Most ecommerce, manufacturing, and distribution businesses start lean. Shopify for sales. A spreadsheet for inventory. QuickBooks for bookkeeping.
It works – at first.
But once you’re selling across channels, juggling SKUs, and managing fulfillment, the cracks start to show. Reports don’t line up, inventory doesn’t match the books, and financial decisions start feeling like guesswork.
The problem isn’t your tools. It’s usually your accounting team, or more accurately, your lack of one.
When the Tools Stop Being Enough
E-commerce, manufacturing, and distribution businesses usually outgrow their systems faster than they expect. Here’s what usually happens:
- Shopify says one thing, Amazon says another. Channel data doesn’t reconcile with accounting.
- Spreadsheets balloon. Multiple versions floating around, each with slightly different numbers.
- Inventory never matches. What’s on the floor doesn’t match what’s in your books.
- Financials stop making sense. You’re selling more, but your reports don’t show where profit’s really coming from.
These aren’t system glitches. They’re accounting failures.
Why Accounting Is the Real Bottleneck for Ecommerce, Manufacturing, and Distribution
Shopify, Amazon, and spreadsheets all produce data. But without accounting designed to unify that data, you’ll always be flying blind.
Most bookkeeping setups can’t consolidate across channels or tie sales to COGS and fulfillment costs. That leaves you with financials that might satisfy your tax accountant but don’t help you run a complex, growing product business.
It’s why owners feel like they’re drowning in data but starving for answers.
How Fractional Accounting Solves It
You don’t need more dashboards. You need accounting that’s built for multi-channel product businesses.
A fractional team with expertise in the complexities of ecommerce, manufacturing, and distribution accounting gives you:
- One back office that integrates Shopify, Amazon, wholesale, and inventory systems.
- Consolidated reporting that shows true profitability across channels.
- Accounting processes that scale as SKUs, orders, and complexity grow.
- A team of specialists who spot risks and fix broken workflows before they drag down margins.
Instead of forcing your existing tools to do jobs they weren’t designed for, fractional accounting plugs in to make them work together – and builds the financial foundation you need to scale.
Build a Business That Can Scale
Spreadsheets and Shopify can get you started. But they can’t handle multi-channel complexity, or give you clarity on your margins.
That’s the job of a back office run by experts – and it’s why outsourced accounting is becoming the default for serious product businesses.
👉 Get your Free Financial Risk & Readiness Assessment
We’ll show you how a fractional accounting team can take the chaos out of your systems and give you financial clarity you can trust.
James Wheeler
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdavidwheeler/James Wheeler is the founder of kept.pro, where he helps business owners design accounting systems that create clarity and confidence in decision-making. Over more than 15 years in executive financial leadership roles across service and technology companies, James has focused on making finance a true strategic function rather than a reporting burden. He was twice a finalist for the San Diego Business Journal CFO of the Year and has served on several nonprofit and for-profit boards over the past decade. James earned both his BA in Economics and MBA from the University of California, San Diego, where he received multiple graduate fellowships, and later completed executive education at MIT Sloan.
