Marketplace payouts, platform fees, returns, and inventory reconciled into books that show real margin instead of a top-line number that flatters you.
The deposit from your marketplace is not your revenue. It is gross sales minus referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage, ad spend, chargebacks, refunds, and a reserve, all netted into one number. Record that deposit as sales and your margin looks wrong in a way that gets more expensive the more you scale.
We unpack those settlements so every component lands in its own account. Fees are expenses. Refunds reduce revenue. Ad spend inside the platform is marketing, not a cost of goods reduction. Once the settlement is broken apart correctly, you can finally see contribution margin by channel and stop guessing which SKUs are carrying the business. We work with online sellers throughout Kentucky and remotely, using QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, or whatever your stack already runs on.
A Shopify payout, an Amazon disbursement, and a PayPal transfer all hit the bank as one line. Behind each one sits dozens of fee types. We map every settlement component to a consistent chart of accounts so the same fee always lands in the same place, month after month. Then the payout gets reconciled to the bank so nothing floats. Sales channels stay separated, which matters because your margin on a marketplace with a 15 percent referral fee is not the margin on your own site. Once that structure holds, monthly reporting shows what each channel contributes after its own real costs.
If you expense inventory when you buy it, your P&L swings wildly and your margin is fiction. Cost of goods sold has to move when the unit ships. That means tracking landed cost, so freight, duty, and inbound shipping ride along with the unit instead of sitting in an overhead bucket. It means periodic counts reconciled against what the system thinks you have, and shrink recorded when it happens instead of discovered at year end. We set up inventory tracking that ties to the balance sheet, so the value on your books is the value on your shelf. Slow movers get flagged before they turn into cash you cannot get back.
Economic nexus means you can owe sales tax in a state where you have never set foot, triggered by revenue or transaction count. Marketplace facilitator rules cover some of it, which is why plenty of sellers assume they are fine when they are not. Sales on your own site usually are not covered. We track where you have crossed thresholds, get registrations in order, and keep the filings on schedule so the exposure stays visible instead of compounding quietly. Sales tax compliance is squarely in scope here. Income tax returns are not, and we hand that work to an outside CPA with clean books attached.
The hardest thing about running an online store is that growth eats cash. You pay for inventory months before you sell it, ad spend goes out daily, and marketplace reserves hold back a slice of what you earned. A rolling cash forecast built around your reorder cycle and your seasonality shows when the next big purchase order collides with a slow week. At the controller and CFO level, We build that forecast, run budget versus actual monthly, and help you set a target return on ad spend that actually clears your contribution margin instead of just looking good in the ad dashboard.
It complicates the setup, not the ongoing work. Each channel gets its own revenue and fee tracking so you can compare them honestly. The setup is the heavy lift. After that, the monthly close runs the same regardless of how many channels you sell through, and you get a per-channel margin view every month.
No. Baum's Accounting Services does not prepare income tax returns and is not a CPA firm. We handle bookkeeping, inventory and COGS, payroll and payroll tax filings, sales tax compliance, and reporting. When it is time to file, we refer that work to an outside CPA and give them books that are already closed and reconciled.
Returns reduce revenue in the period they happen and the inventory comes back on the books if the unit is sellable. Chargebacks get their own account so you can see whether the rate is climbing. Both get buried inside net payouts if nobody breaks them out, and both tell you something useful about product and fulfillment quality.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
Trust accounting has to be exact and separate. Operating accounts, matter-level profitability, and partner distributions get handled alongside it.
Read moreProduction versus collections, supply and lab costs as a share of revenue, and whether adding a chair or an associate actually pencils out.
Read moreMargin by category, inventory turns, and shrinkage caught early, because cash tied up in slow stock is the quietest problem in retail.
Read moreBook a consultation. You will leave the call knowing what shape your numbers are in.
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