Perhaps the most important financial metric for any eCommerce business, and one of the hardest to calculate at scale, is the net profit you make on every item sold.
Well, Seller Ledger has just rolled out the “holy grail” of eCommerce reports – the ability to see your profit on each item sale.
Do you know which products are actually making you money?
Net profit per item sale is what you’re left with after subtracting all directly-linked expenses from the income you produce by selling an item. It’s the ultimate bottom line.
But figuring out this number is incredibly difficult, particularly if you sell on more than one channel. You need to account for so many potential numbers, which vary widely by channel:
Sales price
Any discounts offered
Shipping charges you may collect from the buyer
Sales commissions paid to the listing platform
Potential payment processing fees
Advertising/promotion/boosting fees
Potential inventory storage fees
and many more
And while each platform provides these numbers, they are not always presented together in a single view.
Then, there’s what is often the single biggest determination of your profit – cost of goods sold. Most platforms don’t know this, and a lot of sellers prefer not to share it (for good reason – given concerns about platforms using that data against them.)
The classic solution—spreadsheets!
Sellers have been using spreadsheets to try to figure this out for decades. In fact, there are lots of experienced sellers and influencers across the web offering spreadsheet templates to help sellers track these numbers.
Does this look familiar?
While very good at calculating the numbers you want to see, there is one massive limitation in these spreadsheets: the amount of time to keep them up to date. If only these spreadsheets could update themselves.
Well, that’s basically what Seller Ledger now does.
Actual profit, for every product, by channel—all in one place
If you go to the Reports tab, you will see a new sub-tab called “Gross and Net Profit”. This replaces and expands the prior “Gross Profit” report. Click into it to see your full profit picture by product.
You can view by individual channel or by all of them. If you have sold the same product in multiple channels, you’ll be able to expand that row and see and compare the profit numbers between those channels.
In addition, for those sellers with a LOT of inventory, you can search both by product name and SKU.
What you can do with this information
Knowing how much you make on each item, on each channel, gives you the power to make smarter decisions in your business:
Source better products: You are now armed with the most accurate information on which items generate the most profit. Find more of them.
Spend your ad dollars better: Make sure your advertising/promotional spend is paying off for you
Change your pricing on each channel: You can now factor in all costs from a channel to see if pricing needs to be adjusted.
Allocate inventory differently: Prioritize the channel/product combinations that make you the most profit.
Stop losing money: Identify any products on any specific channels and stop selling them.
How to get the most from this report
In order to get set up to have this information at your fingertips, there a few things that will help tremendously when using Seller Ledger.
Connect your sales channels: first, you need to connect your sales channel/platform to Seller Ledger. You can find our most current list here, and know that it is likely to continue growing.
Turn on inventory tracking: If you are just writing off “cost of goods sold” as you buy inventory, this level of insight won’t be available to you. But if you’d like to get this report, go to the Inventory tab and change your method to “Inventory Tracking.” We’ve also made it very easy to switch back if you prefer not to continue.
Load your item costs into Seller Ledger: Make sure you include unique SKUs for each item. As a reminder, you can add them individually, upload a receipt or even a CSV file.
Include SKU when listing your item: most platforms make this pretty obvious when listing, while others may require an extra step.
Not all platforms support automatic SKU matching
The following connected platforms don’t provide support for SKU fields: Mercari, Depop, Manapool
However, we do provide the ability to match sold items to inventory after-the-fact, so you can still get the insights you need.
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Have you been tracking business expenses in a spreadsheet for a while? Does the leap to traditional accounting software feel like more work than it’s worth? Well, no more.
In our never-ending quest to save sellers time, we’ve added the ability to upload expenses (and income transactions, if you so desire) in bulk, using CSV formatted files. Seller Ledger lets you keep all of that hard work and gives you a leg up when you want to try automating your accounting and bookkeeping.
How to upload your expenses
Just go to the Expenses tab, and you will now see a tab that says “Expense Uploads”. This is also where you can find the ability to upload many mileage trips at once.
Just follow the formatting guidelines on the screen (or take a look at our sample CSV template) and load your transactions. Plus, as an added bonus, you can include category names in there which, if they are the same as the ones you have in Seller Ledger, will group and total up your expenses and ensure they show up in the correct line of your tax report.
For income transactions, just do the same thing from the Income tab.
Simplify cost of goods sold if you don’t track inventory
If you don’t track inventory, but do have a running list of your cost of goods sold purchases, just include the “category” column and make sure to label those transactions as “Cost of Goods Sold.” Then check out how much more accurate your numbers look, including seeing your overall gross profit.
Stay tuned for more improvements in this general area. And keep sending us your feedback!
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To better help you manage the products you sell, Seller Ledger has added a new view under the Inventory tab. In addition, for those of you who are not tracking inventory (i.e. using a “cash-based” approach) and writing off cost of goods sold directly, you’ll notice that the Inventory tab now has more useful features.
Finding your products
Clicking into the Inventory tab, you will see a new sub-tab called “Products”. For those of you already tracking inventory, it will show to the right of the other tabs.
For those of you writing off cost of goods directly, you’ll also have access to the new Products tab, just without the extra Inventory tabs:
Editing your products
Click into your products tab to a see a list of every product that you have either sold or loaded purchase/cost information for. We show you each product’s name, SKU, how much has been sold and on what channels.
You can sort by product name, by SKU, number sold or revenue.
If you have multiple copies of the same product that use slightly different names, now you can correct that. The same holds for cases where you are missing SKUs or using the same SKU for different items. Correcting those makes it possible to fully automate your cost of goods sold and see your profit per order.
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Do you sell cards from top games like Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece and Disney Lorcana? Well, now there’s an easier way to track your sales and determine your profits. Using our updated Chrome browser extension, Seller Ledger will regularly import the key information you need to determine the profitability and taxes owed for your business, including:
Card and pack item prices
Shipping collected
Commissions
Transaction fees
Item fees
Payouts
Plus, if you track your inventory costs with unique SKUs, Seller Ledger will automatically tie those sales back to the item costs, reduce your inventory and update cost of goods sold.
Seller Ledger matches payouts to your bank deposits
Seller Ledger does something pretty powerful when we import your sales, fee and payout history from TCGplayer. We compare all imported transactions from TCGplayer to the payouts we receive and make sure the sum total of all of the transactions in the payout match the amount of each payout.
We even organize your transactions into two sections when you click into your TCGplayer account: “Not paid out” transactions and “Paid out” transactions. In fact, from the TCGplayer account summary view, you can click into any payout to see every single transaction that makes up that payout. This makes sure that your financial amounts from TCGplayer are accurate.
Lastly, if you choose to link your bank account to Seller Ledger, we will also automatically match the payouts that come from TCGplayer to the deposits when they show up in Seller Ledger. These are properly treated as transfers, so you avoid any risk of double counting.
How to automate your TCGplayer accounting
In order to link your TCGplayer account to Seller Ledger, you need only do the following:
1. You should use the Chrome browser when accessing Seller Ledger so that you can also make use of the second tool (below).
2. Once you are using Chrome, you will want to install Seller Ledger’s custom-built Browser Extension. This extension allows Seller Ledger to automatically pull down and import the proper transaction details.
Once you are properly set up, Seller Ledger will regularly access your TCGplayer account and retrieve the order, shipping, commission, fee, and payout information.
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In our continued efforts to simply eCommerce accounting, we’re pleased to announce the ability to sync your Square account with Seller Ledger. This provides the biggest step to better automate accounting for Square sellers. This functionality is now in open “beta”, meaning anyone can try it.
As we did before with our Shopify integration, we allow Square sellers to bring in both online and point-of-sale transactions.
To link your Square account, simply click the “Add Channels, Banks and Accounts” button on your dashboard. Then, click the Square logo:
Log in to Square and, once you are returned to Seller Ledger, we will begin importing you transaction history. Doing so will allow us to bring in sales, returns, fees and even sales tax that you may have collected – all broken out in detail and summarized to help you with tax filing.
And as with any new functionality, we’d love to hear any constructive feedback you might have. Email us at [email protected].
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As we have done with both eBay and Amazon, we also recently released the ability for Walmart customers to view the NET profit on each order.
Walmart profit per order
Click the “>>expand” link next to any order in your Walmart account. Under the category split totals that make up that order, you will see a new “related expenses” section that includes other fees and expenses that are tied to that order. This includes the Walmart commission charged for that order. In addition, if you purchase shipping labels through Walmart, we include that too.
Lastly, as mentioned when rolling out our Gross Profit report, if you track your inventory costs at the item level and use unique SKUs for each of your Walmart items, we will match those costs to the correct item. That, plus the other related expenses, helps you see the true NET profit for each order on Walmart.
If you are a Walmart seller who’d like this kind of visibility and automation in your accounting, give Seller Ledger a try. We offer a 30-day free trial, no credit card required.
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Whether you’re thinking of switching or just getting started, this step-by-step guide will help you choose the right solution for your Amazon business.
Amazon (and eCommerce) accounting comes with a rather unique set of challenges, above and beyond traditional business accounting. In addition to regular income and expense tracking, you can expect to face:
Lots of order transactions (if you’re lucky)
Even more fee transactions
Inventory and cost of goods sold tracking
Reconciling platform payouts vs your bank
The good news is, with modern software, you can shrink the time you spend on accounting for your Amazon business from hours a month to minutes.
How do I choose?
First, let’s assume that you’d like to get your Amazon data into your accounting software with as little customization and setup as possible. That will rule out platforms like Wave Accounting and FreshBooks, which not only don’t have direct integrations with Amazon, but they require using a general-purpose API (application programming interface) tool like Zapier to make it work. That’s a non-starter for most sellers.
Next, the key question becomes – how much (and what kind of) Amazon data do you want to bring into your accounting software. Specifically, do you want all of the transactions from Amazon or just summarized information?
Detailed vs Summarized Amazon Data
So what does it mean, to get detailed vs summarized Amazon data? Let’s take a look at each method:
Detailed transaction data
This means pulling in every order, including line items, discounts, sales tax collected and remitted, shipping collected and fees subtracted. It also means bringing in shipping label transactions, and LOTS of other Amazon fees.
What are the pros and cons of this approach?
Pros:
You get a detailed understanding of your Amazon accounting, not only at the P&L and balance sheet level, but also down to the net profit on every sale (if your solution can pull that off – more on this later.)
You can automate inventory and cost of goods calculations by mapping sales back to the original inventory purchases.
You avoid the issue of payouts that can span different periods (e.g. an early January payout that includes both December and January transactions.)
Cons:
A lot of folks (especially old-school CPAs) worry about “cluttering up” your books with too much detail, which can bog down your accounting platform’s performance. Amazon does produce an enormous number of small transactions.
Reconciling all of those transactions to the payouts and deposits to your bank can be a royal pain in the neck if your solution doesn’t do this for you (again, more on this later.)
Summarized data
Using this approach, instead of bringing in all Amazon transactions, you summarize them outside of your accounting platform, and instead, match the totals to each payout that shows up in your bank account.
The pros and cons of this approach are pretty much the reverse of the above:
Pros:
Reconciliation of all of those Amazon transaction totals to your payouts should be easier.
You avoid “cluttering up” your accounting software with details you may never need to dig into.
The performance of your accounting software remains high by limiting the data you add.
Cons:
You miss out on net profit calculations.
You can’t automate inventory/cost of goods calculations.
Payouts that span multiple months or years are still problematic.
Biased perspective
We’d like to take a quick moment to point out the following observations. We believe two of the most commonly referenced reasons for choosing the “summarized” approach stem from folks dealing with practical limitations of existing solutions.
First, the idea that a lot of data will “clutter up” accounting software is more a reflection of the design of that software than the data itself. Good software design, especially around the user interface, can do an awful lot to hide details until you’re ready to look for them. In addition, when a software solution already has a lot of non-eCommerce features that already “clutter up” the interface, perhaps avoiding those unused features would help.
Second, the argument about performance is equally fascinating. There are many other platforms that process exponentially more data than accounting platforms and yet are still performant. Just ask Google, Amazon, eBay and Shopify (or TaxJar.) So changing your desired behavior because of the scaling limitations of a platform seems suboptimal.
What are the best options?
In addition to looking at the data options from Amazon, you may have some other criteria specific to you and your business. How much do you want to do yourself vs outsource to an accountant or bookkeeper? Do you want something specifically designed for eCommerce? How much do you value simplicity? Are you price conscious?
We’ll go through the leading contenders in the space, based on current (2026) sentiment:
Seller Ledger
Seller Ledger is one of the newer players in the space, created by several of the original team members behind Outright/GoDaddy Bookkeeping and TaxJar. It provides both the accounting platform plus a direct Amazon integration (as well as many others) and chooses the “detailed transactions” approach.
Seller Ledger is specifically designed for eCommerce sellers, so it has a much simpler user interface and setup process that traditional accounting software. It also has a pricing model that starts much lower and grows with the size of your business. Additionally, it does not limit features based on pricing tiers.
Detailed transaction approach
Seller Ledger pulls in all transaction data from Amazon via a custom-built integration. It does not require any third party connectors. And while it does pull in every Amazon transaction, it also ties every single transaction to each payout, and matches those payouts directly to your bank account deposit. This addresses the concerns about payout reconciliation, because it is built into the system, and also avoids the timing issue when a payout occurs around the end of a period.
It groups all transactions related to each Amazon order (including fees, shipping labels, etc) so you can see your net profit per order. That includes cost of goods sold, if you are using unique SKUs. Plus, it can automate inventory levels using the FIFO (first-in, first-out) method.
If you want to outsource your Amazon accounting completely, you can use Seller Ledger and invite your accounting pro to access your data. But bookkeeping services are not included in the price of the software.
Plans start as low as $10/mo for very small sellers and go up based on monthly transaction volume.
Limitations/concerns
As of the time of this writing, Seller Ledger is primarily designed for US eCommerce sellers. It handles US income and sales tax very well, and now provides currency conversion that works really well for North American merchants with sales in MXN and CAD. For sales in other countries, we provide report filters by native currency.
It is also exclusively designed for eCommerce businesses, so if you require invoicing or other features for service-based businesses, you may want to look elsewhere.
QuickBooks Online or Xero + third party connector
The most familiar names in accounting software, these two classic platforms support all kinds of business types, not just Amazon businesses.
QuickBooks is by far the most popular accounting platform in the market. It has a direct integration option with Amazon, though most commentary suggests using a third party connector (A2X, Link My Books, Synder) to properly handle Amazon data. It is also more recommended for US-based businesses. However, QuickBooks is also relatively expensive and is notorious for raising prices (as in, up 35% in the last 3 years as of this writing.)
Xero has no direct integration with Amazon, relying instead on those same third party connectors. It tends to be much more recommended for non-US businesses (especially anyone based in New Zealand or Australia.) And it is quite a bit less expensive than QuickBooks.
Now let’s look at the third party connectors. While there are a lot of more general purpose middleware solutions out there (e.g. Zapier, Webgility, etc,) we are going to focus on the 3 that appear to be the best tailored for eCommerce.
A2X Accounting is well respected for their data accuracy and working especially well with QuickBooks. They use the “summarized” approach to bringing in Amazon data, though they have a creative solution for splitting payouts across periods. They are said to be a bit more complex than other solutions, and more expensive.
Link My Books, which also uses the “summarized” data approach, focuses a bit more on ease of use and VAT compliance. It is also a bit less expensive than A2X Accounting.
Synder is a more broad-based connector, working not only with Amazon and other marketplaces, but also with payment platforms like Stripe, PayPal and Square. They also support the “detailed” approach to Amazon data in your accounting platform. They tend to be a bit more complex, which, given their extra capabilities makes sense. And their pricing is a bit higher.
The combos
Given the performance and “clutter” concerns, and seeing the US vs non-US focuses, it would seem like the choices really come down to:
QuickBooks + A2X Accounting (if you are US-based)
Xero + Link My Books (for non-US businesses.)
In both cases, you will be using the “summarized” Amazon data approach, with the pros and cons mentioned earlier.
Both combinations are also designed very well to work with accounting professionals.
In terms of pricing, QuickBooks Online + A2X Accounting is going to be on the more expensive side, at likely $100-$200/mo to start (depending on how many channels you link and transactions you process.)
Xero + Link My Books appears to start at about half that rate and go up from there.
One additional thought: by using two different applications, it might make for fun customer support inquiries if/when something changes or breaks. And given how often Amazon adds or changes their fees, software updates are inevitable.
Finaloop
Another relatively new option, Finaloop is a “full service” solution for eCommerce businesses looking for software + bookkeeping all in one place. Like Seller Ledger, they provide the accounting platform and a direct integration with Amazon, using the “detailed” data approach. And similar to Synder, they also link to other marketplaces and payment platforms. But their big claim to fame is that their service also comes with team members who will do your bookkeeping for you.
With pricing that starts at $250/mo, the base pricing isn’t that much more expensive than QuickBooks + A2X Accounting. But, prices rise pretty quickly and are based on your business revenue.
Limitations/concerns
Given what happened to Bench Accounting, another startup that tried to build a “software + bookkeeping” business (more broadly than eCommerce,) you’ll want to make sure you can take your data with you if needed.
Summary Comparison
Seller Ledger
Best for:
Small to mid-sized Amazon sellers in the US
Those who want detailed Amazon data
Those who want an affordable option
QuickBooks + A2X Accounting
Best for:
Larger US-based Amazon sellers
Those who want summary level data
Those willing to pay for quality/reputation
Already have an accounting pro that likes this combination
Xero + Link My Books
Best for:
Larger non-US based Amazon sellers
Those who want summary data
Those looking for a more affordable summary solution
Already have an accounting pro that likes this combination
Finaloop
Best for:
Amazon sellers who want to outsource their bookkeeping but don’t already have an accounting pro
Those willing to pay for that outsourcing
Those who want detailed Amazon data
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While most of the major eCommerce marketplaces, like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy have robust APIs that make it possible for us to automatically import and categorize their transactions, a lot of newer and smaller marketplaces haven’t made that investment.
For some of the more popular ones, like Whatnot, Poshmark, Mercari and Depop, we’ve built a custom import tool for the transactions that they allow you to export. And we continue to evaluate other marketplaces.
But, in the meantime, we’ve recently rolled out the ability to track sales from any marketplace. You can now import order history from any online platform, so long as you can modify their transaction files to match our format. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Download your transaction history in CSV format
Log into your marketplace and find the place to access your order/transaction history. The more detailed the report, the better. Then, download it in a CSV (comma-separated) format – a very common format for exporting data.
To upload a file with order and refund details, Seller Ledger expects the following fields:
Required:
Order Date
Order ID
Customer Name
Product Name
Quantity
Unit Price
Ship To State
Ship To Zip
Ship To Country
Optional:
SKU
Shipping
Tax
Ship To Address
Ship To City
In fact, it may be easier to simply use our sample format file, which we provide here.
Step 4: Upload the new file to Seller Ledger
Click into your newly created marketplace account from the dashboard and click the “Upload history” tab.
You’ll want to choose the “Upload orders” option on the left. Click the “Choose File” button, select the reformatted file you just created, and click Save. Seller Ledger will begin importing your order history, complete with any product, fee and refund details that are provided.
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Sometimes you may find yourself with inventory that isn’t selling, so you think about donating it in the hopes of writing it off. The question is – can you write off inventory donations? And if so, how?
The good news and the bad news
The good news is: yes, you are permitted to donate unsold inventory. According to the IRS:
How much you can deduct
“the amount you can deduct is the smaller of its FMV on the day you contributed it or its basis”
FMV means “fair market value”, as in, what you could sell the item for. And basis is your full loaded cost for that item.
The bad news, at least for Schedule-C filers, is that you do not get to just write the donations off as part of cost of goods sold. From that same IRS publication:
How to classify donations
“You must remove the amount of your charitable contribution deduction from your opening inventory. It isn’t part of the cost of goods sold.”
What this is basically saying is that, instead of adding those donated items to your cost of goods sold total, you need to remove them from your inventory, then deduct the value of those items on Schedule A of your personal tax return.
Handling Inventory Donations in Seller Ledger
Fortunately, Seller Ledger allows you to remove donated items from inventory. When you click “Remove stock”, simply choose the “Remove for personal use” option.
This removes those items from your inventory without adding them to cost of goods sold. Instead, they will be treated as a “Not for business” expense.
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Recently, we wrote about how folks who source on eBay can track their purchases in Seller Ledger. Well, we’ve also heard that more and more resellers are sourcing from Whatnot, a fast-growing live-streaming sales platform. We already make it possible to import your Whatnot sales into Seller Ledger, but today, we’ll show you how to create inventory from your purchase history.
Step 1: Get your Whatnot purchase history in the right format
First, you’re going to want to download your Whatnot orders report for a given period of time. It will come in a CSV file format that, when you open it in a spreadsheet, will look something like this:
The good news, because it’s already in a CSV file format, you only need to make a few changes and it will upload to Seller Ledger just fine.
Step 2: Remove and rename columns
The vast majority of the columns in this file won’t be needed for uploading inventory. You can simply delete the following columns, which are not supported by our inventory upload feature
order id
order numeric id
buyer
seller
product description
product category
processed date
order status
order style
order currency
sold price
subtotal
shipping price
taxes
taxes currency
credits applied
Inbound cost of goods sold
Note: because the “total amount” column amount includes the inbound “shipping price” and “taxes” amounts, that “total amount” will be properly divided among the quantity of the items and be included in the item costs.
Keep the “product name” column header as is, as well as the header for “quantity.” But rename “total amount” column header to “total cost” to match the column headers we require.
Step 3: Create unique SKUs for each product
The most important step now is to add a new column, titled “sku” and to create unique SKUs for each item in this file. Then, when you list them on various platforms to sell (and include the corresponding SKU value,) Seller Ledger can tie the sale back to the original cost, reduce your inventory and properly calculate cost of goods sold.
Step 4: Upload your inventory to Seller Ledger
Lastly, to load this cost information into Seller Ledger, just go to the Inventory tab and click the “Add Inventory” button. Record the date that you are uploading this information, “Whatnot” as “Purchased from” and enter the total amount of all of the items (which you can add up in the spreadsheet). Then click the button near the bottom of the screen that says “Upload inventory”, choose the file, and click save. Within a few minutes, it should show as a single large purchase of items with all of the cost details broken down.
Don’t track inventory in Seller Ledger? That’s ok too
We recently rolled out the ability to upload generic expenses in a CSV file format, which can include COGS purchases from other platforms. Learn more about how to do that here.
That’s it. Happy sourcing on Whatnot. May your profit be ever increasing.
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