E-commerce & Online Sellers

Bookkeeping for businesses that sell online, across however many platforms you sell on. ClearLedgers consolidates the payout streams, fees, and inventory into books that show which products and channels actually drive your profit.

The Industry

What hits your bank account does not tell the story of what actually happened in sales. Amazon deposits money every two weeks after taking out referral fees, FBA fees, and storage fees. Shopify sends payouts after Shopify Payments takes its cut. Each platform has its own timing, its own fee structure, and its own settlement reports buried somewhere in seller central. A $4,800 deposit might represent $5,600 in actual sales, but the books only see the deposit unless someone reconciles back to the source. That reconciliation work is where ClearLedgers® comes in.

Layer on refunds and chargebacks that show up weeks after the original sale. Returns that need inventory adjustments. Multiple warehouses or fulfillment centers holding stock you cannot physically see. Selling across enough states that you have triggered sales tax obligations in places you have never visited. A single-channel Shopify store has different bookkeeping needs than a business selling on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and its own site simultaneously, but they share the same fundamental challenge. The money flowing through your business is complicated, and the books need to reflect what is actually happening.

Who This Covers

Single-channel Shopify stores. Amazon FBA sellers. Multi-channel operations selling across Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, and their own websites. Dropshippers and wholesale resellers. Any business selling products online and dealing with platform payouts, inventory management, and the complexity that comes with digital commerce.

What Complicates It

Platform payouts arrive net of fees and do not match sales totals. Settlement reports live in different systems than sales reports. Multiple channels mean multiple data streams that all need to reconcile. Refunds and chargebacks appear weeks after the original transaction. Inventory sits in warehouses and fulfillment centers you do not control. Sales tax obligations accumulate in states where you have established nexus through sales volume or physical presence.

What We Handle

ClearLedgers consolidates all your channels into one clean set of books. Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, your own website. Every sale gets recorded at the full amount, and every fee gets recorded as the real cost it is. When Amazon deposits $4,832 into your account, we trace that back to the $5,500 in actual sales and the $668 in fees they kept. Your revenue reflects what customers actually paid. Your expenses show what platforms actually charged. The difference between recording gross versus net is the difference between understanding your business and guessing at it.

Inventory accounting tracks what you own and what it is worth. As products sell, cost of goods sold moves from your balance sheet to your income statement properly. Returns go back into inventory with appropriate valuations. You can see profitability by product, by channel, by month. Sales tax gets tracked and filed on time for every state where you have an obligation. The books become a complete record of what is happening across your business, not a partial picture based on whatever hit the bank.

Multi-Channel Consolidation and Payout Reconciliation

All sales channels feeding into QuickBooks as one clean record. Settlement reports reconciled to sales so deposits make sense. Fees broken out by type so you see exactly what Amazon, Shopify, and payment processors charge. Referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage fees, payment processing fees all visible as distinct expenses instead of buried inside net deposits.

Inventory and Sales Tax

Inventory tracked with proper counts and valuations, reconciled to what your channels and warehouse systems report. Cost of goods sold calculated accurately so margins reflect reality instead of estimates. Sales tax obligations monitored and filings submitted on time for every state where you have established nexus. You focus on selling products while the compliance side runs smoothly in the background.

What Goes Wrong

The most common mistake is recording platform deposits as revenue. Amazon sends $12,000 and it goes into the books as $12,000 in sales. But that deposit represents $14,200 in actual sales minus $2,200 in fees. Recording only the deposit understates your revenue and hides the true cost of selling on that platform. When fees are invisible, you cannot compare channel economics or notice when a platform raises rates. You think you are running at 40% margin when the real number is 28% after all the fees get accounted for properly. Pricing decisions based on invisible costs lead to products that look profitable but are not.

Inventory that never reconciles is the other quiet disaster. Products sell faster than purchases get recorded. Returns come back but never go back into inventory. Amazon loses units in their warehouse and sends a reimbursement that nobody ties to an inventory adjustment. Over time, your books say you have 400 units of a SKU and you actually have 280. Your books say inventory is worth $50,000 and the real number is $38,000. Cost of goods sold is wrong. Margins are wrong. Product profitability is fiction. At tax time, nobody can defend the numbers because they do not trace to reality.

Fees Buried in Net Deposits

Revenue understated because only deposits get recorded. Platform fees invisible because they never hit the expense side of the books. Referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage fees, payment processing fees all hidden inside the net payout. No way to compare what it actually costs to sell on Amazon versus Shopify versus your own site. Decisions about where to focus inventory and advertising made without the data that matters most.

Inventory Disconnected from Reality

Books showing inventory that does not exist. Cost of goods sold calculated from numbers that do not match physical counts. Products marked sold but returns never recorded back into stock. No reconciliation between what QuickBooks says and what Amazon, your 3PL, or your warehouse reports. Margins that look good on paper because the cost basis drifted from reality months ago and nobody caught it.

What Changes

Your books tell the real story. Revenue shows what customers paid. Expenses show what platforms charged. Inventory matches what you actually hold. When your accountant asks about cost of goods sold at tax time, the number is defensible because it traces to real purchases and real sales. When you want to know if that new product line is profitable after six months, the data exists to answer. You stop guessing at margins and start knowing them. Pricing decisions come from actual cost data instead of back-of-envelope estimates.

Channel decisions become data-driven. If Amazon fees have crept up to 35% of revenue while your own site costs 12% to fulfill, you can see it clearly and decide what to do. If certain products only make sense at higher price points, you know before overcommitting to inventory. Sales tax compliance stops being a scramble because obligations are tracked and filings happen on schedule. The books become a tool for running the business instead of something you dread reconciling when tax season arrives. If you are ready to see your e-commerce business clearly, we would be glad to talk.

Clarity on What Is Profitable

Product-level margins based on accurate cost data. Channel comparison showing the true cost to sell on each platform after all fees. Visibility into which SKUs make money and which ones look good but eat margin on fees, returns, and storage. Pricing decisions grounded in real numbers. The ability to answer whether you should expand on Amazon or invest in your own store because you have the data to compare.

Clean Records and Compliance

Books that reconcile to platform reports and bank deposits without mystery discrepancies. Inventory that matches physical counts and warehouse reports. Sales tax filed on time across every state where you have nexus. Financial statements your accountant can work with at tax time without reconstructing the year from settlement reports and spreadsheets. Records that support your business instead of creating anxiety about what you might be missing.

Relationship-First Bookkeeping for Small Businesses