How it runs for retail stores
A named LedgerBPO accountant posts sales from Shopify POS, Square or Lightspeed by tender and tax code, matches batches and cash to deposits, records supplier bills to inventory or cost of goods sold, and reconciles every account monthly inside your QuickBooks Online or Xero file.
What is outsourced bookkeeping?
Outsourced bookkeeping means a remote accounting team records, categorizes and reconciles your business transactions instead of an employee doing it in-house. You keep ownership of the accounting file and the bank relationship. The provider works inside your software on a fixed schedule, so the books are ready for reporting, tax and lending whenever you need them.
What we handle for retail stores
- Z-reports posted daily by tender type, tax rate and store
- Card batches matched to net deposits with processor fees recorded
- Cash drawer counts reconciled to deposits, with over-and-short tracked
- Supplier invoices, freight and duty recorded to inventory or cost of goods
- Gift-card, layaway and store-credit liabilities kept separate from sales
The KPI that matters here
Books reconciled and store-level P&L issued within 5 business days of month-end.
Retail compliance notes
Sales tax collection and remittance
Sales tax collected at the register belongs to the state and, in many places, to a city or county too, each with its own rate and filing frequency. We reconcile the tax collected in your POS to the liability in the ledger every month and prepare the workings for each jurisdiction. Your registered preparer or your Avalara or TaxJar subscription files the return; we prepare, we do not file.
Economic nexus for online sales
Since the Wayfair decision in 2018, a store selling online can owe sales tax in states where it has no premises once it passes that state's threshold, commonly $100,000 in sales or 200 transactions. We track sales by ship-to state from Shopify or your marketplace reports and flag when a threshold is near so you and your advisor can register in time.
Inventory shrinkage and counts
Shrink from theft, damage, miscounts and vendor errors reduces gross margin and, if unrecorded, overstates both inventory on the balance sheet and profit. We book count adjustments when you supply cycle or full counts, separate known write-offs such as damaged goods from unexplained variance, and report shrink as a percentage of sales each period.
Gift cards and unclaimed property
Gift-card sales are recorded as a liability and released to revenue on redemption, with breakage recognized only under the method your CPA sets. Several states treat unredeemed balances as unclaimed property after a dormancy period. We keep a card-level liability schedule so the annual unclaimed-property review is a report, not a reconstruction.
Retail software we work in
- Shopify
- Square
- QuickBooks Online
- Xero
- Avalara
- TaxJar
- Dext
- Lightspeed
- Clover
- All 50 platforms
More for retail stores
Other services for retail
Frequently asked questions
How does retail bookkeeping differ from bookkeeping for a service business?
Retail books have three extra layers: daily sales posting by tender and tax rate, inventory and cost of goods sold that move separately from cash, and a sales-tax liability that must reconcile to the register. A service business mostly invoices and pays bills. We build the retail layers into the file so the monthly P&L shows real gross margin.
Do you need access to my POS as well as my accounting software?
Read-only access to your POS reporting is enough, and it saves you exporting Z-reports every day. We pull daily sales summaries from Shopify POS, Square, Lightspeed or Clover and post them to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Where an integration exists we set it up and check it daily; where it does not we post from the reports.
How do you handle returns, exchanges and store credit?
Returns are posted as a reduction of sales with the tax reversed, exchanges as a return plus a new sale, and store credit issued as a liability until it is used. Keeping these separate from gross sales means margin, sales tax and the gift-card liability are all right. Card refunds are matched to the processor's refund lines during reconciliation.
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