Etsy bookkeeping for shops that outgrew the spreadsheet
Etsy's payment account is a running tangle of sales, fees, ads, refunds and deposits. We turn it into clean books, whether you make what you sell or source it.
Etsy's fee structure nickels a shop a dozen ways: listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing, Offsite Ads (which you can't opt out of past $10k), Etsy Ads, shipping labels. The payment account nets everything continuously, so deposits have almost no relationship to any period's sales.
Makers add a second layer: materials-based COGS. Pricing handmade work without knowing your true cost per piece is how shops stay busy and broke.
Etsy-specific accounting problems
The payment account black box
Sales go in, fees come out, ads come out, refunds come out, deposits leave on your schedule. Reconstructing what happened in a month requires Etsy's CSVs and patience. We have both.
Offsite Ads fees on some orders and not others
A 12-15% fee that only hits ad-attributed orders makes per-order profitability wildly uneven. We track it as the marketing cost it is, so you can see what Offsite Ads actually costs you.
Materials COGS for makers
The beads, fabric, glaze and packaging you bought in bulk need to become a per-item cost. We build a materials costing approach that's accurate enough to price by and simple enough to maintain.
What we do every month
- Etsy payment account fully reconciled monthly
- All fee types broken out: listing, transaction, processing, ads
- Offsite Ads cost tracking by attribution
- Materials-based COGS for handmade sellers
- Purchased-inventory COGS for resellers and POD
- Sales tax and VAT collected kept out of revenue
- Multi-channel consolidation if you also sell elsewhere
- Books closed by the 10th business day
For makers, vintage sellers and print-on-demand
A jewelry maker, a vintage reseller and a POD shop have three different COGS problems. Materials allocation, per-piece sourcing costs, and printer invoices matched to orders. We've set up all three, and the setup determines whether your margins are knowledge or folklore.
Shops that grow usually add Shopify or a wholesale channel next. Your books come with us, one file, per-channel P&L, no re-platforming.
Related services
Closed by day 10, or 50% off
Your prior month is reconciled and delivered by the 10th business day, guaranteed in writing. Miss it and that month's fee is half price. No competitor guarantees anything.
You own your books
We work inside your QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite file, not ours. Leave any time and everything stays with you, diligence history included.
Exit-grade, always
Accrual books with landed-cost COGS and a maintained addback schedule. If a buyer or lender called tomorrow, your books would be ready.
Published pricing, no lock-in
Our full rate card is on the website and engagements run month-to-month. Every ecommerce-exclusive competitor hides pricing behind a sales call. We don't.
Etsy bookkeeping FAQs
Do I need bookkeeping for my Etsy shop?
For the sellers we serve, Etsy is usually one channel of a $100K+/mo multi-channel operation, and yes, it needs real books: the IRS already sees your gross sales via the 1099-K, and buyers in diligence will ask about every channel, including the small ones.
How do I figure out COGS for handmade items?
Break each product into materials cost per unit, based on what you actually pay in bulk, plus direct packaging. We build and maintain that costing with you so it updates when supply prices move.
Etsy is my side business. Is this overkill?
If Etsy is a side business, we're probably not your firm yet: we work with $100K+/mo operations. Join the waitlist and take our free close checklist, and we'll be here when the business crosses seven figures.
We'll do last month's books free, and show you what your bookkeeper missed
The free Ecommerce Books Audit: connect read-only access and within 3 business days you get a clean month of books plus a 10-minute recorded teardown of every margin leak, COGS error and sales-tax risk we found. Keep it all, even if you never hire us.
- ✓ Books closed by day 10, guaranteed in writing
- ✓ Everything stays in your QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite file
- ✓ Published pricing, month-to-month, no lock-in