24 is the reference: it says of delivered goods that "The position is not affected by whether the charge for delivery is separately itemised or invoiced to the customer", and that where delivery is a separate supply — broadly, where "delivery is not required under the contract or you deliver somebody else's goods" — then "the liability of the delivery charge is not affected by the liability of the goods you're delivering and is always standard-rated". Record which of these your arrangement looks like, flag it for your accountant, and do not let the model decide it for you.

6. **Add the VAT on the commission itself, then decide whether you ever get it back.** The fee is a supply to you, and it carries its own VAT: Deliveroo's terms say the service fee is charged "plus VAT at the prevailing rate", and Uber's say "All Fees payable pursuant to this Agreement are exclusive of VAT." If you are VAT registered that VAT is input tax and the cost to you is the fee itself. If you are not registered, it is simply more money gone, and the app is costing you a fifth more than the percentage suggests. GOV.UK sets the registration line: "You must register if either: your total taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000 (the VAT threshold) [or] you expect your taxable turnover to go over £90,000 in the next 30 days", and adds that "You can choose to register for VAT if your turnover is less than £90,000 ('voluntary registration')." State in the document which side of that line the business is on, because the same commission rate produces two different answers depending on it, and a business near the threshold pushing volume through the apps needs to see the crossing coming rather than meet it.

7. **Build the per-dish line, in this order, and let it go negative on the page rather than in the bank.** For each dish: the app price the customer pays, minus the VAT if it is standard-rated, minus the commission calculated on the base you confirmed in step 3, minus the VAT on that commission if you are not registered, minus packaging — box, lid, bag, sauce pot, cutlery, napkin, label, priced at what you actually pay per unit and not rounded to nothing — minus the food cost of the portion. What is left is what that dish contributes on the app, before a single minute of labour, gas or rent. Then put the same dish's counter or table contribution next to it, so the comparison is visible rather than argued. The dishes that fail are predictable and they are rarely the expensive ones: low-price high-food-cost items, anything with a heavy container, anything given away as a side, and anything whose app price was copied straight from the in-house menu. Sort the list by contribution per dish and again by contribution times the number sold, because a small loss on the best seller outweighs a large loss on something that goes out twice a month.

8. **Do the marketplace-versus-own-delivery arithmetic with your own numbers, using the published spread only as a shape.** Uber Eats is the one platform of the three that publishes UK merchant rates at all, and it publishes them as a menu of options: "The Uber Eats service fee is calculated using the fee percentages below, which vary depending on the option you choose (does not include VAT)", then "30% Delivery Fee" where Uber delivers, "13% Delivery Fee" where you deliver yourself, "13% Pickup Fee" for collection, and a one-off activation fee of "£650 (excl. VAT)". Treat those as evidence that the gap between letting the platform deliver and delivering yourself is large and real, not as your numbers — yours come from step 2. Then the calculation is simple and rarely done: take your own spread between the delivery rate and the self-delivery or pickup rate, multiply it by your average order value, multiply by the orders you actually get in a week, and compare it with the fully loaded weekly cost of doing the deliveries yourself — wages including on-costs, a vehicle, fuel, hire and reward insurance, phones, and the orders you will lose because your own delivery radius is smaller and your own app is not where people look. The CMA's own framing is that this is a genuinely different product and not just a cheaper one: logistics platforms "provide a somewhat different offer from a restaurant perspective — offering delivery services and charging much higher commission rates as a result". Note too that the 2017 CMA restaurant survey found "The vast majority of restaurants on Just Eat (96%) provide their own delivery service", which is the reminder that marketplace-only listing is an ordinary way to trade, not an exotic one.

9. **Finish with the decisions, the things you could not resolve, and what triggers redoing this.** Three lists. First, price and menu actions: which dishes to reprice on the app, which to take off it, which to bundle so the packaging cost is carried once, and what the new contribution is at the proposed price. Second, contract actions: the rate you are actually on, what a percentage point is worth to you per year in pounds, which service tier you are on and whether pickup or self-delivery is worth testing, and the date your agreement allows a change. Third, open questions for the accountant, each written as a question rather than an assumption — the hot or cold status of any borderline dish, the delivery charge treatment from step 5, and the registration position from step 6. Then set the triggers for redoing the whole thing: any change to your rate or tier, any change to app menu prices, a packaging supplier change, a promotion period, and the end of any onboarding or introductory rate, since Deliveroo's terms contemplate exactly that transition — after an onboarding offer period, partners "will be subject to Deliveroo's standard commission rates". An introductory rate that expires unnoticed can move a whole menu from profitable to not, in one week, with no email you will remember reading.

## Then it checks

1. Every commission rate, fee and percentage in the document is either read off the owner's own statement, with the statement and period named, or quoted from a page that was actually fetched, with the URL and date beside it. There is no rate in the document whose origin is not stated.
2. The base each percentage is charged on is written down next to the rate — VAT-inclusive or VAT-exclusive, before or after promotions — and it was confirmed from the statement rather than assumed to match the other platform.
3. Every line of the app menu carries a VAT position, and each one is marked either standard-rated, zero-rated, or unresolved and referred to the accountant. Nothing is left blank, and nothing borderline is silently resolved in the owner's favour.
4. Every per-dish calculation includes packaging as a priced line, not a rounding, and names the packaging items counted. A dish whose packaging is recorded as zero is either genuinely unpackaged or the check fails.
5. The marketplace-versus-own-delivery comparison uses the owner's own rates and order volume, and its cost side includes wages with on-costs, vehicle, fuel, insurance and phones. A comparison built on a published rate that is not the owner's, or one that counts only a driver's hourly pay, fails.
6. The document states which side of the VAT registration threshold the business sits on, says the output is a working document for the owner and their accountant rather than tax advice, and lists the triggers for redoing it.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a commission rate, service fee or platform charge that was not either read off this owner's own statement or quoted from a named published page with its URL and the date it was read. Commission rates are negotiated per partner and the published record is deliberately incomplete: Deliveroo and Just Eat do not publish a UK merchant rate on their partner pages at all, and even the Competition and Markets Authority published its figures redacted. A skill that assumes a rate produces a confident wrong answer about the owner's own money, which is worse than producing none.
- Treat any commission figure found in an article, a forum, a comparison site or a search snippet as unusable. It is either unsourced, out of date, or somebody else's negotiated rate, and it cannot be told apart from a correct one by looking at it.
- Where a figure has to come from the owner, say so in the step and leave the space empty until they supply it. Do not fill a gap with a typical, average or illustrative number that will then be read as theirs.
- Never write a VAT treatment for a borderline dish as settled. Mark it unresolved and send it to the accountant. Hot or cold is a question about facts — how it was heated, how it was packed, how it was advertised — and those facts are the owner's, not the model's.
- Distinguish the fees the platform charges the customer from the fees it charges the owner. Published consumer service and delivery fees are not merchant commission, and using one as the other is the most common way this arithmetic goes wrong in public.
- This is written for restaurants, bars, cafés and pubs. Never shrink the category to "kitchens".
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner and their accountant. It is not tax advice, it is not legal advice, and it does not determine any VAT position. Whether a particular supply is catering, hot takeaway food or a zero-rated cold supply turns on facts that HMRC decides, and no calculation produced here settles that.

## Built from
- GOV.UK / HM Revenue & Customs, "Catering, takeaway food (VAT Notice 709/1)", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/catering-takeaway-food-and-vat-notice-7091, last updated 8 June 2026, read 15 September 2026: section 1.3 on what is "in the course of catering", section 2.1's ordinary meaning of catering and its example "delivery of cooked ready-to-eat food or meals (with or without crockery or cutlery)", section 2.2's rule that "Any supply of food or drink as part of a contract for catering is standard-rated", section 4.1 on hot versus cold takeaway, and the five tests in section 4.2 quoted verbatim in step 4.
- GOV.UK / HM Revenue & Customs, "Postage, delivery and direct marketing (VAT Notice 700/24)", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-postage-delivery-and-direct-marketing-notice-70024, last updated 30 September 2022, read 15 September 2026: the treatment of delivered goods quoted in step 5, including that itemising the delivery charge separately changes nothing, and that a delivery charge which is a separate supply "is always standard-rated".
- GOV.UK, "Register for VAT", https://www.gov.uk/register-for-vat, no last-updated date shown on the page, read 15 September 2026: the £90,000 registration threshold and the voluntary registration sentence quoted in step 6.
- Deliveroo (Roofoods Ltd), "Deliveroo Partners Terms and Conditions", https://merchants.deliveroo.com/en-GB/legal/terms, Delivery Service, Marketplace+ and Pickup Service sections last updated 14 January 2021, Payment Cycle section last updated 11 August 2020, read 15 September 2026: the service fee method "calculated as a percentage of GMV (inclusive of VAT) per order, plus VAT at the prevailing rate" used in steps 2, 3 and 6, the payment sentence quoted in step 1, and the onboarding-to-standard-rate transition in step 9. No percentage appears anywhere in the document.
- Uber, "Uber Eats Merchant Terms and Conditions" (Great Britain), https://www.uber.com/gb/en/legal/uber-eats-merchant-terms-and-conditions/, last updated 16 June 2025, read 15 September 2026: clause 6.a.i deferring the Service Fee to the Order Form, quoted in step 2; clause 6.b.i making the merchant the "retailer" or "seller" and putting the VAT rate decision on the merchant, quoted in step 5; and clause 6.a.iv.1, "All Fees payable pursuant to this Agreement are exclusive of VAT", quoted in step 6.
- Uber, "Pricing That Works for Your Business", https://merchants.ubereats.com/gb/en/pricing/, no publication date shown on the page, read 15 September 2026: the only UK merchant rates any of the three platforms publishes — "30% Delivery Fee", "13% Delivery Fee" for self-delivery, "13% Pickup Fee", the activation fee of "£650 (excl. VAT)", and the sentence that the fee percentages "vary depending on the option you choose (does not include VAT)" — used in step 8 as the shape of the marketplace-versus-own-delivery spread and never as the owner's own rate.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Just Eat and Hungryhouse: A report on the anticipated acquisition by JUST EAT plc of Hungryhouse Holdings Limited", 16 November 2017, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a0d6521ed915d0ade60db7e/justeat-hungryhouse-final-report.pdf, read 15 September 2026: paragraph 6.19(a) with its redacted average and redacted range, quoted in step 2; paragraph 4.16 on logistics platforms charging "much higher commission rates", and paragraph 2.50(d)'s finding that 96% of Just Eat restaurants provided their own delivery, both used in step 8.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Anticipated acquisition by Amazon of a minority shareholding and certain rights in Deliveroo: Final report", 4 August 2020, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f297aa18fa8f57ac287c118/Final_report_pdf_a_version_-----.pdf, read 15 September 2026: paragraph 3.19, "Restaurants are charged a delivery fee by Deliveroo based on the order value; this fee is typically [] where restaurants use the online logistics-enabled marketplace", which is the clearest published demonstration that the rate is not public information and underpins rule four.
- Deliveroo, "Grow your business on Deliveroo" partner landing page, https://merchants.deliveroo.com/en-GB, read 15 September 2026: checked for a published UK merchant rate and found none, which is a cited absence rather than a cited figure.

# delivery-commission

## You are given
A folder for one UK hospitality business trading on the delivery apps: full remittance statements covering at least one complete payment period per platform, as acquirer PDFs, portal CSV exports or phone photographs; the app menu with the prices the customer pays; the counter or table menu for the same dishes; recipe cards or a costing sheet giving the food cost per portion; packaging invoices; and whatever the owner has about their own VAT registration position. There may be more than one site and more than one merchant account per platform. Claude has already decided which dishes are borderline for VAT, which questions belong with the accountant, and how the marketplace-versus-own-delivery comparison should be framed. That decided material arrives as a text, CSV or Markdown file in the same folder. Assume the statements are not consistently named, that one platform's period does not line up with another's, and that at least one rate is not printed anywhere.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `statement-lines.csv` - one row per named line on every statement. Columns exactly, in this order:
`platform,merchant_or_site,statement_period_start,statement_period_end,line_label_as_printed,line_category,orders_count,gross_order_value_gbp,amount_gbp,vat_on_the_line_gbp,source_file,page_or_row_reference`
 - `line_category` is one of exactly `gross merchandise value`, `service fee`, `delivery fee`, `pickup fee`, `promotion or offer cost`, `refund`, `adjustment`, `activation or sign-up fee`, `equipment or tablet charge`, `advertising`, `VAT on fees`, `net paid to bank`, `not classified`.
 - Every named line on the statement appears. Never drop a line, never fold one into another total, and never guess a category: anything ambiguous is `not classified`.
 - Where the statement does not print a figure, write `not shown on statement`.
2. `effective-rate.csv` - one row per platform, per merchant account, per service type, per statement period. Columns exactly, in this order:
`platform,merchant_or_site,service_type_as_printed,statement_period_start,statement_period_end,orders_count,gross_order_value_gbp,total_fee_deducted_gbp,effective_rate_pct,base_the_percentage_is_charged_on,base_confirmed_from,promotions_deducted_before_or_after_the_fee,rate_source,source_file`
 - `effective_rate_pct` is `total_fee_deducted_gbp / gross_order_value_gbp * 100`, computed from this owner's own statement and nothing else.
 - `base_the_percentage_is_charged_on` is `VAT-inclusive order value`, `VAT-exclusive order value` or `not stated on the statement`, and `base_confirmed_from` names the file and line it was confirmed from. The rate and the base are useless apart, so neither cell may be filled while the other is empty.
 - `rate_source` is `read off the owner's own statement` for every row. A rate that cannot be computed or read off the statement produces no row here and goes in file 10 instead.
3. `order-line-spot-checks.csv` - columns exactly: `platform,order_reference,order_date,service_type,order_value_gbp,fee_charged_gbp,implied_rate_pct,matches_the_blended_rate_yes_no,difference_pct_points,source_file`. At least ten individual order lines per platform where the statement itemises them, chosen to cover each service type present. A blended rate that hides a different rate on pickup, self-delivery or promotional orders shows up here or nowhere.
4. `menu-vat-position.csv` - one row per dish per platform. Columns exactly: `dish,platform,app_menu_price_gbp,vat_position,which_test_it_was_marked_under,evidence_in_the_inputs,question_ref,source_file`
 - `vat_position` is one of exactly `standard-rated`, `zero-rated`, `unresolved, referred to the accountant`. **No cell is ever left blank, and nothing borderline is resolved in the owner's favour.**
 - `which_test_it_was_marked_under` is transcribed from the decided material. Where the decided material did not settle it, the row is `unresolved, referred to the accountant` and carries a `question_ref` into file 11.
5. `packaging-costs.csv` - columns exactly: `dish,packaging_item,supplier,invoice_number,invoice_date,pack_size_as_printed,pack_price_net_of_vat_gbp,unit_cost_gbp,units_per_order,line_cost_gbp,source_file`. Box, lid, bag, sauce pot, cutlery, napkin, label and anything else the inputs evidence, each priced from a supplied invoice. A packaging cost of zero is written only where an input says the item goes out unpackaged.
6. `dish-contribution.csv` - the money table, sorted by `contribution_per_order_gbp`, lowest first. Columns exactly, in this order:
`dish,platform,app_price_gbp,vat_position,vat_on_the_sale_gbp,price_net_of_vat_gbp,commission_base_gbp,commission_rate_pct,commission_gbp,vat_on_commission_gbp,vat_on_commission_recoverable_yes_no,packaging_cost_gbp,food_cost_gbp,contribution_per_order_gbp,units_sold_in_period,contribution_in_period_gbp,counter_price_gbp,counter_contribution_per_order_gbp,difference_gbp,source_file`
 - `commission_rate_pct` and `commission_base_gbp` come from file 2 for that platform and service type. A dish on a platform with no row in file 2 is not costed: it goes in file 10.
 - A dish whose `vat_position` is `unresolved, referred to the accountant` is written with `vat_on_the_sale_gbp` empty, every column from `price_net_of_vat_gbp` rightwards empty, and a `question_ref` in file 11. It is never costed on an assumed treatment.
 - Negative contributions are written as negative figures. Nothing is floored at zero.
7. `dish-contribution-by-volume.csv` - the same rows as file 6, sorted by `contribution_in_period_gbp`, lowest first, so a small loss on the best seller ranks above a large loss on something that goes out twice a month.
8. `marketplace-versus-own-delivery.csv` - columns exactly: `line,platform,amount,unit,how_it_was_calculated,source_file,status`. Rows, in this order: the owner's delivery rate, the owner's self-delivery rate, the owner's pickup rate, the spread in percentage points, average order value, orders per week, weekly value of the spread, annualised value of the spread, then the cost side: driver wages, employer National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday pay accrual, vehicle, fuel, hire and reward insurance, phones, other, total weekly cost of own delivery, and the difference. `status` is `read from the inputs`, `arithmetic on rows above` or `NOT SUPPLIED`. **A total is written only where every row feeding it is present; where any cost row is `NOT SUPPLIED` the total row reads `not calculated, see rates-not-found.csv` and the gap is listed in file 10.**
9. `value-of-one-percentage-point.csv` - columns exactly: `platform,merchant_or_site,gross_order_value_in_period_gbp,period_length_days,annualised_gross_order_value_gbp,value_of_one_percentage_point_gbp,how_it_was_calculated,source_file`. One row per platform per merchant account, so the owner can see what a point is worth before any conversation about the rate.
10. `rates-not-found.csv` - the exceptions file. Columns exactly: `platform,merchant_or_site,service_type,what_was_looked_for,where_it_was_looked_for,reason_not_found,effect_on_the_output`. `effect_on_the_output` is one of exactly `no effective rate calculated`, `dishes on this platform not costed`, `spread not calculated`, `cost side incomplete`, `figure left blank`. Every dish, platform and comparison that could not be completed appears here by name.
11. `questions-for-the-accountant.md` - a numbered list of every unresolved item, written as a question rather than an assumption. Every `unresolved, referred to the accountant` row from file 4 with the dish named and what is known about how it is heated, packed and advertised; the delivery charge treatment where the owner charges for delivery themselves; the VAT registration position as the inputs state it, written as a question about what follows from it rather than as an answer; and every conflict found between two statements. `question_ref` values run `A-001` upwards and match the references in files 4 and 6.
12. `README.md` - what was read, the statement periods covered per platform, the merchant accounts found, the count of lines by `line_category`, how many landed in `not classified`, the number of dishes costed, the number left uncosted, and any file that could not be read with the reason.

## Rules
- **Never assume, recall, average, import or infer a commission rate.** Every rate in this pack is computed from this owner's own remittance, or read off a rate line printed on that remittance, with the statement and period named in the row. A rate found in an article, a forum, a comparison site, a search snippet, a competitor's experience or your own knowledge is unusable: it is either unsourced, out of date, or somebody else's negotiated rate, and it cannot be told apart from a correct one by looking at it. A platform whose rate cannot be found produces no rate, no costed dish and no comparison, and goes in `rates-not-found.csv`.
- **The published record is deliberately incomplete and must not be patched.** Uber Eats is the only one of the three platforms that publishes a UK merchant rate at all; Deliveroo publishes the method and no percentage; no Just Eat merchant figure could be obtained from any Just Eat page. A published Uber figure may appear only as a clearly labelled `published rate, not this owner's` row in `marketplace-versus-own-delivery.csv`, never in `effective-rate.csv`, never in `dish-contribution.csv`, and never applied to another platform by analogy. The nine-year-old Just Eat and Hungryhouse figures from the 2017 competition inquiry are stale and must not be written anywhere.
- **Never state a VAT treatment.** Each menu line is `standard-rated`, `zero-rated` or `unresolved, referred to the accountant`, and the first two are written only where the decided material settled them with the test named. Hot versus cold takeaway turns on facts about how the food was heated, how it was packed and how it was advertised, and those facts are the owner's. Never settle a borderline dish, never settle the treatment of a delivery charge, and never state what the registration position means for the business. All of it goes to `questions-for-the-accountant.md`.
- Distinguish the fees the platform charges the customer from the fees it charges the owner. A consumer service fee, delivery fee or small-order fee printed on a customer receipt is not merchant commission and never enters `effective-rate.csv`. Using one as the other is the commonest way this arithmetic goes wrong in public.
- Write the base beside every percentage. A fee charged on a VAT-inclusive order value takes a bigger bite of the owner's own money than the headline rate suggests, and a rate without its base is not a finding.
- Refunds, adjustments and promotion costs are deductions and are entered as such. A refunded order still cost the food, the packaging and the time.
- Every figure, rate, date and reference traces to a supplied input file named in that row's `source_file` cell. Never fill a gap with a typical, average, illustrative or web-sourced number, a trade benchmark or a rounded guess. Gaps go in `rates-not-found.csv`.
- Packaging is a priced line, never a rounding. A dish costed with no packaging line and no input saying it goes out unpackaged is not costed.
- Round only at the point of display, to two decimal places. Rates are shown to two decimal places. The lines in `dish-contribution.csv` must sum to the contribution exactly.
- Never propose a price, recommend leaving or joining a platform, draft a notice, or send, sign, submit, cancel or renegotiate anything anywhere.
- This is written for restaurants, bars, cafes, pubs, hotels and venues. Never shrink the category to "kitchens".
- British English, £, dates written as DD Month YYYY. No em dash characters anywhere. No emoji.
- Put this line at the top of `rates-not-found.csv` as a first comment row, at the top of `questions-for-the-accountant.md` and at the end of `README.md`: "Working document prepared for the owner and their accountant. It is not tax advice, it is not legal advice, and it does not determine any VAT position."

## Return
The absolute path of each of the twelve files with their row counts, the statement periods read per platform, the merchant accounts found, the effective rate computed for each platform and service type with the base it is charged on, the count of statement lines by `line_category` and how many landed in `not classified`, the number of dishes costed and the number left uncosted with the reason, the number of dishes whose VAT position is unresolved, and every entry in `rates-not-found.csv`. State plainly that no commission rate was assumed and that no VAT treatment was settled here.