E-commerce
Amazon sellers, Shopify stores, dropshipping businesses, and DTC brands dealing with platform fees, inventory, and multi-channel complexity.
The Industry
The deposit that hits your bank account is not your revenue. Amazon takes referral fees, FBA fees, and storage fees before sending you money. They hold reserves. They deduct returns that happened three weeks ago. A $15,000 deposit might represent $19,000 in gross sales. If you just record the deposit as revenue, your books show $15,000 in sales and zero in fees. Your margins look artificially high because you’re missing $4,000 in expenses. Then you wonder why there’s less cash than expected.
Add multiple platforms and things get messier. You’re selling on Amazon, running a Shopify store, maybe listing a few items on eBay or Etsy. Each platform has its own fee structure, its own payout timing, and its own reporting format. Shopify sends you money through Stripe or PayPal, both of which take their own cut. Trying to answer a simple question like “how much did I actually sell this month” requires pulling reports from five different places and doing math that rarely adds up on the first try.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Amazon FBA sellers, Shopify store owners, eBay and Etsy sellers, dropshipping businesses, and direct-to-consumer brands. Any e-commerce business in The Woodlands or Greater Houston area selling products online through one or more platforms.
What Makes It Complex
What Makes It Complex
Platform deposits net of fees, returns, and reserves that need reconciliation. Multiple sales channels with different reporting formats. Inventory tracking across FBA warehouses, third-party fulfillment centers, or your own storage. Cost of goods sold calculations requiring landed costs. Advertising spend on Amazon PPC and paid social that needs proper expense tracking.
What We Handle
We reconcile platform payouts to actual sales activity. Amazon settlement reports get broken down into gross sales, referral fees, FBA fees, returns, and any reserves held. Shopify payments get separated from payment processor fees. This means your books show real revenue on the income side and real expenses on the expense side. You can actually see what the platforms are costing you instead of just accepting whatever lands in your bank account.
Inventory accounting is where e-commerce bookkeeping differs from services businesses. We track cost of goods sold based on what you actually paid for products, including shipping from suppliers, customs duties if you’re importing, and any other landing costs. When you sell an item, the cost flows to COGS. When an item gets returned, inventory adjusts. Monthly financial statements show real gross margins because the cost side reflects reality. Tax preparation captures home office deductions for home-based sellers, advertising expenses, platform fees, and properly documented COGS.
Platform Reconciliation
Platform Reconciliation
Settlement reports from Amazon, Shopify, and other platforms translated into proper accounting entries. Gross sales recorded as revenue. Fees categorized by type. Returns tracked. Reserves and holdbacks accounted for. QuickBooks set up to handle multi-channel e-commerce with each platform showing its own performance.
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold
Inventory tracking that accounts for products in your warehouse, in FBA, or with fulfillment partners. COGS calculated using actual product costs plus landed costs from importing. Returns properly adjusted in inventory counts. Monthly financials showing accurate gross margins by product or product category.
What Goes Wrong
Recording Amazon deposits directly as sales is the most common mistake. You received $48,000 from Amazon this month. You record $48,000 in revenue. But your actual gross sales were $62,000. Amazon kept $14,000 in fees, returns, and reserves. Your P&L now shows $48,000 in revenue and your product costs as expenses. It looks like you have decent margins. In reality, you have $14,000 in platform costs that aren’t showing up anywhere. Your actual margin is much lower but your books don’t reflect it.
Inventory creates another layer of problems. Products get purchased and expensed immediately instead of held as inventory until sold. COGS becomes whatever you bought this month instead of the cost of items you actually shipped. Returns don’t get added back to inventory. By the end of the year, your physical inventory doesn’t match your books. Tax time arrives and your accountant asks for COGS documentation but there’s no system to pull it from. You end up guessing or reconstructing the year from shipping records and supplier invoices.
Revenue and Fees Blended Together
Revenue and Fees Blended Together
Deposits recorded as revenue instead of reconciled to actual sales. Platform fees invisible in the financials. What looks like a 35% gross margin is actually 22% once you account for the fees Amazon and Shopify already deducted. Pricing decisions get made on distorted margin data.
Inventory That Doesn't Match Reality
Inventory That Doesn't Match Reality
Product purchases expensed when bought instead of tracked as inventory. COGS calculated wrong or estimated. Returns not reflected in inventory counts. End-of-year physical count shows 400 units but the books say 280. No way to reconcile the difference. Tax filing uses unreliable numbers.
What Changes
Each sales channel shows its true performance. Amazon revenue appears separately from Shopify revenue. Fees for each platform are tracked so you can see the real cost of selling on that channel. If Amazon fees are eating 28% of gross sales while your own website costs 4% in payment processing, that’s visible. You can make informed decisions about where to invest in advertising and where to push customers. Product-level or category-level margins become clear once COGS is properly tracked.
Monthly books close on time with numbers you can trust. Inventory balances match physical counts because adjustments happen throughout the year instead of as a year-end surprise. When tax time comes, COGS is documented and defensible. Home office deductions, advertising costs, and platform fees are captured properly. If you need inventory financing or a line of credit to fund a larger purchase order, you have clean financial statements to show the bank instead of a mess that raises more questions than it answers.
Channel and Product Visibility
Channel and Product Visibility
Revenue and fees separated by platform showing which channels are actually profitable. Gross margin calculated correctly with proper COGS. Product categories tracked so you know which items make money and which ones look busy but don’t contribute much after costs. Data to support decisions about pricing, advertising, and product mix.
Clean Books That Support Growth
Clean Books That Support Growth
Monthly financials that close consistently with reconciled accounts. Inventory records that match reality. Tax returns prepared with accurate COGS and all relevant deductions captured. Financial statements ready for lenders if you need capital for inventory. A foundation that lets you scale without the books becoming a bigger mess.
Greater Houston's Small Business Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
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