E-Commerce
Online sellers dealing with platform fees buried in deposits, inventory across multiple locations, and sales tax in states you've never visited.
The Industry
E-commerce sellers don’t receive simple payments. Amazon deposits every two weeks, but that deposit isn’t your revenue. It’s sales minus referral fees, FBA fulfillment fees, storage fees, refunds, and chargebacks all combined into one number. Shopify sellers deal with payment processor fees, transaction fees, and app subscriptions that need to be separated from gross sales. Etsy takes listing fees, transaction fees, and payment processing fees before you see a dollar. The deposit hitting your bank account might look like profit, but you need to work backwards through platform reports to understand what actually happened.
Then there’s inventory. You purchased products months ago. Some are in your garage, some are sitting in Amazon’s warehouse, some are in transit from overseas. What did you actually sell this month? What was the true cost of those items including shipping to the fulfillment center? Subscription box sellers add another layer with prepaid revenue that needs recognition over the subscription period. These businesses look simple from the outside but require accounting that tracks every fee, every return, and every unit of inventory across multiple platforms and locations.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Shopify store owners, Amazon FBA sellers, Etsy sellers, subscription box businesses. Online sellers across Los Angeles dealing with multi-channel sales, platform fees, inventory management, and customers in dozens of states.
What Complicates It
What Complicates It
Platform fees buried inside deposits that need extraction and categorization. Inventory moving through your home, fulfillment centers, and transit. Sales to customers in multiple states creating tax obligations you may not know about. Returns processed weeks after the original sale. Payment deposits that never match your sales reports without proper reconciliation work.
What We Handle
Platform reconciliation breaks down those consolidated deposits into actual components. Amazon settlement reports get translated into gross sales, referral fees, FBA fees, storage fees, and refunds. Shopify transactions get separated from Shopify Payments fees and app subscriptions. This gives you visibility into what each platform actually costs and what your true revenue is before any deductions. Multi-channel sellers get all platforms consolidated into one set of books in QuickBooks so you can see total business performance without logging into five different dashboards.
Inventory accounting tracks what you purchased, what’s in stock, and what cost of goods sold belongs to each period. Landed costs including shipping to fulfillment centers get built into inventory value so COGS reflects true product costs. Sales tax compliance means tracking where you have nexus, calculating what you owe, and filing on time across multiple states. California sellers often discover they owe sales tax in a dozen other states based on where their customers live. We handle the tracking and filing so you don’t miss deadlines or underpay.
Platform Reconciliation and Fee Tracking
Platform Reconciliation and Fee Tracking
Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and other marketplace settlement reports broken down into component parts. Fees tracked by type so you can see what each platform costs. Multi-channel sales consolidated into QuickBooks. Transaction-level matching between platform reports and bank deposits so nothing slips through.
Inventory and Sales Tax Compliance
Inventory and Sales Tax Compliance
Inventory valued with landed costs included. COGS calculated correctly as items sell rather than when purchased. Sales tax nexus tracked across states with filings completed on time. California CDTFA compliance for local sales plus multi-state obligations for out-of-state customers handled systematically.
What Goes Wrong
The most common mistake is treating platform deposits as revenue. You sold $30,000 on Amazon this month, but the deposit was $24,000. That $6,000 difference is referral fees, FBA fees, returns, and storage costs that many sellers never properly categorize. They just record what hit the bank. This makes margins look 20% better than reality. When tax time comes, your profit calculation is wrong because you didn’t capture those fees as expenses. You might actually overpay on taxes by failing to deduct platform costs that are legitimately business expenses.
Inventory creates its own problems. Expensing products when you buy them instead of when you sell them distorts every month’s performance. You spend $20,000 on inventory in January but only sell $8,000 worth of it. If you expensed everything in January, you show a massive loss followed by artificially profitable months. COGS needs to match the units you actually shipped. Sales tax gets ignored until a state sends a notice. California sellers with customers in Texas, Florida, and New York often have nexus in those states and owe sales tax. Finding this out through an audit letter is expensive.
Platform Fees Hidden in Plain Sight
Platform Fees Hidden in Plain Sight
Treating the bank deposit as revenue instead of breaking down the settlement report. Missing thousands in deductible fees because they were never categorized. Gross margins that look like 25% but are actually 18% once you account for all platform costs. No visibility into which sales channels are actually worth the fees they charge.
Inventory and Tax Problems
Inventory and Tax Problems
Products expensed at purchase creating profit swings that don’t reflect actual business performance. No accurate COGS making product-level profitability impossible to calculate. Sales tax nexus in multiple states going untracked until you receive an uncomfortable letter from another state’s revenue department asking about years of back taxes.
What Changes
Platform settlement reports get reconciled monthly. You see exactly what each marketplace costs and what your true margins are after all fees. Multi-channel sellers can compare Shopify direct sales against Amazon FBA and see which channel actually makes more money per order after accounting for all costs. Product-level profitability becomes possible when COGS is tracked correctly and platform fees are allocated properly. You might discover your best-selling product has the worst margin once you account for Amazon’s referral and fulfillment fees.
Sales tax compliance happens on schedule without you tracking deadlines across a dozen states. California obligations get filed with the CDTFA. Out-of-state nexus is monitored and filings completed before penalties accumulate. For sellers thinking about eventually selling the business, clean books with proper inventory valuation and separated platform fees make due diligence straightforward. A buyer looking at your Shopify store wants to see true profitability, not deposits that haven’t been reconciled. Your financial records become an asset that supports your asking price instead of a problem to clean up before you can close a deal.
True Profitability Visibility
True Profitability Visibility
Margins calculated correctly after all platform fees. Product-level profitability showing which items make money and which ones don’t justify the shelf space. Channel comparison between direct sales and marketplace sales. Inventory valued correctly so monthly profits reflect actual performance rather than purchase timing.
Compliance and Exit Readiness
Compliance and Exit Readiness
Sales tax filed on time in every state where you have nexus. Quarterly estimated taxes calculated on actual profit rather than gross deposits. Financial records organized to support potential buyers or investors. Books that can withstand due diligence because every transaction is categorized and reconciled properly.
LA's Small Business Bookkeeper
The Next Step:
A Short Conversation
Tell us about your business and what you're dealing with. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear price for the work.