What is ecommerce bookkeeping?
Ecommerce bookkeeping is recording each order, fee, refund and payout so a bank deposit can be traced back to the sales behind it.
Selling online changes one thing about the books: the deposit in the bank is not the sale. Shopify says its Payments activity report shows a breakdown of transactions, fees and payouts for a chosen date range, and the money itself is transferred to the payout bank account that was set up with Shopify Payments. The meaning of bookkeeping stays the same, but every deposit now hides a pile of orders, card fees and refunds.
I sell beans through my own Shopify store and on Amazon, so one week of sales arrives as two sets of payouts with two sets of fees. If you are new to the idea, the meaning of bookkeeping is the place to start, and more starting points for new bookkeepers sit in the same section. Recording and interpreting are two jobs, and where bookkeeping ends and accounting begins decides who needs to see these entries.
What the ledger needs from each order
Each order needs three lines in the ledger: the sale, the fee the platform keeps and any refund. Shopify lets a store choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts, so a second job is grouping those orders by the payout that carried them. When the grouping is right, one bank deposit matches one set of entries and the monthly bank check stays short.
Two stores make that harder. A café has a till and cash, and bookkeeping for food businesses uses different habits from web orders. Three businesses mean three ledgers, so books for more than one company is a question of its own.
Letting software do the posting
Typing orders into a ledger works while there are few of them. After that, a connector reads the store and posts the entries. Shopify payout connectors are ranked separately, and how A2X and Synder differ comes down to working from payout data or syncing transactions.
If the ledger itself is the open question, software for online sellers covers the accounting side. Sales tax is the other add-on that online sellers meet, and tools that compete with TaxJar are one route for stores that ship to many states.
Tax and the bank
Shipping beans to customers in many states means each state can have its own sales tax rules. Software that tracks and files sales tax does the filing work, and the boundary note below says who decides whether a filing is needed at all.
Last, the deposit still has to be checked against the bank statement each month. Bank reconciliation questions walk through that check.
Common questions
Why does a Shopify payout never match my sales?
A payout is the money left after fees and refunds. The Shopify Payments activity report shows a breakdown of transactions, fees and payouts for a chosen date range, and that breakdown explains the gap.
How often does Shopify pay out?
A store can choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts, so the ledger needs a way to group orders by payout.
Do I need a connector or can I type it in?
Typing works while orders are few. Past that, a connector such as A2X, from $29 a month for Shopify, or Synder, from $65 a month, does the posting.