Outsourced Ecommerce Bookkeeping and Amazon FBA Reconciliation for US Businesses

Om Accounting is an India-based accounting firm that keeps the books for US ecommerce brands, Amazon and Walmart sellers, and the CPA firms that serve them. We do the work that has to happen before anyone can file a US return or raise a round: settlement reconciliation, inventory and cost of goods sold, multi-channel revenue, gateway fees, and a month-end close that actually closes. Your CPA gets a tied-out trial balance instead of a bank feed and a folder of PDFs.

The reason US sellers outsource bookkeeping to India is not only cost. It is that ecommerce bookkeeping in the US is a reconciliation problem rather than a data-entry problem. A general bookkeeper who has never opened an Amazon settlement report will book the deposit as revenue, and from that single decision your gross margin, your ad efficiency, your inventory value and your tax position are all wrong at once. We have spent years inside settlement files, and that is the whole difference.

What we handle	Ecommerce and general bookkeeping, Amazon and Walmart settlement reconciliation, inventory and COGS, accounts payable and receivable, payroll journals, month-end close, management reporting
Who it is for	US Amazon FBA and FBM sellers, Shopify and DTC brands, wholesale and distribution businesses, and US CPA and bookkeeping firms outsourcing overflow work
Platforms	Amazon.com, Walmart Marketplace, Shopify, eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop, Faire, WooCommerce, BigCommerce
Software	QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, A2X, Link My Books, Dext, Hubdoc, Bill.com, Ramp, Gusto
How we work	A named accountant plus a reviewer, working the US business day in reverse so your books move overnight
Reporting	Monthly P and L, balance sheet, cash flow, channel-wise contribution, inventory and COGS schedule, reconciliation pack
What we do not do	We are not a US CPA firm. We do not sign or file US federal or state returns and we do not give US tax advice

Why US ecommerce businesses outsource bookkeeping to India

Three reasons come up in almost every conversation, and only one of them is price.

The first is depth on a narrow problem. A US bookkeeper who is excellent at a services business or a restaurant is not automatically good at a business where the money that lands in the bank has already had fifteen different deductions taken out of it. Ecommerce bookkeeping is a specialism, and specialists are easier to find when you are not restricted to one metro area.

The second is the clock. India is roughly nine and a half to twelve and a half hours ahead of the US mainland depending on your time zone and the season. Work you send at the end of your day is picked up at the start of ours, so a close that would take a week of back-and-forth inside one time zone gets compressed. We are honest about the flip side: if you want someone on a call at 10am Pacific, that is 10.30pm in India, and while we do hold scheduled calls in that window, we do not pretend to be available all day on US hours.

The third is capacity that does not evaporate. A single in-house bookkeeper is a single point of failure. Our engagements run with a named accountant and a reviewer who both know your file, so a holiday or a resignation does not stall your close.

If you are comparing an offshore team against hiring in-house, our page on outsourced accounting from India sets out how the engagement is actually structured, what a handover looks like, and where outsourcing tends not to be the right answer.

Your Amazon deposit is not your revenue

This is the single most common error in US ecommerce books, and it is worth being blunt about the consequences. When Amazon pays you, the deposit is a net figure. It is what is left after Amazon has taken referral fees, FBA fulfilment fees, storage, advertising in some account structures, refunds it has already issued to buyers, and any adjustments it has made, and after it has held back a reserve.

Book that deposit as sales and four things break simultaneously. Revenue is understated, so your topline is wrong and any revenue-based covenant, valuation multiple or loan application built on it is wrong. Expenses are understated by exactly the same amount, so every fee is invisible and nobody can tell you whether FBA fees are eating your margin. Gross margin looks better than it is. And refunds disappear entirely, so your true return rate is unknowable.

The correct treatment is to explode the settlement into its parts, recognise gross sales as sales, book each fee category to its own expense account, book refunds against revenue, and reconcile the resulting net to the actual deposit to the cent. That reconciliation is the control. If it does not tie, something has been missed.

What sits inside a single Amazon settlement

A settlement is not a small file. Depending on volume it can carry tens of thousands of line items across a dozen transaction types, and each type has a different accounting answer.

• Product sales and product sales tax — gross revenue, plus tax that in most cases Amazon has collected and will remit itself under marketplace facilitator rules
• Shipping credits and gift wrap credits — revenue, not a reduction of freight cost
• Promotional rebates — coupons, Lightning Deals and percentage-off promotions, which reduce net revenue and should be visible as a separate line rather than buried
• Referral fees — the marketplace commission, usually the largest single deduction
• FBA fulfilment fees — pick, pack and ship, driven by size tier and weight, and the number most affected by dimension changes
• Monthly and long-term storage fees — long-term storage in particular is a signal that something is not selling, not just a cost
• Removal, disposal and returns processing
• Refunds and refund commission — the refund reverses revenue, and Amazon returns only part of the original referral fee
• Advertising — sometimes deducted inside the settlement, sometimes billed to a card separately, and if you do not know which, your ad spend is either double counted or missing
• Reserves, current and previous — money earned but not yet released
• Adjustments, reimbursements and chargebacks

Each of those needs a consistent mapping to the chart of accounts, applied the same way every month, so that a change in a line is a business signal rather than a bookkeeping artefact. We use purpose-built Amazon accounting workflows for this, supported by A2X or Link My Books where the client already has them, and by our own reconciliation where they do not.

Settlement periods that straddle month-end

Amazon settles on a rolling fourteen-day cycle that does not care about your calendar month. A settlement period will routinely start on the 26th and end on the 9th, so a single file contains sales from two accounting months.

If you post the whole settlement to the month it was paid in, every month is a mixture of two half-months and your monthly comparatives are meaningless. Proper cut-off means splitting the settlement at the month boundary and accruing the portion that belongs to the earlier month. Do this consistently and you can compare March to February honestly. Skip it and you will spend management meetings explaining variances that are pure timing.

Reimbursements, reserves and chargebacks

Reimbursements arise when Amazon loses or damages your inventory, or when a customer return never physically comes back. They are income, and they should sit in their own account. Netting them against fees hides them, and reimbursements are one of the few places where careful bookkeeping directly finds money: a rising reimbursement line usually means a warehouse or inbound problem worth investigating, and a suspiciously flat one often means claims are not being filed at all.

Reserves are the amount Amazon is holding back. Revenue has been earned and should be recognised, but the cash has not arrived, so the reserve belongs on the balance sheet as a receivable from Amazon. Sellers who ignore reserves understate their assets and misread their own cash position, which matters most exactly when it hurts most, in the run-up to Q4 when reserves climb.

Chargebacks and A-to-z claims need to be visible as a rate, not as a scatter of small debits. A chargeback rate that is drifting upward is an operational warning long before it is a material cost.

Inventory and COGS: the number most US ecommerce P and Ls get wrong

A great many ecommerce P and Ls treat inventory purchases as an expense in the month the supplier was paid. That turns the profit and loss account into a cash flow statement with a misleading title. In a business that buys in large lots and sells over months, it produces a loss in the buying month and a fictional profit afterwards.

Cost of goods sold has to be landed cost, matched to the units actually sold. Landed cost means the unit price plus inbound freight, customs duty, customs broker charges, prep and labelling, and inbound shipping into the fulfilment centre. For US importers this matters more than it used to, because duty is no longer a rounding error on many product categories.

The inventory itself is spread across places that all have to be counted: units in Amazon fulfilment centres, units in transit from the supplier, units at a 3PL or prep centre, units in your own storage, and units that are unsellable. Reconciling the recorded quantity to the actual quantity every month is what stops inventory becoming a plug figure. Where the count and the ledger disagree, the difference is shrinkage, damage or a mis-booked receipt, and each of those is a different conversation.

Selling on more than one channel

Very few US brands are single-channel now. A typical file carries Amazon, a Shopify store, sometimes Walmart Marketplace, and increasingly TikTok Shop, Etsy, eBay or Faire for wholesale. Each reports differently, deducts differently and pays differently.

The work is normalisation: putting every channel onto one comparable basis so that gross revenue, platform fees, fulfilment cost, advertising, refunds and net contribution mean the same thing everywhere. Only then can you answer the question that actually decides where your next dollar of inventory and ad spend goes, which is not which channel is biggest but which channel is most profitable per unit after everything.

That analysis is the foundation of the wider ecommerce accounting service we run, and for founders who want it read back to them rather than emailed, our virtual CFO engagement puts a monthly review call around the same numbers.

Payment gateways, BNPL and the deposits that never match

Direct-to-consumer sales bring their own reconciliation. Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Authorize.net and the buy-now-pay-later providers such as Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay all pay net of fees, on their own schedules, with their own holds and reserves, and with chargebacks and disputes landing later than the sale.

Every gateway needs its own clearing account: gross sale in, fee out, payout matched to the bank. If a gateway clearing account never returns to a explainable balance, something is wrong, and it is usually a missing refund, an unrecorded dispute, or a payout period that has been posted twice. We reconcile these monthly and report the balance rather than letting it drift.

Sales tax: what the marketplace does, and what is still yours

Marketplace facilitator laws in the great majority of US states now put the obligation to collect and remit sales tax on marketplace sales onto the marketplace itself. Amazon, Walmart and eBay collect on those sales and remit them. That genuinely removes a large part of the burden, and it is why a seller who is purely on Amazon has a much simpler position than they did before 2018.

It does not remove everything, and the gaps are where sellers get caught.

• Sales you make directly, through your own Shopify or WooCommerce store, are yours. No marketplace is collecting on those, and your obligation depends on your own nexus
• Marketplace sales can still count toward a state economic nexus threshold even where the marketplace remitted the tax, which means marketplace volume can pull your direct sales into a registration requirement
• Physical presence still creates nexus. Inventory sitting in a fulfilment centre in a state is a fact pattern that has to be considered, not assumed away
• Some states expect a registered seller to keep filing returns even where the reported figure is nil

Our role here is data, not filing. We keep sales by state, by channel, and split between marketplace-collected and seller-collected, so that whoever runs your registrations and returns, whether that is your CPA or a platform such as Avalara or TaxJar, is working from figures that reconcile to your books. We do not register you in states and we do not file US sales tax returns.

Form 1099-K does not equal your revenue

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act the Form 1099-K reporting threshold reverted to more than $20,000 in gross payments and more than 200 transactions, undoing the much lower threshold that had been legislated earlier. Whether or not you receive one, the number on a 1099-K is not your revenue.

A 1099-K reports gross payment volume before platform fees, before refunds, and before chargebacks. Your books will correctly show a lower revenue figure, and the gap has to be explainable line by line if it is ever questioned. Keeping that reconciliation on file, rather than reconstructing it under pressure a year later, is ordinary good bookkeeping and takes minutes a month when the settlement work has already been done properly.

The software we work in

We work in your stack rather than asking you to move to ours. In practice that is QuickBooks Online or Xero for most sellers and NetSuite for larger ones, with A2X or Link My Books handling settlement summarisation where they are already in place, Dext or Hubdoc for document capture, Bill.com for payables approval, Ramp or Brex for card feeds, and Gusto or your existing provider for payroll, from which we take the journals.

If you have no stack yet, we will recommend one and set it up, including a chart of accounts built for ecommerce rather than the generic default, because the default chart is the reason most ecommerce P and Ls are unreadable.

How a month runs with us

Days one to three, we pull the settlements, bank and card feeds, gateway reports and supplier invoices. Days four to seven, transactions are coded, settlements exploded and reconciled, inventory movements posted and landed cost applied. Days eight to ten, a second person reviews, balance sheet accounts are substantiated, and questions come back to you in one consolidated list rather than in a trickle. By the middle of the following month you have the reporting pack.

• Profit and loss with channel-wise contribution, not just a single revenue line
• Balance sheet with inventory, Amazon reserve receivable and gateway clearing accounts substantiated
• Cash flow and a short commentary on what moved and why
• Inventory and COGS schedule with units and landed cost
• A reconciliation pack tying every settlement and every gateway payout to the bank
• An aged payables and receivables list

What your CPA gets from us

A significant share of our US work comes through CPA and bookkeeping firms rather than direct from sellers, because the ecommerce files are the ones that consume disproportionate staff time in a busy season. What a practice receives from us is a closed month: a trial balance that ties, schedules supporting every balance sheet line, a documented settlement reconciliation, and a fixed-format working paper file. The practice keeps the client relationship, the advisory work and the filing. We keep the volume work off their desk.

For direct clients the same output goes to your own CPA at year end, which usually shortens their engagement rather than lengthening it, because they are not rebuilding the year from bank statements in March.

What we do, and what we do not

Being clear about this saves everybody time.

We do: bookkeeping and accounting to US GAAP-based management reporting standards, settlement and gateway reconciliation, inventory and COGS, payables and receivables, payroll journals from your payroll provider, month-end and year-end close, management reporting, and the preparation work your CPA needs.

We do not: we are an Indian firm and we are not a US CPA firm. We do not sign or file US federal, state or local tax returns, we do not represent you before the IRS or a state department of revenue, we do not perform audits or reviews, and we do not give US tax advice. Those things belong with a licensed US practitioner, and we work alongside yours. If you do not have one, we will say so plainly rather than quietly doing work that is not ours to do.

Data security and handover

You keep ownership of your accounting file and your data throughout. Access is given on named user accounts inside your own software rather than by sharing a master login, so access can be granted and withdrawn by you at any time. Documents move through your document management tool or a shared drive you control, not through personal email. Staff working on your file are under confidentiality obligations, and access is limited to the people actually on the engagement.

We do not claim security certifications the firm does not hold. If your business needs a specific certified control environment, tell us before you engage and we will tell you honestly whether we meet it.

Who you are actually hiring

Om Accounting and Consultancy is based in Jaipur, India, founded in 2017, with professional experience in the field going back to 2007. The team includes qualified chartered accountants and CPAs alongside CA-level accounting professionals, and the ecommerce practice is the part of the firm that has grown fastest, because settlement reconciliation turned out to be a problem very few generalist firms wanted to learn properly.

We publish more about the firm and the people on the about page. Our largest practice is in India, and we also serve ecommerce sellers in the UAE, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Talk to us about your books

The fastest way to start is to send us one recent Amazon settlement file and your current trial balance. Within a few days we will tell you what is being missed, what it is costing you, and what a clean close would look like, with no obligation to proceed. If your books are already in good shape we will say that too.

Get in touch through our contact page to arrange a call at a time that works in your zone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an Indian firm really do bookkeeping for a US company?

Yes. Bookkeeping, reconciliation, close and management reporting are not regulated activities in the United States and can be performed from anywhere. What is regulated is the practice of public accountancy: signing tax returns, representing a taxpayer before the IRS, and issuing audit or review opinions. We do the first set of activities and we do not do the second, which stays with your US CPA.

Why does my Amazon deposit never match my sales figure?

Because the deposit is a net number. Amazon has already deducted referral fees, FBA fulfilment fees, storage, refunds it has issued to buyers, sometimes advertising, and it has held back a reserve. Your sales figure should be gross, with each of those deductions recorded separately as revenue reductions or expenses. When the two are reconciled correctly the difference is fully explained, line by line.

I sell on Amazon and Shopify. Do I need to worry about sales tax at all?

On the Amazon side, marketplace facilitator laws mean Amazon collects and remits sales tax on those sales in almost every state. On the Shopify side, nobody is collecting for you, so that revenue is your own responsibility wherever you have nexus. Marketplace sales can also count toward a state economic nexus threshold, which is how sellers who assumed they were fully covered end up with a registration obligation. We keep the state-level data so your US adviser can make that call on real numbers.

What is the current 1099-K threshold, and does the number on it match my revenue?

The threshold reverted to more than $20,000 in gross payments and more than 200 transactions. The number on the form does not match your revenue, because it reports gross payment volume before platform fees, refunds and chargebacks. Your accounts will show a lower figure, and the difference should be reconciled and documented rather than explained from memory later.

How does the time difference actually work in practice?

India runs roughly nine and a half to twelve and a half hours ahead of the US mainland. Work you send at the end of your day is being processed while you sleep and is usually waiting when you start. Scheduled calls happen in the overlap, which is your morning and our evening. We hold those calls, but we do not claim full availability across US business hours, because that would not be true.

My books are two years behind. Can you fix that?

Yes, and catch-up work is a large part of what we do. We start by agreeing a target: a specific date from which the books will be reliable, and what happens to the period before it. Settlements are rebuilt from Amazon reports, inventory is restated on landed cost, and each year is closed and locked in sequence. It is more work than a live month, and we will quote it separately rather than pretending it fits inside a monthly fee.

Do you work with CPA firms as a white-label back office?

Yes. Several US practices use us for exactly that, particularly for ecommerce clients whose settlement work consumes staff time out of proportion to the fee. We work in your file, to your templates, under your naming conventions, and you keep the client relationship and the filing. We are happy to remain invisible to your client if that is how you prefer to run it.

Which accounting software do you prefer?

We work in whatever you already use. In practice most US ecommerce clients are on QuickBooks Online or Xero, with larger operations on NetSuite. Where A2X or Link My Books is already installed we use it. If you are starting fresh we will usually recommend QuickBooks Online or Xero with a chart of accounts designed for ecommerce, because the generic default chart is the reason most ecommerce profit and loss accounts cannot be read.

How do you price the work?

On volume and complexity rather than hours: the number of channels, transaction volume, whether inventory is involved, how many entities and currencies there are, and whether the file is current or needs catching up. You get a fixed monthly fee agreed in advance, and catch-up or clean-up work is quoted separately so it does not turn into an open-ended bill.

What happens if we decide to stop working with you?

You take everything. The accounting file is yours and lives in your own software subscription, the documentation is in your own storage, and we provide a written handover covering the chart of accounts, the settlement mapping, open items and the month-end checklist. There is no lock-in through us holding your data, because we never hold it in the first place.