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Bookkeeping cleanup for e-commerce & online sellers

Selling across Shopify, Amazon, and Etsy means deposits that never match your sales, fees buried inside payouts, and sales tax piling up in states you’ve never set foot in. We untangle the channels, rebuild COGS, and deliver financials clean enough for a lender, a buyer, or an investor.

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Billed hourly against a written estimate, agreed before any work starts. Most cleanups are done in 2–6 weeks.

Why e-commerce (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy) books get messy.

E-commerce books get messy because the money you see in your bank account is almost never the money you actually earned. Each platform nets out its own fees, refunds, and chargebacks before depositing a lump sum on its own schedule, so a single bank deposit can blend a week of sales across hundreds of orders. Inventory purchases get expensed the day you buy them instead of when they sell, so gross margin is invisible and the P&L lies. Layer on sales-tax nexus that quietly triggers in new states as you grow, and most sellers don’t realize their books are broken until an investor, lender, or accountant asks for numbers that hold up. The growth is real. The bookkeeping system just never scaled with the channels.

What trips up e-commerce (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy).

  • Bank deposits that never match your sales

    Platform payouts arrive net of fees, refunds, and reserves on their own schedule, so a single deposit blends days of orders. Without channel-level reconciliation your revenue is a guess.

  • Payment-processor fees buried in payouts

    Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, and Amazon all skim fees before they pay you. Booked as a single net deposit, your real revenue and your real fee expense both disappear.

  • Sales-tax nexus you didn’t know you had

    Economic nexus can trigger in a dozen states as you scale. Tax collected through the platforms but never verified against remittance is a quiet compliance time bomb.

  • Inventory and COGS that hide your true margin

    When inventory purchases are expensed on the day you buy them, gross margin is invisible and your P&L swings wildly month to month for no real reason.

  • Refunds and chargebacks muddying revenue

    Returns, partial refunds, and chargebacks booked inconsistently inflate or deflate revenue and leave reconciliation gaps that never close.

What we handle for e-commerce (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy).

Every cleanup is led by Elizabeth Olsen, a West Point graduate and QuickBooks Advanced Certified ProAdvisor, and built around how your industry actually earns and spends.

  • Reconcile every sales channel (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, wholesale) to actual bank deposits, separating fees, refunds, and reserves
  • Break out payment-processor fees so your true revenue and true cost of selling are both visible
  • Rebuild inventory and COGS tracking so gross margin is accurate and consistent month to month
  • Review sales-tax collection against remittance across every state where you have nexus and flag discrepancies for your CPA
  • Untangle refunds, returns, and chargebacks so revenue reflects what you actually kept
  • Deliver channel-level P&Ls and investor- or lender-ready financial statements

E-commerce (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy) bookkeeping questions.

Yes, and it’s the heart of nearly every e-commerce cleanup. Platforms deposit a net figure after fees, refunds, and reserves, so the bank balance never equals gross sales. We reconcile each channel’s payout reports back to your bank, breaking out the fees and refunds, so your revenue and expenses are finally accurate.

We review the sales tax your platforms collected against what was actually remitted, and we flag any states where economic nexus may have been triggered but not addressed. We don’t file your returns, but we hand you and your CPA a clean, documented picture so any discrepancies get resolved before they become a liability.

Yes. The most common e-commerce bookkeeping error is expensing inventory when you buy it instead of when it sells, which hides your gross margin completely. We rebuild inventory and cost-of-goods-sold tracking so your margins are accurate and your monthly P&L stops swinging for no reason.

That’s a frequent reason sellers call us. We reconcile every channel, correct COGS, resolve sales-tax gaps, and produce restated financials that hold up to due diligence. We’ve taken sellers from zero reconciled months to investor-ready statements in a matter of weeks.

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Cleaning up your e-commerce (Shopify, Amazon, Etsy) books starts with a free call.

Every engagement starts with a conversation and a clear scope and price in writing: billed hourly, no monthly bookkeeping retainer, no surprise invoices.

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