Automation: letting the machines do it so you don’t have to.
It’s easy to see how automation saves you time. Our brains aren’t keen on repetitive tasks and can sometimes fall short, but software? Designed to crunch, compute, report, and repeat – software is accurate, it scales, and it constantly improves.
So if you’re going to automate parts of your business, where should you begin? With the vital organs of course: your accounts. Without efficient bookkeeping, your business can’t thrive.
But if you’re searching for the best Amazon accounting software, you probably know this already. So, let’s get down to it.
In this blog on Amazon accounting software, part of our Amazon accounting hub:
Table of Contents
- Accounting Automation for Ecommerce
- The top 10 things that accounting software gives you
- The Best Accounting Software for Amazon FBA
- Free accounting software for Amazon sellers
- Integrated Amazon FBA accounting software
- How to choose your Amazon accounting software
- Optimizing Your Accounting Automation with Fiflow
- Keen for Automation Beyond Your Accounts?
- Next in the Series…
- Other Amazon Resources
Accounting Automation for Ecommerce
Few tasks for your business are as crucial (and labor-intensive) as accounting. It can propel you, or it can sink you.
With the technology we have at our fingertips today, manual number crunching should be a thing of the past. Accounting software offers incredible value to ecommerce businesses that couldn’t be achieved anywhere near as quickly by doing it ourselves.
The top 10 things that accounting software gives you
- The time to focus on other things and grow your business.
- Continuous financial reporting for in-depth reports whenever you want them – not just at the end of the tax year.
- Visibility over cash flow so that you don’t over allocate your resources.
- Minimal ropes to learn to manage your accounts if you’ve never done it before.
- Minimal margin for error because most of the calculation is done for you.
- A scalable system that allows integrations so that you can add on enhancements and customize your business infrastructure.
- A centralized system, keeping your business operations all in one place even as you grow.
- Greater security with online encryption, and the ability to control access levels for anyone you allow into your books.
- Remote access from anywhere in the world.
- Less headaches at tax time: your tax will have been collected and accounted for throughout the year, making compliance easier and more accurate.
There are some free alternatives to accounting software, so are they worth investigating first? Let’s look at your options and how to choose between them.
The Best Accounting Software for Amazon FBA
With a plethora of accounting software out there to choose from, where should Amazon sellers start?
- Free accounting software for Amazon sellers
Unfortunately, if you want quality accounting software, you will need to pay for it.
Some new sellers might want to explore creating an Amazon accounting spreadsheet to get going, but you can outgrow this quickly, and managing your accounts efficiently this way is extremely difficult. Why?
- Excel is not designed for comprehensive bookkeeping: While spreadsheets are no doubt useful resources for accounting, they are not optimized to manage all aspects of ecommerce bookkeeping.
- It’s all manual: You’ll need to create and update every aspect yourself. If something gets missed, it could compromise the entire sheet and you will have no way of checking for errors. In a famous news story, a simple copy/paste error in a spreadsheet cost TransAlta $24 million. And that’s not the only example of an Excel catastrophe.
- It doesn’t scale well: High volumes of information don’t translate well to Excel, and can clog it up. With cloud software designed to handle it, your business can grow without fear of overwhelming its own infrastructure.
Spreadsheets are an option, but for someone without an accounting background (and even trained professionals), relying on them is fraught with risk.
If you are processing ten orders a week, using a spreadsheet might suffice. But as soon as this number grows, keeping track of your data might demand more of your time than you want to give.
We recommend using accounting software as early in the game as possible. It will allow you to manage your money properly, analyze the health of your business accurately, and share reliable data with future investors, stakeholders, buyers, or an accountant.
Plus, if you do take on an accountant, having accounting software will enable them to spend less time crunching your numbers and more time helping you strategize growth.
- Integrated Amazon FBA accounting software
We are going to focus on three of the best accounting software options for Amazon sellers: QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage.
All three of these software solutions integrate with Amazon for automatic transfer of data and easy financial reporting. Below, we’ll explore their features and include review summaries from Capterra, a top software reviews site.
QuickBooks for Amazon
QuickBooks is fast becoming a comprehensive solution for ecommerce sellers, with add-on and enhancement options that help you cover all your bases.
You may have heard of QuickBooks Online or Desktop, but there’s another kid on the block.
QuickBooks Commerce (formerly TradeGecko), describes itself as:
“[A] powerful cloud based inventory and order management software for modern online businesses. We combine all your sales channels, locations and currencies so that every product, order and customer can be managed in one place.”
– QuickBooks.
What does this mean for Amazon sellers? QuickBooks has product options to suit you as you grow. You can start with their online version from just $16/month and upgrade to the specially-designed ecommerce version from $39.99/month to help you cover:
- Inventory management
- Warehouse management
- CRM
- Sales and orders
- More detailed financial reporting
A snapshot of the QuickBooks Commerce dashboard:
How does QuickBooks Online look for users? Take a peek:
QuickBooks reviews:
Find this overview and more in-depth user reviews of QuickBooks and its product variations here.
How does QuickBooks stand out?
With an impressive number of features available (at a price), QuickBooks has more plan options than Xero and Sage, giving users greater control over their subscription.
Xero for Amazon
Next up: Xero. This award-winning accounting software was designed with small businesses and accountants in mind. Xero is also on the cloud, allows unlimited users, and boasts hundreds of app integrations for a customized automation stack.
“Get your books done faster… feel confident in your numbers… add more to your software… [and] do business from anywhere on any device.”
– Xero.
With plans ranging from $5.50/mo to $31/mo, Xero can meet small and medium-sized business owners wherever they are in their journey.
Here’s a snapshot of the Xero dashboard:
And more information about the software provider:
Complete list can be found here.
Xero reviews:
Find this overview and more in-depth user reviews of Xero and its product variations here.
How does Xero stand out?
Xero offers the most affordable starting options for the smallest businesses with monthly subscriptions for less than $10. Depending on how much you want to grow and whether more complex integrations or features are in your future, this might suffice for your business.
Sage for Amazon
Sage took its industry-leading software into the cloud in 2018, opening its services up to a world of ecommerce sellers. As one of the UK’s top accounting software providers, you know you’re in expert hands with any Sage product.
The Sage App Marketplace gives sellers access to numerous Sage-approved apps to integrate so that you can tailor your business automation solution from the ground up.
“Your books? Job done. Take control of your cash flow with Sage Accounting… Sage Accounting supports your business at every step.”
– Sage.
Offering a free 30-day trial, Sage has three pricing plans between £12-£30/mo for UK users and two plans at $10 and $25/mo for the US.
Here’s a simplified version of the Sage Accounting dashboard:
Check out Sage’s introduction video:
Sage reviews:
Find this overview and more in-depth reviews via verified review site Capterra.
How does Sage stand out?
As part of a larger ecosystem of products that handle not just accounting but enterprise resource management, joining the Sage family could open you up to a whole different set of tools and features. Depending on your business goals, this may suit you down the road.
- How to choose your Amazon accounting software
Choosing which software to use comes down to your Amazon business goals.
If you don’t yet have clear business goals or an Amazon business plan, consider creating one of these before investing in a digital toolkit. By mapping out your ideal journey, which can of course change as things unfold, you can make smart decisions about where to spend your money and how to build lasting foundations.
We recommend hiring the help of a specialist ecommerce accountant, at least in the beginning, to help you get set up for success.
Optimizing Your Accounting Automation with Fiflow
Integrating accounting software with your Amazon account is a smart first step for all new sellers, but for those keen to grow quickly, it’s not the end of the road.
Even with excellent accounting software, there is a fair amount of manual reconciliation to be done, and Amazon fees in particular are notoriously tricky to interpret and track.
Amazon disbursements can represent a number of expense lines that aren’t always separated on your settlements, including things like:
- Sales tax collected
- Shipping and handling costs
- Reimbursements and returns received
- Amazon fees
The creators of Fiflow were themselves Amazon sellers for a decade prior to launching this software. They were struggling with the same gap that was left in the integration between Amazon and their accounting software: interpreting statements and deposits.
So, Fiflow was born.
Fiflow closes this gap for sellers and automatically calculates these lines, organizing them into journal summaries for your bank deposits so that books are neat, tidy and accessible.
Fiflow also splits statements that span months and uses the accrual method of accounting to give you the most accurate picture of your business financials. This way, you can reconcile your accounts in a matter of minutes, stay on top of your fees, figure out profit margins easily and ensure you are tax compliant – all by adding one extra app.
A2X also has a Cost of Goods Sold feature, enabling you to track inventory too. And finally, all the accounting software options we’ve discussed above seamlessly integrate with Fiflow.
Check out what Fiflow for Amazon can do for you below and start your free trial today.
Keen for Automation Beyond Your Accounts?
In our blog, Amazon Automation Guide, we walk you through what else you should be automating in your Amazon business, and crucially, in what order.
Next in the Series…
This blog is part of the Fiflow Ecommerce Accounting Hub. In the next part, we’ll be covering the big subject of Amazon fees and transactions.
Other Amazon Resources
- Amazon Automation Guide
- Amazon Pay Guide: Everything You Need to Know
- Intelligent Automation for the Amazon Seller