E-Commerce Books That Survive Contact With Reality
Platform payouts aren't revenue. Deposits aren't profit. Between Shopify, Amazon, payment processors, ad spend, and returns sits the truth about your business — and most e-commerce books never find it. Fairlight does.
✓ Payout reconciliation ✓ True landed-cost COGS ✓ Multi-state sales tax
Built for E-Commerce
E-Commerce Businesses We Work With
Shopify and DTC brands
owned-channel sellers where ad spend, conversion, and contribution margin decide everything.
Amazon sellers (FBA and FBM)
settlement reports decoded, fees mapped, and reserve balances tracked instead of guessed.
Multi-channel sellers
Shopify plus Amazon plus Etsy plus wholesale, measured by channel and reconciled as one business.
Subscription box and consumables brands
recurring revenue, churn, and inventory forecasting in one tangle worth untangling.
Dropshippers and print-on-demand
thin-margin models where supplier costs, refunds, and processor fees decide if you actually made money.
Cross-border sellers
Canadian-owned U.S. e-commerce entities and U.S. sellers expanding into Canada, where the tax questions multiply.
Cross-border accounting →Why E-Commerce Books Lie
Payout accounting
booking deposits as revenue hides fees, refunds, and reserves, overstating sales and understating costs in one move
COGS without landed costs
product cost alone ignores freight, duties, and prep, inflating your gross margin until reality bills you
Sales tax nexus sprawl
economic nexus thresholds crossed state by state as you grow, often without anyone noticing until a notice arrives
Inventory across locations
stock in your garage, a 3PL, and FBA warehouses, with the books tracking none of it
Ad spend versus contribution margin
ROAS that looks great while the business loses money after shipping, fees, and returns
Returns and chargebacks
revenue reversed weeks after it was booked, quietly distorting every month's numbers
What Fairlight Does for E-Commerce
Platform payout reconciliation
Shopify, Amazon settlements, Stripe, and PayPal broken into gross sales, fees, refunds, and reserves — booked correctly, tied to the bank
True COGS and landed costs
freight, duties, and prep built into product costs, so gross margin means something
Channel-level profitability
each sales channel measured on its own revenue, fees, and fulfillment costs
Multi-state sales tax management
nexus monitoring as you grow, registrations where required, and filings handled
Inventory accounting
purchases, 3PL and FBA stock, and shrink reconciled into numbers you can plan buys against
Growth-stage CFO advisory
cash flow forecasting for inventory buys, contribution-margin analysis, and the financial groundwork for raising or selling
The Full Stack, One Firm
E-Commerce Bookkeeping
payouts, inventory, channel P&Ls
Learn more →E-Commerce Tax
multi-state sales tax, entity strategy, year-round planning
Learn more →E-Commerce CFO Advisory
contribution margin, inventory cash planning
Learn more →Cross-Border Selling
Canadian-owned U.S. stores and cross-border structures
Learn more →How E-Commerce businesses typically work with us
Deposits booked as revenue
platform deposits booked as sales, hiding fees and refunds.
rebuild from settlement reports so sales and costs are real.
Margin that includes everything
COGS counts product cost only.
build freight, duties, and prep into landed cost so gross margin means something.
A Canadian-owned U.S. store
a U.S. Shopify store run through an LLC by a Canadian owner.
handle Form 5472, treaty questions, and both countries' filings.
Representative situations, not specific clients — details are generalized.
Engagement paths
Start with the return
Begin with a clean, correctly filed return — no monthly commitment to start.
Monthly books + tax
Keep the books clean every month, then add tax and advisory on one bill as you grow.
See the plans →Fractional CFO
Forecasts, the numbers that matter, and a finance partner for the big calls.
See CFO advisory →Not sure which? A short call sorts it — we'll tell you the one thing worth doing first.
What you can count on
- Deposits separated from reality — platform payouts broken into gross sales, fees, refunds, and reserves and tied to the bank, so you know what you actually made.
- Clear scope and pricing — every price quoted before any work begins, never an hourly surprise.
- One firm, the whole picture — books, tax, payroll, and advisory under one roof, so nothing gets re-explained to a new vendor at the worst moment.
Who you work with
Fairlight's founder held senior finance roles inside e-commerce and consumer businesses — payout files and 3PL invoices are familiar territory.
The team holds CPA credentials in both the United States and Canada, so your books, your return, and the bigger decisions are handled under one roof — and cross-border situations get both countries in-house.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you work with A2X or similar connectors?
Yes — A2X and similar tools that translate platform settlements into clean journal entries are part of our standard e-commerce stack, configured and reviewed by us.
How do I know where I owe sales tax?
Economic nexus rules differ by state — most trigger around $100,000 in sales into that state. We monitor your footprint and tell you when registration is needed, before the state tells you.
I'm a Canadian running a U.S. Shopify store through an LLC. What filings do I have?
Likely Form 5472 with a pro forma 1120 at minimum, possibly more depending on structure — and it's a filing with severe penalties for missing it. Start with our cross-border assessment.
Can you fix books where deposits were booked as revenue?
Yes — that's the most common e-commerce cleanup we see. We rebuild from settlement reports, and the corrected margins usually change how owners think about their business.
Find Out What You Actually Made Last Month
Book a free consultation — we'll look at one month of payouts together and show you the difference between deposits and reality.