How it runs for retail stores
Lender and landlord reports, including percentage-rent sales certifications, come from the same closed figures.
What is outsourced financial reporting?
Outsourced financial reporting means a remote accounting team prepares your periodic financial statements and management reports instead of an in-house controller. The team works from your own accounting file, applies a consistent close and review process, and issues a report pack on a fixed date each month. You keep the data, the software and the decisions.
What we handle for retail stores
- Store-level P&L with gross margin, occupancy and labor as a percent of sales
- Category margin report from POS sales and landed cost
- Inventory value, turns and days on hand on the balance sheet pack
- Sales-tax liability by jurisdiction reconciled and shown
- Percentage-rent sales certifications and lender packages from closed books
The KPI that matters here
Report pack issued within 2 business days of the close with a written variance note.
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
Financial reporting in other industries
Frequently asked questions
Can you report gross margin by product category?
Yes, when your POS records cost at the item level we combine its category sales and cost export with landed-cost adjustments from the ledger to produce a category margin table each month. Where the POS lacks item cost we report margin by department using purchase data. Either way, categories that lose money after freight and shrink become visible.
What reports do landlords and lenders usually want from a store?
Mall and percentage-rent landlords want a periodic gross-sales certification by store; lenders want a P&L, balance sheet and sometimes inventory and receivable aging for a borrowing base. All of these come from the closed books, so the figures agree with each other and with the sales-tax returns. We prepare them for your signature.
How do you compare stores of different sizes?
By expressing every cost line as a percentage of that store's sales and by reporting sales per square foot and per labor hour where you supply the inputs. Same-store sales against the prior year separate growth from new openings. The KPI dashboards service for retail stores turns these comparisons into a weekly view for the owner.
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