Independent bookkeeping & advisory firm · Serving clients nationwide, remotely
Your Shopify dashboard shows gross sales. Your bank shows a smaller, irregular Shopify Payments deposit — net of processing fees, refunds, chargebacks, and held funds. We reconcile gross order value to net payout for every deposit, book gift-card and sales-tax liability where they belong, and tie in Shop Pay, PayPal, and your POS. We keep the records and the by-state numbers your CPA needs; your CPA confirms nexus and files.
If your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Shopify accounting reconciles gross order value to each net Shopify Payments payout, booking processing fees as expense, refunds and chargebacks as contra-revenue, and collected sales tax and unredeemed gift cards as liabilities, in your own QuickBooks file. It is a fixed monthly fee of $500–$2,500+/mo against a written scope, set by order volume and channels.
They took something that felt overwhelming to me as a first-year business owner and made it simple.
What stood out the most was TechBrot Inc’s attention to detail.
| In one Shopify payout | On the deposit — what you see | Reconciled — how we book it |
|---|---|---|
| Gross order value | Never matches the deposit | Booked as revenue, gross |
| Shopify Payments processing fees | Silently subtracted from the payout | Booked as an expense, visible on the P&L |
| Refunds & chargebacks | Netted against sales | Booked as contra-revenue, tracked separately |
| Collected sales tax | Mixed into gross order value | Booked as a liability you generally remit, not income |
| Gift cards sold vs redeemed | Treated like a normal sale | Booked as a liability until the card is redeemed |
| Shopify reserves & holdbacks | Deposit looks short | Tracked as a receivable until released |
Nearly every messy Shopify file fails in the same three areas. Knowing which one you’re in tells us where to start.
Shopify Payments deposits net of fees, refunds, and reserves, so a single payout never equals your gross order value. Booked as one number, revenue is understated and processing fees vanish from your P&L. The fix is payout-level reconciliation that ties gross order value to each net deposit, separating revenue, fees, refunds, and tax — every payout, every month. If you’ve never reconciled a payout, your margins are currently fiction. It’s fixable.
Collected sales tax and gift-card sales flow through gross order value, but neither is revenue — tax is money you generally remit, and a gift card is a liability until it’s redeemed. Booked as income, your revenue is inflated and your obligations are invisible. The fix is booking both as liabilities, with clean by-state sales-tax records and gift-card balances tracked to redemption. We keep the records; your CPA or state authority makes the nexus and filing call.
Once you add Shopify POS, Shop Pay, or PayPal, the same order can appear to settle twice, or a channel’s fees can go unbooked entirely. Totals stop tying out. The fix is reconciling every channel and processor to a single source of truth in QuickBooks, so revenue is counted once and every fee lands on the P&L — the foundation for accurate monthly bookkeeping.
Every engagement is scoped to your channels and order volume, delivered in your own QuickBooks file by your TechBrot team, with every close reviewed by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
Gross order value tied to each net Shopify Payments payout — processing fees, refunds, chargebacks, and reserves separated correctly, every deposit, never netted into one number.
Collected sales tax and unredeemed gift cards booked as liabilities — not income — with clean by-state records and gift-card balances tracked to redemption.
Shopify POS, Shop Pay, and third-party processors like PayPal reconciled alongside Shopify Payments, so revenue is counted once and every fee hits the P&L.
COGS and inventory maintained in QuickBooks by SKU and channel, including landed cost where relevant, so gross margin on your Shopify catalog is accurate and decision-ready.
A Shopify-ready chart of accounts and correct QuickBooks setup, with the right connector apps posting clean summarized journal entries from your Shopify admin into the file.
Untangle netted payouts, correct sales tax and gift cards booked as income, and reconcile each channel to a known-good baseline before monthly bookkeeping begins.
Run more than one store, or sell on another channel alongside Shopify? If it pays out to a bank account, we can reconcile it. Ask on a call.
Every Shopify engagement follows the same four-phase rhythm — payouts reconciled first, profit visibility second, advisory third.
A 30-minute call to map your Shopify setup — channels, processors, order volume, gift cards, and where the books drift from the deposits. No pitch.
If needed, a cleanup to untangle netted payouts and correct mis-booked tax and gift cards, plus the right QuickBooks setup and connector apps for Shopify.
Every Shopify Payments payout reconciled gross-to-net, all channels and processors tied out, with COGS and by-state sales-tax records maintained.
A monthly financial package with channel-level margin and, as you scale, cash-flow and growth advisory.
Once every Shopify payout reconciles and your margins are real, the question changes from “do the books match the bank?” to “what do we do about them?” Which products to scale, when a discount or free-shipping threshold actually pays for itself, how margin holds up against rising ad costs and processing fees — the decisions that move a Shopify business.
That’s where advisory comes in: a QuickBooks ProAdvisor who knows your numbers turning them into cash-flow, pricing, and growth decisions. Accurate books come first; then that judgment turns them into decisions. As automation commoditizes basic bookkeeping, this advisory layer is where the value — and the margin — now lives. Explore fractional CFO & advisory
Checked against TechBrot’s methodology.
Because the payout is netted before it reaches your bank. Shopify subtracts processing fees, refunds, and chargebacks, and may hold a reserve, so the deposit is smaller and irregular. Accurate books reconcile gross order value to each net payout, booking revenue gross, fees as expense, refunds and chargebacks as contra-revenue, and reserves as a receivable until released.
We post summarized journal entries from your Shopify admin into your own QuickBooks file — typically per payout or per period — rather than importing every individual order. Each entry separates revenue, fees, refunds, sales tax, and gift cards, and is reconciled to the matching bank deposit. Where a connector app such as A2X fits your volume, we use it to generate clean summaries.
On your own Shopify store, you generally are. Unlike a marketplace facilitator, Shopify does not remit sales tax on your behalf for your own store — Shopify Tax helps calculate it, but the seller is generally the responsible party. TechBrot keeps the by-state records and reconciles what was collected; whether you have nexus, where to register, and when to file are determined with your CPA or the relevant state authority.
Yes. Each settles differently — Shopify POS for in-person sales, Shop Pay through Shopify Payments, and third-party processors like PayPal on their own schedule. We reconcile every channel and processor so total revenue is counted once and every fee lands on the P&L, with no double-counting across them.
A gift card is a liability when sold and only becomes revenue when redeemed, so we book the sale to a gift-card liability account and recognize revenue on redemption. Chargebacks and refunds are booked as contra-revenue and tracked separately rather than quietly netted against sales, so both your revenue and your dispute exposure stay visible.
With a cleanup. We untangle netted payouts, correct sales tax or gift cards that were booked as income, reconcile each channel to a known-good baseline, then transition into accurate monthly bookkeeping. This is a representative path, not a promised outcome — a messy Shopify file is the normal starting point. See pricing for how scope is set.