The error that hides in almost every seller's books
The illustration above is one real TikTok Shop settlement. The seller made $18,204.90. The bank received $12,847.33. The $5,357.57 difference isn't a rounding issue — it's commission, affiliate payouts, refunds and a reserve, and every one of those belongs in your books as its own line.
Record only the deposit and three things happen at once: your revenue is understated, your expenses are missing entirely, and your gross margin looks better than it is. You then make inventory and ad-spend decisions on that number.
How we do it instead
- A chart of accounts built for e-commerce. Separate accounts for referral fees, fulfilment fees, ad spend, refunds, reserves and chargebacks — per channel, so the P&L answers real questions.
- Settlements imported properly. A2X or Link My Books maps each settlement to its components automatically, which means it happens every time and not just when someone remembers.
- COGS matched to sales, not to purchases. Booking inventory as COGS when you pay for it makes margin swing 10–20 points month to month for no real reason. Accrual handling fixes it.
- Reserves and payout timing tracked, so the month a sale happened is the month it appears.
- Margin reported by channel, because "we're profitable overall" is not a strategy.
Channels we work in every day
- Amazon — bi-weekly settlements, FBA fees, reserves, the full settlement split
- Shopify — Shopify Payments, third-party gateways, app subscriptions and chargebacks
- TikTok Shop — affiliate commissions, platform subsidies, the fastest-growing mess in the industry
- Walmart, Etsy, eBay, Faire — each with its own payout logic
- Wholesale and retail alongside DTC, including net terms and chargebacks
What it costs
Essential
One channel, up to ~500 transactions a month.
Growth
Two to three channels with inventory-aware COGS.
Multichannel Pro
Four or more channels, wholesale alongside DTC, margin by channel.
If the existing file needs fixing first, that's a cleanup at $450 per month of backlog — quoted up front, after the free diagnostic.
Straight answers
We're a foreign-owned US LLC. Is that a problem?
It's most of what we do. It also comes with an obligation many owners find out about too late: Form 5472 carries a $25,000 penalty for non-filing, per year, even with zero income.
Do you handle sales tax?
Yes, as an add-on at $150 per state per month. We'll also tell you honestly where you do and don't have nexus, rather than signing you up for filings you don't owe.
Do I need A2X? That's another subscription.
For most multi-channel sellers it pays for itself immediately in accuracy and time. If your volume is low enough that manual splits make more sense, we'll say so — we don't take a cut either way.
How does this start?
Free 48-hour diagnostic. Read-only access, a written memo back on what's misbooked and what it's costing you. Yours to keep whether you work with us or not.
Find out what your real margin is.
Free 48-hour diagnostic on your QuickBooks, returned as a written memo. No call, no obligation.
Email us — takes 30 secondsNo sales calls. The whole process happens in writing.