SDO CPA LLC
18 years of experience
Bobby Huang is a partner at SDO CPA. 18 years of hands-on bookkeeping. He still reconciles real client books and built Growthy from the same review-and-approve work bookkeepers do each week.
A business has $80,000 in outstanding invoices. It also owes $40,000 to vendors. These two numbers look similar on paper. But they're opposites. One is a current asset. The other is a current liability.
Most people think accounts receivable automation means faster collections. It doesn't. Most AR tools on the market do one thing: send invoice reminders on a schedule.
You sent the invoice 6 months ago. You've followed up twice. You've called once. At some point, you stop treating that $2,400 as money you'll collect.
You sent 20 invoices last month. Revenue looks solid on paper. But cash is thin, and you're not sure why. The answer is probably sitting in your receivables.
You set up QBO for an ecommerce client. The default chart looks fine. Then the Shopify payout lands. You have one "Product Revenue" account. No line for Amazon fees. Sales tax in income where it has no place.
Most ecommerce sellers get paid two to three weeks after a sale. That delay is fine for cash flow planning. But many sellers let that same delay drive how they record costs. That's a much more expensive mistake.
You open one Shopify store. You sell to buyers across the country. It feels like one business, in one place, with one ecommerce sales tax nexus problem.
Your Shopify payout hits the bank: $1,847.32. Your Shopify sales dashboard says $2,100.00. The gap isn't missing money. It's Shopify Payments fees, refunds you issued, and shipping you collected, all netted before the deposit hits.
PayPal bookkeeping done right: treat PayPal as a bank account, record sales gross, book fees separately, and reconcile transfers so the books tie out.
You ring up $1,200 in sales on Monday. Tuesday morning, $1,167.60 hits your bank account. Where did $32.40 go?
A $18,432 deposit lands in your bank from Shopify. It looks like a great month. It isn't income, and the difference is what ecommerce bookkeeping is really about.
An investor looks at your deck and asks one question. "What's in your COGS?" If your answer is "not much," your 90% gross margin is about to shrink in front of the whole room.
See Growthy on a sample book. Read-only bank access.
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