Ecommerce bookkeeping services cost from about $100 a month for cash-basis plans to $1,500 to $10,000 a month for ecommerce-specialist firms, as of October 2026. A service worth paying for covers five things: marketplace settlement reconciliation, fee coding by type, cost of goods sold, inventory valuation, and a clean sales tax handoff to your tax preparer.
It is part of our complete guide to ecommerce accounting.
The price range is wide because the scope behind it is wide. A $99 plan and a $2,500 engagement both call themselves bookkeeping, but only one of them carries inventory on the balance sheet and books cost of goods against each sale. This guide covers what an ecommerce bookkeeping service should include, what published pricing looks like, how the three delivery models differ, and the questions to ask before you sign anything.
What should an ecommerce bookkeeping service include?
Ecommerce books differ from service-business books in one structural way: the money arrives net. Every marketplace payout bundles sales, refunds, fees, ad charges, and adjustments into a single deposit. A bookkeeper who records the deposit as revenue has produced a tidy ledger that is wrong in both directions. So the first test of any service is whether it unpacks the payout.
A complete ecommerce scope covers these five areas.
| Scope area | What "done" looks like |
|---|---|
| Settlement reconciliation | Each payout split into gross sales, refunds, fees, ad spend, and reserves, then tied to the bank deposit it produced |
| Fee coding by type | Referral, fulfillment, storage, payment processing, and advertising fees posted to separate accounts, not one "fees" bucket |
| Cost of goods sold | COGS booked against each sale at landed cost (purchase price plus freight, duty, and prep), not expensed when the supplier is paid |
| Inventory | Stock carried as an asset, with write-downs for loss, damage, and obsolete units |
| Sales tax handoff | Tax collected by a marketplace facilitator separated from tax you owe on your own store, so your preparer files from a clean split |
Two further items separate a good service from an adequate one. The first is accrual accounting. Cash-basis books cannot hold inventory as an asset, so they cannot produce a real gross margin, and lenders and acquirers will ask for accrual statements anyway. The second is a channel-level view: a profit and loss statement split by marketplace, so the operator can see which channel earns its place.
If a proposal does not mention settlements, landed cost, or inventory by name, it is a general bookkeeping proposal with an ecommerce label. Our ecommerce bookkeeping guide goes deeper on the chart of accounts this work depends on, and the channel-specific mechanics live in our guides to Amazon FBA accounting, Shopify bookkeeping, and eBay bookkeeping.
What do ecommerce bookkeeping services cost in 2026?
Most ecommerce bookkeeping firms do not publish prices. They quote after a discovery call, based on revenue, transaction count, number of accounts, and number of channels. The firms that do publish give a useful picture of how the market prices this work.
At the entry level, Pilot's pricing page lists its Essentials plan at $99 per month as of October 2026, for businesses under $100,000 in monthly expenses. It is cash-basis only, uses a standard chart of accounts, and does not include a dedicated bookkeeper. That is a reasonable product for a simple service business. For a seller holding inventory, cash-basis books leave out the asset that matters most.
At the specialist end, Eightx's bookkeeping services page publishes three ecommerce tiers, as of October 2026:
| Eightx tier | Revenue band | Published monthly price | Ecommerce scope named on the page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundational | $1M to $5M | $1,500 to $2,500 | Multi-channel revenue recognition, settlement reconciliation for Shopify and Amazon FBA, basic inventory tracking, sales tax filing, monthly P&L and balance sheet |
| Operator-grade | $5M to $25M | $2,500 to $5,000 | Adds landed-cost COGS, multi-currency consolidation, channel-level P&L with contribution margin, weekly cash visibility |
| Multi-entity | $25M to $150M | $5,000 to $10,000 | Adds cross-border consolidation, SKU-level inventory accounting, board-ready reporting |
The same page lists cleanup projects at a fixed $5,000 to $25,000 for books that have fallen out of control. That second number is the one operators tend to miss. Catch-up and cleanup work is usually priced separately from the monthly fee, and a seller who has run on a spreadsheet for a year should expect to pay it before the monthly engagement starts.
The pattern across the market: price scales with revenue and complexity because the service model prices human hours. Each added channel, entity, or currency is more time, so it is a higher tier. For the broader picture of generic service pricing, see our guide to online bookkeeping services.
Firm vs platform vs platform with a specialist
Ecommerce operators choosing bookkeeping help are choosing between three delivery models. The cost difference matters, but the difference in how current the numbers are matters more.
| Bookkeeping firm | Software platform alone | Platform with a human specialist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | People at the firm, from exports and connector apps | Software, with the operator handling exceptions | Software does the daily work; a specialist reviews it with you |
| How current the books are | Closed once a month, typically days to weeks after month end | As current as the operator keeps up with exceptions | Posted daily, reviewed monthly |
| Who owns judgment calls | The firm | The operator | The operator, with a specialist on the monthly call |
| How the price moves | Up with revenue, channels, and entities | Usually flat or by volume | Usually flat, starting from a published price |
| Where it strains | Latency: decisions wait for the close | Nobody reviews the edge cases | Needs connected channels to do the daily work |
A firm is the right call when the business is complex enough to need a human owning every entry, such as multiple entities across currencies, and the operator is content to read last month's numbers. A software platform alone suits operators with simple books and the discipline to clear exceptions weekly. The third model sits between them: the daily reconciliation happens continuously, and a person reviews the output with you each month. Our comparison of AI bookkeeping and outsourced bookkeeping covers the method trade-offs in more depth.
The real comparison is against people. A bookkeeper plus a controller-level reviewer is the service most growing sellers end up buying, in pieces, and the published tiers above show what that costs once inventory and landed cost enter the scope.
What should you ask before signing?
The pricing page tells you what a service charges. These questions tell you what it actually does with a marketplace payout.
- How do you record a marketplace settlement? The answer should be "gross sales, with each fee and refund on its own line." If the answer is "we record the deposit," walk away.
- Where does landed cost live? Ask whether freight, duty, and prep are capitalized into inventory and released to COGS at sale, or expensed when paid.
- Cash or accrual? For any seller holding inventory, accrual is the only answer that produces a real gross margin.
- How do you split sales tax? Marketplace facilitators collect and remit on their own orders. Your own store is your responsibility. The service should keep the two apart.
- When are the books closed, and closed to what standard? A date is not enough. Ask whether every payout is tied to a bank deposit before the month is called final.
- What does catch-up cost, and what are the contract terms? Cleanup fees, minimum terms, and notice periods vary widely and are often not on the pricing page.
- What happens when I add a channel? If a second marketplace moves you up a tier, price that now rather than after it launches.
A service that answers all seven clearly is worth its fee. A service that answers vaguely on the first two will produce books that look finished and mislead every margin decision built on them. Before any engagement starts, run your current channel fees through our ecommerce fee calculators so you know what a correctly coded fee line should look like.
How Futureproof handles ecommerce bookkeeping
Futureproof is the third model: one ledger that replaces your accounting software, run by an AI finance team, with a monthly review call with a human financial specialist included. Pricing is from $1,000/month for all six agents. There are no per-seat fees and no modules.
The daily work is concrete. Vic, the AI bookkeeper, splits each payout into sales, fees, refunds, and adjustments, codes card and bank activity beside it, books cost of goods against the sale, and closes the day. Theo carries landed cost: supplier bills, freight, duty, and purchase orders are coded and matched, so inventory value and the cost basis under each sale hold up without a year-end exercise. Hugo rebuilds margin per SKU and per channel from posted entries each night. Corrections and anything that did not reconcile come to you with the evidence attached, and every entry lands on the audit trail.
On channels, Amazon and eBay are live, Shopify is in beta, and TikTok Shop is coming soon. Coming from QuickBooks, a one-click migration brings your history across. The ecommerce bookkeeping page shows the full workflow, and our piece on the ecommerce accounting stack shows what it replaces.
The monthly specialist call is where the judgment lives: reviewing the close, questioning a margin move, and deciding what the numbers mean for the next quarter. That is the part of a bookkeeping firm worth keeping, without waiting for it to produce the books first.
FAQ
How much does ecommerce bookkeeping cost per month?
As of October 2026, published pricing runs from $99 a month for cash-basis plans with no dedicated bookkeeper to $1,500 to $10,000 a month for ecommerce-specialist firms, scaled by revenue. Cleanup of neglected books is usually extra, with one published range at $5,000 to $25,000. Futureproof starts at $1,000 per month with a monthly specialist review included.
Do I need a bookkeeper who specializes in ecommerce?
If you hold inventory or sell on a marketplace, yes. Settlement reconciliation, landed cost, inventory valuation, and marketplace sales tax are specialist work. A generalist who records payouts as revenue will understate sales, hide fees, and leave inventory off the balance sheet, which distorts every margin decision made from those books.
What is the difference between an ecommerce bookkeeper and an ecommerce accountant?
A bookkeeper records and reconciles transactions: payouts, fees, bills, and inventory movements. An accountant works from those records to prepare tax returns, advise on entity structure, and handle filings. Most operators need both. Clean bookkeeping is what makes the accountant's work faster, because the preparer files from a ledger rather than reconstructing one.
Can software replace an ecommerce bookkeeping service?
Software can replace the daily reconciliation work, which is most of what a bookkeeping service bills for. It does not replace human judgment on edge cases, period-end review, or what the numbers mean. That is why a platform paired with a human specialist covers more than software alone, and why your tax preparer stays in the picture either way.
Ready to see your books current every day, with a specialist reviewing them monthly? Start a 14-day trial or book a demo.
