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Live and on-demand sessions from our accounting and finance specialists, with full transcripts and key takeaways

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Inventory & COGS
The Financial Impact of Inventory: How Inventory Shapes Your Business's Bottom Line
Part one of the inventory series. Inventory is an operational problem that sends you a financial bill. Karlie Lester and the Finale team work through where the chaos starts: purchasing on spreadsheets, tracking that misses every outflow except sales, and selling across channels without knowing your true cost. Brittany Brown closes with the two questions clients actually ask, and an honest answer on the cash cycle for a small brand.
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Brittany Brown61 min
Ecommerce Accounting
The Ecommerce KPIs That Actually Matter
No slides. Stephen Brown opens the dashboard. LedgerGurus gives its monthly accounting clients and walks the six metrics on it, using data from the brand he co-owns. What each benchmark is, where it came from, and what a spike actually means: an inventory adjustment, a tariff, a Black Friday that crossed into December. Then payroll, interest, contribution margin, and the cash conversion cycle.
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Stephen Brown46 min
Sales Tax
Going Global 101: Tax & Tariffs for DTC Ecommerce Brands
An HS code is a passport for your product. Get it wrong and the parcel sits in customs, the carrier guesses a code that errs high, and your customer gets a surprise bill at the door. Brian Kelly of Avalara maps US sales tax concepts onto their global equivalents, explains what drives a tariff percentage, and covers the EU de minimis repeal taking effect July 1, 2026.
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Valerie RoseJun 25, 202634 min
Strategy
An Honest Conversation on AI, Capital, and What's Actually Working in Ecommerce Finance
Merchant cash advances quote a fee, not a rate. A 10% fee repaid over four months is closer to 42% APR, and most brands never do that math. Stephen Brown and David Segal of Highbeam cover what LedgerGurus customer data shows about margins and cash, why inventory problems are operational rather than financial, how to negotiate supplier terms before borrowing, and where AI is producing real results in finance work.
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Stephen BrownJun 11, 202654 min
Profitability
What Actually Makes Ecommerce Brands Profitable? Real Benchmarks. Real Answers.
You track revenue but still wonder if your numbers are normal. LedgerGurus benchmarked around 90 of its own ecommerce clients: 44% are growing and profitable, median gross margin sits at 63.7%, and ad spend runs just 8.1% of revenue. Stephen Brown and Stacy Walker break down the four performance quadrants, why wholesale dilutes ad spend, which costs to attack first, and how to read a benchmark report without jumping to the wrong conclusions.
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Stephen BrownApr 9, 202632 min
Inventory & COGS
5 Reasons Profit Lies Hidden in Inventory (Why Profitable Brands Still Feel Cash-Poor)
Sales are growing, the P&L says you're profitable, and cash still feels tight. Karlie from LedgerGurus and Madison Kishen from Finale walk through five places profit hides inside inventory: unexplained margin swings, landed costs that never make it into product cost, spreadsheets that quietly break, nobody owning the numbers, and no monthly check. Then a three-step fix, and how each operational action turns into a financial entry.
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Mar 25, 202659 min
Cash Flow
Understanding Growth Limitations: How Capital Controls Your Ecommerce Expansion
There is a mathematical limit to how fast an inventory business can grow on its own profits, and most owners have never calculated theirs. Stephen Brown walks through the cash conversion cycle, turns it into a working capital intensity ratio, and divides profit margin by that ratio to produce the ceiling. For a typical brand with a 5% net margin and a 150 day cycle, that ceiling lands around 12%. He then covers the three levers that raise it.
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Stephen BrownMar 19, 202630 min
Strategy
Planning for 2026 with 10 Ecommerce Finance Predictions
Ten calls for the year ahead, delivered in 25 minutes. Stephen Brown argues tariffs have peaked, interest rates split into winners and losers depending on what your debt is tied to, and inflation stays sticky enough that annual price reviews are now table stakes. His most bullish call is AI: shopping, checkout, and eventually advertising. Lauren Maillard covers the tax provisions worth planning around.
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Stephen BrownJan 15, 202625 min
Profitability
A Smart Approach to Cutting Costs
A 30% tariff turns a $400,000 profit into $178,000 before you do anything about it. Stephen Brown runs the Tariff Impact Calculator live, then lays out target ranges for every major cost category and works through where to cut. Discretionary spending goes first, payroll gets the three O's treatment, and the contribution margin triad of COGS, fulfillment, and advertising takes longer but moves the most.
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Stephen BrownJun 4, 202532 min
Profitability
How Tariffs are Impacting Your Profits
A month after the global tariff announcement, most of the world sits at a 10% pause and China does not. Stephen Brown runs the numbers on what a 145% tariff does to an efficient brand, then works through the decisions in front of sellers: hold the order, use a bonded warehouse, or import at a loss. He covers how to game plan the rest of the world by trade balance, and how to spread the cost across manufacturers, customers, and wholesale prices.
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Stephen BrownMay 7, 202535 min
Inventory & COGS
COGS Calculation: Finding the best path to profitability
Part three of the inventory accounting series. Brittany Brown, Karlie, and partners from Finale and A2X work through what belongs in COGS, what belongs in cost of sales, and why the difference decides whether your gross margin means anything. They cover the timing question of recognising COGS at sale or at shipment, the three costing methods, and where each tool fits as a business matures.
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Brittany BrownMar 19, 202569 min
Inventory & COGS
Purchasing & the Three-Way Match: Effortless Purchasing, Clean Records, Seamless Reordering
Part two of the inventory accounting series. Once you pay a vendor, you lose every bit of leverage you had. The three-way match is what gives you the confidence to release that payment: the purchase order, the receiving record, and the bill all agreeing before money moves. Brittany Brown, Karlie Lester, and the Finale team cover why the three documents usually sit with three different people, and what that costs.
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Brittany BrownMar 5, 202560 min
Cash Flow
Inventory, Bills and Business Funding: The Ecommerce Trifecta with Settle
A purchase order from Whole Foods or Walmart sets off labels, packaging, freight bills, work orders, and 3PL transfers, all funded before a dollar comes back. Pete from Settle walks through how the platform ties that chain together: a universal product catalog, POs with estimated landed cost, three-way matching, monthly COGS by SKU and location, bill pay, and a working capital line. Stephen Brown handles the accounting questions throughout.
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Stephen BrownJan 23, 202556 min
Sales Tax
Sales Tax 101 with Avalara
Forty-five states rely on sales tax as their single biggest revenue stream, which is why they keep hiring auditors and lowering thresholds. Christopher and Kevin from Avalara walk through the five steps of compliance, from working out where you have nexus to remitting the returns. Along the way: why New York taxes tacos but not burritos, why one neighbour gets all the packages, and what a VDA does to a Texas look-back period.
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Kelley BirrellOct 31, 202457 min
Ecommerce Accounting
How to Use Your Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement to Strengthen Your Business's Health
Part three of the financial statements workshop series. Stephen Brown opens the real books of Solé Toscana, the brand he co-owns, and walks line by line through its balance sheet: the holding accounts, the goodwill from the acquisition, the partner loans distorting his ratios. Then the quick ratio, debt to assets, and the cash conversion cycle, before showing how the cash flow statement explains the gap between profit and cash.
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Stephen BrownOct 16, 202457 min
Profitability
Unlock Higher Profits with Smarter Return Solutions with Redo
Free returns crush margins, and charging for returns crushes conversion. Stephen Brown hosts Ty Robbins of Redo, a Shopify app that covers your return shipping labels when customers opt in at checkout for about $2, then rolls returns, support ticketing, order tracking, and package protection into one free platform. Ty demos the Popflex flow, explains how Redo earns the spread on unused labels, and shares results: $500,000 retained in 30 days and a 12.8% drop in refund rate.
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Stephen BrownOct 3, 202437 min
Ecommerce Accounting
Analyzing Your Profit and Loss for Better Business Decisions
Your P&L already says where your business is stuck; most owners just can't read it yet. In part two of the workshop series, Stephen Brown opens Sole Toscana's live QuickBooks Online file and walks the statement top to bottom, then turns every line into a percentage of income: gross margin, contribution margin, fulfillment at 14.5%, advertising at 36%. He shows the Grow dashboards LedgerGurus is rolling out to clients and the year-over-year view that took the brand from a loss to positive income.
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Stephen BrownSep 19, 202464 min
Ecommerce Accounting
Using Accrual Accounting to See the Full Picture of Your Business
Cash accounting shows a loss one month and a windfall the next, and neither tells you if you're profitable. In part one of a three-part workshop, Stephen Brown explains accrual accounting for ecommerce: why wholesale deposits aren't revenue yet, where inventory sits before it becomes COGS, how the three financial statements connect, and the three principles behind it all. He walks through real numbers from Sole Toscana, the skincare brand LedgerGurus co-owns, inside QuickBooks Online.
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Stephen BrownSep 5, 202464 min
Sales Tax
Compliance Counts: Why Your Business Cannot Afford to Ignore Sales Tax
Six years after Wayfair, the grace period is over. States are buying seller lists, pulling data from marketplaces, and auditing back to 2018. Lauren Maillard walks through the business activity questionnaires arriving from Illinois and Washington, the two ways to get compliant, and how to decide between them. Stephen Brown fields a heavy stream of audience questions on nexus, drop shipping, exemption certificates, and the new retail delivery fees.
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Stephen BrownAug 22, 202462 min
Cash Flow
Funding for Consumer Product Companies in 2024 | What to Expect & How to Get It
Venture capital available to consumer products fell from around $5 billion to $150 million in three years, and banks were never enthusiastic about inventory as collateral. Greg Russell of BRG Growth Partners walks through what replaced it: short-term secured lenders, term lending, and the fixed fee products that sit on every Shopify and Amazon dashboard. Stephen Brown runs the actual math on three of them live, and an 8% fee turns into 39% APR.
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Stephen BrownApr 18, 202470 min
Ecommerce Accounting
Metrics That Matter: Exploring the Diagnostic Toolkit for Ecommerce Sellers
Duckweed grows in the dark as well as the light, which is why it outgrows everything around it. Richard Gaffen of Common Thread Collective uses that as the test for a brand: can you grow in bad times as well as good? He walks through the ten metrics behind CTC's diagnostic toolkit, the benchmark for each, and how they combine into a single growth score, using his own brand's results as the worked example.
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Stephen BrownAug 23, 202324 min
Profitability
Cracking the Code: How Analytics Can Drive Your Shopify Store's Success
Facebook grades its own homework: it samples the 25% who allow tracking and reports a ROAS built to keep your budget on its platform. Stephen Brown shares how LedgerGurus bought Sole Toscana as a sandbox, watched new customer ROAS sit at 0.3, and used Triple Whale to climb to 1.16. Grant from Triple Whale walks through the pixel, the post-purchase survey that caught $40,000 in unclicked Facebook revenue, and the cost settings that turn ad data into profit per ad.
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Stephen BrownMay 18, 202338 min
Income Tax
Smart Income Tax Strategies for Ecommerce Businesses - PART 2
The follow-up to part one, covering what happens when a buyer shows up. Heather Allen and Steve DeWitt of Tanner walk through the due diligence checklist, why you should size your own exposure before the buyer does, and how asset sales and stock sales split the tax bill differently for each side. Then the elections worth knowing about: the cash method, bonus depreciation, PTET, and the employee retention credit.
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Stephen BrownMar 1, 202359 min
Income Tax
Smart Income Tax Strategies and Considerations for Ecommerce Businesses - PART 1
Entity choice looks like paperwork until it costs you ten million dollars. Heather Allen and Steve DeWitt of Tanner walk through LLCs, S corps, and C corps: how each is taxed, how owners actually get paid, and what happens when a buyer arrives. Along the way, why an S election can permanently disqualify you from the section 1202 exclusion, and how remote employees and 3PL inventory create filing obligations you never planned for.
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Stephen BrownFeb 9, 202366 min
Sales Tax
How This Online Seller is Working to Simplify Sales Tax in the US
Kexin Smith interviews the Halstead Bead co-owner about the $30,000 integration, the $2.30 spent for every $1 of sales tax collected, 200-plus meetings in DC, and the Louisiana lawsuit over parish-level chaos. He lays out four fixes, from a central clearinghouse to thresholds based on taxable sales, and tells sellers the one thing they can't do: comply alone.
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Kexin SmithDec 13, 202260 min
Sales Tax
The Uncomplicated Truth about Sales Tax | Online Sales Tax Explained
Some sellers are worrying about sales tax when they do not have to, and others are ignoring an obligation that could wipe out their profits. Brittany Brown and Kexin Smith separate the two, then lay out the three guideposts: work out your nexus, decide where to register, and collect and remit. They close with the three setup mistakes clients pay thousands to unravel.
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Brittany BrownNov 2, 202247 min
Inventory & COGS
Business Success Powered by Inventory Management
Cost of goods sold is your single biggest expense, and it's the one number spreadsheets can't keep honest. Brittany Brown makes the case for an inventory management system, from Finale's $75 entry point to the pallet her own brand lost for a year, then Mike Kroger demos the full cycle live: stock by bin, sales velocity reordering that stops overbuying, and the sync that lands bills, inventory value, and COGS in QuickBooks automatically.
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Brittany BrownOct 25, 202282 min

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