E-commerce
Your dashboard says one thing. Your bank account says another. We reconcile platform payouts, track inventory costs, and show you what you actually make per product.
The Industry
E-commerce looks profitable on the surface. Your Shopify dashboard shows $30,000 in sales last month. But between platform fees, payment processing, shipping costs, returns, and advertising spend, the deposit hitting your bank account is a fraction of that number. The gap between gross sales and actual cash collected is where most sellers lose track of their real margins.
The other layer is inventory. You spent $8,000 on product three months ago. Some of it sold, some is sitting in a warehouse, and some came back as returns. Until that inventory cost is properly matched to the revenue it generated, your profit and loss statement is telling you the wrong story. And decisions based on wrong numbers lead to wrong outcomes.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Amazon FBA and FBM sellers, Shopify store owners, DTC brands, dropshippers, Etsy sellers, and multi-channel retailers. Any business selling physical or digital products online where platform payouts and inventory costs make the bookkeeping more complex than it looks.
The Friction
The Friction
Every platform reports differently. Amazon settles every two weeks with a payout that bundles sales, returns, fees, and reimbursements into one deposit. Shopify sends payouts through Stripe or PayPal. Trying to match those deposits to actual orders without a consistent system is exhausting and error-prone.
What We Handle
We reconcile your platform payouts against your actual sales data so the books reflect reality. That means breaking apart the Amazon settlement report into gross revenue, referral fees, FBA fees, advertising costs, and returns. Each piece gets categorized properly in QuickBooks Online so your P&L tells the full story instead of showing one mysterious deposit every two weeks.
Inventory is tracked as an asset until it sells. We maintain your cost of goods sold so you can see true gross margins by product or product line. When you reorder inventory, that purchase doesn’t hit your expense line all at once. It flows through correctly as units move out the door, which means your monthly financials actually make sense.
Platform Reconciliation
Platform Reconciliation
Amazon, Shopify, and other marketplace deposits get reconciled to the transaction level. You see gross revenue, platform fees, and net deposits as separate line items instead of one confusing lump sum in your bank feed. This gives you visibility into what each channel actually costs you to operate.
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold
Products are tracked from purchase through sale. Cost of goods sold is calculated accurately so you know your real margins. This matters even more when product costs shift due to supplier pricing changes, rising shipping rates, or changes in order volume that affect your per-unit landed cost.
Common Problems
The most common mistake is recording the platform deposit as total revenue. If Amazon deposits $18,000 but your gross sales were $25,000, you just understated revenue by $7,000 and buried $7,000 in fees. Your tax return might work out in the short term, but your financial statements become useless for decision-making because you can’t see what the fees actually cost you across channels.
The second issue is inventory timing. Buying $15,000 in product and expensing it all in the month of purchase creates wild swings in your P&L. One month looks like a massive loss, the next looks unrealistically profitable. Without proper inventory accounting, you can’t trust your monthly numbers and every financial decision feels like guessing.
Multi-Channel Confusion
Multi-Channel Confusion
Selling on Amazon, Shopify, and Etsy at the same time means three different payout schedules, three different fee structures, and three different reporting formats. Without a system to pull it all together in QuickBooks, reconciliation falls behind fast. And once it falls behind, catching up takes real effort.
Returns and Refunds
Returns and Refunds
Returns create negative transactions that need to offset the original sale. If they aren’t matched correctly, your revenue stays overstated and your refund expenses get buried somewhere they shouldn’t be. For sellers with return rates above 10%, this alone can significantly distort your financials.
What Changes
You see exactly what each product and each channel costs you. That Amazon product with a 40% gross margin might actually be breaking even once you account for PPC spend, FBA storage fees, and return rates. With clean data, you make stocking and advertising decisions based on real numbers instead of the optimistic version your dashboard shows you.
Tax time becomes straightforward. Your books are reconciled monthly. Inventory is valued correctly. Revenue, fees, and cost of goods sold are all in the right places. Your CPA gets a clean file and you stop paying for hours of cleanup work that could have been avoided with consistent monthly bookkeeping throughout the year.
Product-Level Clarity
Product-Level Clarity
You know which SKUs make money and which ones drain it. That information drives purchasing decisions, pricing adjustments, and where you spend your ad budget. You stop pouring money into products that barely break even and double down on the ones that actually grow your business.
Confidence at Tax Time
Confidence at Tax Time
Monthly bookkeeping means your year-end close is simple. Inventory counts match your records. Revenue is properly stated. Deductions are captured throughout the year instead of scrambled for in March. You go into tax season prepared instead of dreading it.
Long Beach's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Quick Discovery Call
Tell us where things stand with your books. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear quote to get it handled.
