Ecommerce Accounting 101: What Founders Need to Track
You started a store to sell products, not to keep books. But the numbers decide whether the business works, and ecommerce accounting is how
Plain-English breakdowns of margin, cash flow, inventory, and Amazon economics, written for the operators running the business.
Contribution margin, COGS, pricing, promos
13-week forecasting, CCC, burn & runway
Reorder points, forecasting, landed cost
Budget vs actual, models, scenarios
Margin, CAC, retention & ops benchmarks
Ratios, KPI packs, public-company teardowns
FBA fees, ACoS/TACoS, reconciliation
Ecom accounting, COGS, cash vs accrual
Starting, funding, valuation, finance terms
You started a store to sell products, not to keep books. But the numbers decide whether the business works, and ecommerce accounting is how
Return one order in five and the “average” return rate stops being an abstraction. The average ecommerce return rate runs close to 19% of
The price you list at isn’t the money you keep. Between Amazon’s referral fee, the FBA fulfillment fee, storage, and the returns you’ll eat,
There are hundreds of ecommerce metrics and a handful that run the business. The rest are noise on a chart — nice to glance
A 13-week cash flow forecast shows the cash moving in and out of your store, week by week, for the next quarter. It’s the
Landed cost is what a unit truly costs by the time it reaches your shelf — the supplier’s price plus the freight, duty, insurance,
Budget vs actual puts what you planned next to what happened, line by line, so you can see where the month went off script.
Lead time is the number of days between placing a purchase order and having the stock ready to sell. Get it right and your
Safety stock is the buffer inventory you hold to keep selling when demand runs hot or a shipment shows up late. Size it well
Break-even ROAS is the return on ad spend (ROAS) where a sale exactly covers its own costs — the product, the fees to sell
Contribution margin is what one sale leaves behind after its variable costs. It’s the money left to cover your fixed costs — rent, salaries,
