Shea Business Solutions handles bookkeeping for manufacturers and inventory-based businesses across Orlando, FL, where the hard part is not the sales, it is the cost of goods sold. Run in QuickBooks Online by a Level 2 ProAdvisor who answers the same business day. If your profit and loss swings wildly from month to month for no reason you can name, the answer is almost always in how inventory and COGS are tracked.
Manufacturing breaks its books in the most expensive place: inventory valuation. Raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods each have to be tracked, and cost of goods sold has to move in step with what actually shipped. When that tracking is wrong, the profit and loss reports numbers that have nothing to do with reality, and every decision made from those numbers is a guess. A pricing call, a hiring call, or a new-equipment call made on a distorted margin is a call made blind.
Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold, Rebuilt
One Orlando custom metal fabricator came to us with inaccurate cost of goods sold tracking and messy raw-materials inventory in QuickBooks Online, which was distorting their profit and loss badly enough that management could not trust it. We restructured the inventory tracking setup, linked their job-costing software, and established accurate allocations for materials and direct labor. That work corrected a $22,000 inventory valuation error and gave them precise margin reporting per production run, plus clear monthly statements to make decisions from. The distorted P&L had been hiding both the error and the real margins underneath it.
Margin Reporting Per Production Run
Once inventory and COGS are tracked correctly, the reporting can tell you what each run actually earned. Materials and direct labor allocated to the right jobs, cost of goods sold that moves with shipments, and a margin figure per production run you can act on. That is the difference between knowing a product line is profitable and hoping it is, and it is the number a builder should price the next bid from. We build the chart of accounts and item structure in QuickBooks Online so those numbers come out of the monthly close instead of a spreadsheet nobody has time to maintain.
- Inventory tracking that holds. Raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods structured so valuations stay accurate.
- Accurate cost of goods sold. COGS that moves with what actually shipped, not a year-end estimate.
- Job-costing integration. Job-costing or production software linked to QuickBooks so material and labor costs allocate automatically.
- Per-run margins. Clear monthly statements and margin reporting for each production run.
When the File Needs a Full Cleanup
Inventory errors rarely arrive alone. A file with a $22,000 valuation problem usually also has unreconciled months and a chart of accounts that grew without a plan. When that is the case, we start with a full QuickBooks cleanup and optimization, get every account reconciled, and rebuild the structure before layering the inventory tracking back on top. If the books are also months behind, that first step is catch-up bookkeeping, quoted flat after a free review. From there, flat-rate monthly bookkeeping keeps the file accurate.
Raw Materials, Work in Progress, and Where Value Hides
A manufacturer's money spends a lot of its life as something other than cash. It sits in a pile of steel that has not been cut, in a half-finished order on the floor, and in finished goods waiting to ship. Each of those stages is inventory value, and if the books only see raw materials go out and finished goods come in, everything in between disappears from the numbers. We track the stages that matter for how you actually build, so a large materials purchase does not read as a loss the month it lands and a big backlog of work in progress is visible instead of invisible. For the fabricator we rebuilt, getting work in progress and materials tracked correctly was what turned a P&L management had stopped trusting back into a document they could plan against.
Purchasing timing matters just as much. Buy a year of a key material in one quarter and a file that expenses it immediately will show a terrible quarter followed by three great ones, none of which reflect the business. Recording those purchases as the inventory asset they are, and moving them to cost of goods sold as they get consumed, is what keeps monthly margins steady and honest. That is the quiet work behind a per-run margin number you can actually trust.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you fix inventory valuation errors in QuickBooks?
Yes. We restructured inventory tracking for an Orlando metal fabricator and corrected a $22,000 valuation error, then established accurate materials and direct-labor allocations so margins reported correctly.
Do you track cost of goods sold for manufacturers?
Yes. We structure the accounts so cost of goods sold moves with actual shipments and materials and labor allocate to the right jobs, giving you margin reporting per production run.
Can you connect our job-costing software to QuickBooks?
Yes. We link job-costing and production software to QuickBooks Online so material and labor costs flow through automatically instead of being entered by hand.
How much does manufacturing bookkeeping cost?
Monthly bookkeeping starts at $200 and scales with volume. Inventory rebuilds and cleanups are quoted flat after a free assessment, with no hourly billing.
Do you handle both inventory tracking and job costing together?
Yes. For custom and made-to-order manufacturers the two go hand in hand: inventory tracks the materials and job costing ties material and labor to each production run. We set both up in QuickBooks so they reconcile, and we serve manufacturers across Orlando and Central Florida, including Winter Park, Windermere, and Lake Nona.