Shea Business Solutions handles bookkeeping for e-commerce and retail businesses in Orlando, FL, where the money arrives as processor payouts, the real story lives in gross sales and fees, and inventory quietly decides whether the margins are real. The books run in QuickBooks Online under a Level 2 ProAdvisor and Certified Payroll Specialist who answers the same business day.
An online store can look profitable in the bank feed and be losing money per order once fees, refunds, and shipping are put back where they belong. The feed shows deposits. It does not show what you sold.
Retail has the same disease through a different register: POS deposits net of fees, product margins blurred into service revenue, and a stockroom the ledger stopped believing in months ago.
Payouts, Fees, and What You Actually Sold
Shopify, Amazon, and card processors all pay out net: gross sales minus their fees, minus refunds, sometimes minus a rolling reserve. Book the deposit as revenue and every number downstream is wrong, sales understated, fees invisible, refund rates unknowable.
We record gross sales by channel and break the fees out as their own expense, then reconcile every account monthly so a payout never double-counts through undeposited funds. Each channel reports on its own line, because a marketplace order and a direct-site order do not earn the same margin.
Inventory and COGS You Can Trust
Cost of goods sold is where product businesses lose the thread. Purchases booked straight to expense, freight scattered, shrink never counted, and suddenly the P&L margin has nothing to do with reality. When we restructured inventory tracking for an Orlando custom manufacturer, the work surfaced and corrected a $22,000 inventory valuation error and made per-run margins readable for the first time.
The same discipline applies to a stockroom of SKUs: inventory on the balance sheet, COGS recognized when goods sell, and a count cadence the books can trust.
Sales Tax, Kept Visible
Florida taxes tangible product sales where most services are not taxed, and selling into other states can bring their rules into play once volume crosses their thresholds. We do not practice guesswork here: the books are structured so tax collected sits in its own liability account, separated by what the channel already collected for you, so filings are built from visible numbers instead of archaeology.
Integrations: Shopify, Square, and the Rest
A Level 2 ProAdvisor's integration work is what keeps this from becoming manual data entry. We set up and troubleshoot third-party platform connections to QuickBooks Online, the same work that linked a Lake Nona fitness studio's Mindbody system to books solid enough to win a $75,000 expansion loan. Bad integration setup is a top source of duplicated transactions; done right, the channels post themselves and the month closes from reconciled data.
Retail and the POS Register
Brick-and-mortar retail runs the same playbook through Square, Clover, or whatever drives the counter: gross rung sales recorded, processor fees broken out, product and any service revenue on separate lines. Sell online and in-store both, and each side reports independently, so you can see which one is actually carrying the rent.
- Gross sales by channel. Marketplace, direct site, and register each on its own line, fees broken out.
- Inventory and COGS. Stock on the balance sheet, cost recognized at sale, margins you can trust.
- Sales tax visible. Collected tax in its own liability account, channel-collected amounts separated.
- Integrations set up right. Platform data posting itself into QuickBooks, verified, not keyed by hand.
Behind on the Books? Start There
Order volume buries ledgers fast. If you are months back, we get you current with catch-up bookkeeping, then move you onto flat-rate monthly bookkeeping. Monthly service starts at $200 and scales with transaction volume; a proper QuickBooks setup is where new stores should start instead.
Want a real number for your situation? Call, or use the form at the top of this page. Every message gets a same-business-day answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you work with Shopify sellers?
We set up and troubleshoot QuickBooks Online integrations for platforms like Shopify and Square as part of the ProAdvisor work, so channel sales flow into the books instead of being keyed by hand. If your platform exports to QuickBooks, we can wire it in and verify the data lands correctly.
How do you handle marketplace and processor payouts?
Payouts arrive net of fees, refunds, and holds, so booking the deposit as revenue understates sales and hides costs. We record gross sales and break out the fees, then reconcile monthly so no channel double-counts.
Can you fix our inventory numbers?
Yes. Inventory and cost of goods sold cleanup is established work here: for an Orlando manufacturer we restructured inventory tracking and corrected a $22,000 valuation error, which straightened out every margin report downstream.
How much does e-commerce bookkeeping cost?
Monthly bookkeeping starts at $200 and scales with transaction volume, which for online sellers reflects order and channel count. Catch-up and cleanup work is quoted after a free review of your file.
Do you serve online sellers outside Orlando?
The bookkeeping runs remotely, so we work with e-commerce and retail businesses throughout Orlando and Central Florida, including Winter Park, Dr. Phillips, Lake Nona, Windermere, and Baldwin Park, with same-business-day answers.
