E-commerce
Selling online looks simple until you try to reconcile an Amazon settlement report. We untangle the fees, returns, and multi-channel deposits so you know what you actually made.
The Industry
E-commerce looks simple from the outside. You list a product, someone buys it, money shows up in your bank account. But what actually happens between the sale and the deposit is where things get complicated. Amazon doesn’t send you what the customer paid. They send you a settlement that’s been reduced by referral fees, FBA storage, pick-and-pack charges, advertising spend, refund deductions, and reimbursements for damaged inventory. That single deposit in your bank could represent hundreds of individual transactions across two weeks.
Now add a Shopify store with its own payment processor fees and shipping costs. Maybe a Walmart or Etsy channel too. Each platform has its own fee structure, payout schedule, and reporting format. Your bank shows a handful of deposits each month, but underneath those deposits are thousands of line items that determine whether you actually made money. Without proper reconciliation, you are guessing at your profitability.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Amazon FBA and FBM sellers, Shopify store owners, Etsy sellers, dropshippers, direct-to-consumer brands, and multi-channel sellers across Central Florida. Anyone selling products online who needs to understand the real numbers behind their sales.
What Makes It Complicated
What Makes It Complicated
Multiple sales channels with different fee structures and payout timing. Inventory sitting in warehouses across the country creating sales tax obligations in states you’ve never visited. Returns that happen weeks after the original sale. Advertising costs buried inside platform settlements. Revenue that looks healthy on the dashboard but tells a different story once all the fees are subtracted.
What We Handle
We reconcile each sales platform to your actual bank deposits. This means breaking apart Amazon settlement reports into gross revenue, fees by category, refunds, and advertising charges so every dollar is accounted for. The same treatment goes for Shopify, Etsy, or any other channel you sell through. Your QuickBooks file ends up reflecting what really happened instead of just showing lump-sum deposits with no context behind them.
Inventory accounting is a big piece of this. We track your cost of goods sold properly so you know your true margins on each product. That includes the purchase cost, shipping to the warehouse, and any duties or prep fees that go into getting the product ready for sale. We also handle sales tax management for the states where you have nexus, making sure filings happen on time with the right amounts. When your CPA needs clean financials at year-end, the books are already there.
Platform Reconciliation
Platform Reconciliation
Amazon settlement reports broken down into gross sales, referral fees, FBA fees, advertising deductions, refunds, and reimbursements. Shopify and other channel payouts reconciled the same way. Every deposit in your bank traced back to the transactions that created it. No more mystery deposits.
Inventory and Sales Tax
Inventory and Sales Tax
Cost of goods sold tracked by product including landed costs. Inventory valued correctly on the balance sheet so your financials reflect reality. Sales tax nexus obligations identified based on where your inventory is stored and where you’re shipping. Filings handled on time so you’re not accumulating penalties in states you didn’t know you owed.
Common Problems
The most common mistake we see is treating Amazon deposits as revenue. That deposit is already net of fees, refunds, and ad spend. If you record $10,000 as revenue and then also record your product costs, you’ve understated your true expenses because the fees were never captured. Your profit looks higher than it is. This creates problems when tax time comes because the numbers in your books don’t match the 1099-K the platform sent to the IRS.
Inventory accounting is the other big gap. Many sellers expense inventory when they purchase it instead of when it sells. If you bought $30,000 in product in November to prepare for the holiday season, recording that as a November expense wipes out your profit for the month even though most of that inventory won’t sell until December or January. Your monthly financials become unreliable and you lose the ability to track margins by product. Decisions about what to reorder, what to discontinue, and how to price get made on gut feeling instead of data.
Fee Blindness
Fee Blindness
Platform fees eat 25 to 40 percent of gross revenue depending on the channel. When these fees are buried inside net deposits and never broken out, sellers don’t realize how much they are paying. A product that looks profitable at the gross level might be barely breaking even once you add referral fees, FBA charges, and advertising costs together.
Sales Tax Exposure
Sales Tax Exposure
Storing inventory in an Amazon FBA warehouse in Texas creates a tax obligation in Texas. Many sellers don’t realize they have nexus in a dozen states until a notice shows up. Back-filing for missed periods comes with penalties and interest. The longer it goes unaddressed, the more expensive it gets to fix.
What Changes
You stop guessing and start seeing. Every product has a real margin attached to it after accounting for the cost of goods, platform fees, shipping, and advertising. You can look at a report and know which SKUs are carrying the business and which ones are quietly losing money. Reorder decisions become straightforward because the data is there. Pricing conversations happen with actual numbers behind them instead of rough estimates.
The stress around tax season drops significantly. Your books already match the 1099-K forms the platforms issued. Sales tax is current across every state where you have an obligation. Your CPA gets a clean file with properly categorized revenue, cost of goods sold, and expenses. And you finally have monthly financials that mean something, not just a bank balance and a hope that things are going well.
Product-Level Clarity
Product-Level Clarity
True profitability by SKU and by sales channel. You know exactly what each product costs to sell after all fees and fulfillment charges. This gives you the confidence to double down on winners, raise prices where needed, and stop reordering products that aren’t pulling their weight.
Clean Books Year-Round
Clean Books Year-Round
Monthly financials that reflect reality. Inventory on the balance sheet valued correctly. Revenue and fees broken out so your income statement tells the full story. Sales tax filed on time. When your CPA or a potential investor asks for financials, you hand them a file that’s already done right.
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