Retail & E-Commerce Bookkeeping Services

Modern retail and e-commerce businesses sell through multiple channels simultaneously, creating complex accounting challenges that require specialized expertise. Our multi-channel integration services consolidate sales data from physical retail locations, branded e-commerce websites (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce), online marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy), and social commerce platforms (Instagram Shop, Facebook Marketplace) into unified, accurate financial records.

We implement automated systems that synchronize sales, inventory, and customer data across all channels in real-time, preventing overselling and optimizing inventory allocation. Our multi-channel accounting systems track revenue by channel, manage the complex fee structures of different marketplaces (Amazon referral fees, eBay final value fees, Etsy transaction fees), and calculate true profitability per channel after all costs. Retail businesses gain visibility into which channels perform best, understand customer acquisition costs by channel, and make data-driven decisions about where to focus marketing and inventory investments.

Our consolidated reporting combines all channels into comprehensive financial statements while maintaining detailed channel-level analytics. We track gross margin by channel, inventory performance across locations, and customer lifetime value by acquisition channel. E-commerce businesses benefit from automated sales tax calculation for multi-province sales, inventory synchronization preventing stockouts, and reduced administrative time through automated data flow. Multi-channel retailers typically see 20-30% improvement in inventory efficiency and 15-25% reduction in overselling through proper integration and tracking.

Inventory represents one of the largest investments for retail businesses, yet poor inventory management leads to stockouts, overstock situations, excessive carrying costs, and reduced profitability. Our retail inventory management services provide comprehensive tracking across multiple locations, hundreds or thousands of SKUs, and various sales channels with real-time visibility and automated optimization. We implement sophisticated inventory systems that track cost of goods sold accurately using appropriate costing methods (FIFO, weighted average, specific identification) based on your business type and inventory characteristics.

Our retail inventory solutions include automated reorder point management based on sales velocity and lead times, demand forecasting that anticipates seasonal fluctuations and trends, and cycle counting programs that improve inventory accuracy without disrupting operations. We track inventory shrinkage by category and location, identify high-loss items requiring additional security, and implement controls that reduce theft and administrative errors. E-commerce businesses benefit from automated inventory synchronization between online stores and physical retail locations, preventing the common problem of overselling items that are actually out of stock.

Our inventory analytics provide insights into inventory turnover by SKU, identify slow-moving items tying up capital, and highlight fast-moving products requiring increased stock levels. We track gross margin return on investment (GMROII) by product category, helping you understand which inventory generates the best returns on capital invested. Retail and e-commerce businesses typically see 30-40% reduction in stockouts, 20-30% decrease in inventory carrying costs, and 15-25% improvement in cash flow through optimized inventory management. Our systems support multi-location inventory transfers, vendor-managed inventory (VMI) programs, and just-in-time inventory strategies that minimize holding costs while ensuring product availability.

E-commerce businesses process payments through multiple platforms—Stripe for online sales, Square for in-store transactions, PayPal for international customers, Shopify Payments for branded stores, and marketplace payments from Amazon and eBay—creating complex reconciliation challenges that require specialized expertise. Our payment processor integration services provide seamless connection with all major payment processors, enabling real-time transaction synchronization and automated daily reconciliation that matches transaction records across your e-commerce platforms, payment processors, and bank accounts.

We implement systems that track all payment processor fees in detail—discount rates, per-transaction fees, cross-border fees for international sales, currency conversion fees, chargeback fees, and refund processing costs—providing true visibility into your payment processing costs by method and processor. Our fee tracking helps you understand which payment methods are most cost-effective, negotiate better rates with processors based on actual volume, and optimize payment method selection for customers. E-commerce businesses often discover they're paying 2-4% more in payment processing than necessary due to incorrect rate tiers, unnecessary international fees, or suboptimal payment method mix.

Our payment processor reconciliation automatically identifies discrepancies between expected and actual settlements, flags duplicate or missing transactions, and generates detailed reports by payment method and processor. We handle the complex timing differences between sales transactions, processor settlements, and bank deposits, ensuring accurate cash flow forecasting and financial reporting. Retail and e-commerce businesses benefit from 80-90% reduction in manual reconciliation time, accurate tracking of payment costs (often 2-3% of revenue), and improved visibility into payment performance that helps optimize processor selection and reduce fees. Our systems also track chargeback rates by processor, helping identify payment methods with higher fraud risk and implement strategies to reduce chargebacks.

Returns and chargebacks significantly impact e-commerce profitability, yet many businesses lack proper systems to track these costs accurately. Return rates for e-commerce typically range from 15-30%, compared to 8-10% for physical retail, creating substantial costs in return shipping, restocking labor, inventory depreciation, and lost sales. Our returns management services provide comprehensive tracking of return rates by product, category, customer segment, and reason code, giving you the insights needed to optimize return policies and reduce losses.

We implement returns management systems that automatically process return requests, update inventory levels for returned items, issue refunds or process exchanges, and track all associated costs including return shipping labels, restocking labor time, and processing costs. Our analytics identify products with abnormally high return rates, helping you identify quality issues, misleading product descriptions, or sizing problems that drive returns. We track return costs by customer segment, identifying whether returns correlate with new customers, specific acquisition channels, or particular marketing campaigns that may be setting incorrect expectations.

For chargebacks, we implement tracking systems that monitor chargeback rates by payment processor and reason code, identify patterns indicating friendly fraud or actual fraud, and help you build documentation for chargeback dispute resolution. Our systems track win rates for chargeback disputes, identify products or customer segments with higher chargeback risk, and implement strategies to reduce chargebacks through better communication, fraud prevention tools, and optimized checkout processes. Retail and e-commerce businesses typically see 15-25% reduction in return rates through improved product quality, better sizing information, optimized photography, and clearer product descriptions. Our returns analytics also help optimize return policies—finding the balance between generous returns that drive conversion and excessive returns that erode profitability.

E-commerce businesses selling across provincial borders face complex GST/HST compliance challenges that don't exist for purely local businesses. Different provinces have different tax rates—some have harmonized sales tax (HST) ranging from 13-15%, while others have separate GST (5%) and PST with varying rates from 0-10%. Place of supply rules for online sales can be unclear, particularly for digital products, software, and services. Marketplace facilitators like Amazon collect and remit tax on some sales but not others, creating complexity in tracking what tax has already been collected versus what you're responsible for remitting.

Our retail and e-commerce accounting services provide comprehensive sales tax compliance that ensures accurate tax collection, reporting, and remittance for multi-province online sales. We implement automated sales tax calculation that applies the correct tax rate based on customer location, product type (some items are exempt or zero-rated), and current CRA place of supply rules. Our systems track tax collected by province and tax type, generate detailed reports for GST/HST return filing, and maintain proper documentation to support tax calculations in case of audit.

We handle the complexity of marketplace facilitator tax collection, ensuring you don't double-pay taxes on marketplace sales while properly accounting for taxes collected on direct website sales. Our systems track when tax collection switches between you and marketplace facilitators, maintain records of marketplace tax collected, and properly reflect this in your GST/HST reporting. For businesses selling internationally, we also manage Canadian GST/HST on sales to foreign customers versus domestic sales, applying appropriate rules based on customer location and product type. Retail and e-commerce businesses gain confidence in their tax compliance, reduced audit risk through proper documentation, accurate tax tracking that prevents overpayment or underpayment penalties, and automated systems that handle tax complexity so you can focus on growing your business.