E-commerce & online sellers
Bookkeeping for e-commerce and online sellers
A marketplace payout is not a sale. It is dozens of sales, minus fees, minus refunds, minus advertising, arriving as one number two weeks later.
The defining problem of e-commerce bookkeeping is the payout. One deposit hides gross sales, platform commission, payment processing, refunds, chargebacks, shipping labels, advertising and sometimes sales tax the platform already remitted. Recording the deposit as revenue throws all of that away.
Once payouts are broken out properly, the second question becomes answerable: what does a product actually earn after the platform has taken its share and the item has been packed and shipped.
Where the books go wrong
What we look at first
Net payouts booked as sales
Revenue is understated, every cost of selling vanishes, and the margin per product can never be calculated.Inventory expensed on purchase
Stock bought in bulk and sold over months makes the buying month look terrible and every month after look better than it was.Marketplace facilitator tax confusion
Some platforms collect and remit sales tax for you; some do not; direct sales from your own store are different again. The books need to show which is which.Shipping and fulfillment scattered
Postage, packaging, fulfillment fees and storage recorded in four unrelated places make the true cost of delivering an order impossible to see.
What we do each month
- Each payout reconciled from the platform settlement report, not from the bank deposit alone
- Gross sales, commission, processing fees, refunds and chargebacks recorded on their own lines
- Inventory recorded as an asset and relieved as goods sell, across every channel
- Shipping, packaging and fulfillment costs grouped so cost per order is visible
- Advertising spend tracked per channel
- Sales tax records kept by channel, showing what the platform remitted and what did not go through one
Setting up QuickBooks for it
Each sales channel gets its own income and fee accounts in QuickBooks Online, so a payout can be split into its parts and the channels can still be compared.
A settlement summary per payout period — from the platform's own report — is the reliable way in. Connector apps help, and we check the first month's output line by line before trusting one.
Inventory is tracked in QuickBooks or in the selling platform with periodic adjustments, depending on SKU count and how many channels share the stock.
Carey is a QuickBooks Online Advanced ProAdvisor, so a file can be set up, cleaned up or migrated as part of the same engagement — see QuickBooks services.
Reporting
The numbers worth watching
Contribution margin per channel
What is left after product cost, platform fees and fulfillment, for each place you sell.Cost per order
Shipping, packaging and fulfillment against orders shipped. It usually rises quietly.Inventory value and turns
How much cash is sitting in stock and how fast it comes back.
Questions we are asked
We sell on more than one marketplace. Can you handle all of them?
Yes. Each channel is set up with its own revenue and fee accounts and reconciled from its own settlement reports, then reported together. Multi-channel is common; the work is in making sure no payout is recorded twice and none is recorded net.
Do you handle sales tax registration in other states?
No. Economic nexus and multi-state registration are tax matters, and they need a CPA or a sales tax specialist. We keep records by state and channel so that whoever advises you has clean figures to work from.
Start with a conversation
Let's look at your books together
Tell us about your church or business and where your bookkeeping stands. Carey will follow up to arrange a consultation, and you'll receive a written scope before any work begins.