INDUSTRIES / E-COMMERCE
Shopify · Amazon · WooCommerceMake your payouts
match your books
Amazon deposits a number. Stripe deposits a number. Neither of those numbers is your revenue, and treating them as such is the single most common e-commerce bookkeeping error we see — one that hides both your true sales and every fee you paid to make them.
The deposit is not
the revenue
When Amazon settles, it nets your sales against referral fees, FBA fees, storage, returns, refunds, advertising and adjustments, then sends what's left. Record that deposit as revenue and you have simultaneously understated your sales and made every fee you paid invisible.
The practical effect is that you cannot see your fee load. Amazon fees on a typical account run somewhere between fifteen and forty-five percent of gross depending on category and size, and if that number never appears in your books you have no idea whether it's drifting upward. Sellers routinely discover their fee percentage has climbed several points over two years without noticing.
Inventory is the second structural problem. E-commerce is a stock business, and stock is an asset until it sells. Expensing inventory when you buy it means a month with a big purchase order looks disastrous and the month you sell the goods looks fantastic. Neither is real, and neither helps you price.
Cost of goods needs to include landed cost — product, freight, duty, inspection, prep — not just the invoice from the supplier. Sellers who skip the freight and duty side are usually operating on a margin several points thinner than they believe.
Then sales tax. Economic nexus rules mean you can create a filing obligation in a state you have never visited simply by selling enough into it. Marketplace facilitator laws cover some of that, but not all of it, and not for your own storefront.
What usually goes wrong
- Platform deposits recorded as revenue instead of being broken out
- Amazon and Stripe fees invisible in the accounts
- Inventory expensed on purchase rather than held as an asset
- COGS missing freight, duty and prep costs
- Returns and refunds netted rather than tracked
- Sales tax nexus never reviewed across states
- Advertising spend not matched against the products it sold
Bookkeeping from $299/month · Cleanup from $200 per month behind
Books built for
a platform business
Every platform reconciled, every fee visible, inventory treated as the asset it is.
Settlement reconciliation
Amazon, Shopify and Stripe settlements broken into gross sales, fees, refunds and adjustments so the deposit ties out line by line.
Inventory accounting
Stock held as an asset and relieved on sale, so your margin reflects what actually sold rather than what you happened to buy.
Landed cost COGS
Product, freight, duty, inspection and prep included, so your true unit cost is on the page instead of in your head.
Returns & refunds
Tracked as their own line rather than quietly netted against sales, so you can see return rate by product.
Multi-state sales tax
Nexus reviewed across states, marketplace facilitator coverage identified, and filings handled where you have an obligation.
Ad spend matching
Advertising costs mapped against the products and channels that generated the sales, so ACOS is a real number.
You'll recognise this if...
None of these mean anything is broken. They mean the books were set up to satisfy a tax return rather than to run a business, which is the normal starting point.
Revenue looks wrong
Your P&L revenue doesn't match what the seller dashboard says, and nobody has reconciled the gap.
Fees are a mystery
You couldn't say what percentage of gross sales went to platform fees last quarter.
Margins swing wildly
Some months look brilliant and others look terrible, and it tracks with when you placed stock orders.
Nexus never checked
You sell into most states and have never had anyone look at whether that creates filing obligations.
What you'll finally
be able to see
The first change is that your revenue figure becomes true. Gross sales, fees, refunds and net deposit all visible separately, reconciled to the platform every month. That alone corrects the picture most sellers have been working from.
The second is unit economics you can trust. Real landed cost against real selling price, with fees and returns counted, gives you a margin per product you can actually make decisions on — which SKUs to push, which to discontinue, which to reprice.
The third is inventory as an asset. Your balance sheet starts reflecting the stock you're holding, which matters enormously when you talk to a lender, and your monthly margins stop swinging with your purchase schedule.
And sales tax stops being a background worry. Either you have obligations and they're being met, or you don't and you know it. Both are better than not knowing.
BOOK A FREE CALLEvery client gets
- Replies within 48 hours, guaranteed
- Books closed by the 15th, every month
- Flat monthly pricing, no hourly billing
- A plain-English summary with every report
- The same team every single month
- Cancel any time, files handed over cleanly
E-commerce accounting questions
Usually yes for Amazon and Shopify. Tools like A2X handle the settlement breakdown mechanically, and we reconcile and review on top. Good tooling plus a human checking it is the combination that works — either alone leaves gaps.
It adds reconciliations, not complexity. Each platform settles differently and each needs its own treatment, but the chart of accounts is structured so you can see performance per channel as well as overall.
Usually weighted average, which suits most e-commerce well and is simpler to maintain accurately. FIFO makes sense for some businesses, particularly with volatile landed costs. We'll discuss which fits before setting it up.
Possibly. Economic nexus thresholds are based on sales volume or transaction count into a state, not physical presence. Marketplace facilitator laws mean Amazon collects for you in most states, but sales through your own Shopify store are your responsibility.
With a cleanup, priced at $200 per month you're behind and scoped before we begin. E-commerce cleanups often involve rebuilding inventory and COGS from scratch, which we'll flag in the quote rather than discovering later.
If you have fewer than a few hundred active SKUs, yes — it's usually where the most surprising findings are. Above that, product category level is more practical and nearly as useful.
Find out what your
store actually earns
Thirty minutes, no pitch. We'll look at how your platform income is being recorded, show you what's being hidden, and quote a flat monthly price.
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