Your Shopify Payout
Is Not Your Revenue.

It lands net of platform fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserve. Record the deposit and stop there, and not one of them appears in your books.

$10,000 in Gross SalesYou See One Number
Deposit
Net Deposit $8,140 Platform Fees $360 Refunds $900 Reserve Held $600
Get a Free Books Diagnostic Show Me What It Costs

Work It Out Yourself

How Much of Your Business Is Invisible?

Move the sliders to match your business. Nothing is submitted anywhere, and the arithmetic is published below so you can check it.

$0
a year in fees, refunds and sales tax that is missing from your books or sitting in the wrong place, if payouts are recorded as deposits
Platform Fees$0
Refunds$0
Sales Tax Treated as Income$0
Share of Sales Never Recorded0%
See What's Actually in Your Books
The arithmetic. Shopify Payments is taken at 2.9% plus $0.30 per order on a $65 average order; Amazon at a 15% referral fee. Refunds and sales tax use your slider values. Fees and refunds are genuinely absent: if the deposit is booked as revenue and no fee expense is recorded, they appear on neither side of the ledger. Sales tax is the opposite problem — it is in the books, but as income. Net profit may still come out close to right — what breaks is your revenue line, your fee rate per channel, your visible refund rate, and a sales tax liability sitting in your accounts as income. Your real rates will differ. This is an illustration, not a quote.
0Hours to Your ReportFrom the moment read-only access lands, not from the moment you chase us.
$0Cost of the DiagnosticNo card, no trial, no obligation. The report is yours whether you hire us or not.
0Platforms We ReconcileShopify, Amazon, Stripe, PayPal, Walmart and Etsy, settlement by settlement.

What’s Inside One Payout

Four Things Hiding in a Single Deposit

Deposit, Booked as Revenue$8,140
Platform Fees$360
Refunds$900
Reserve Held$600
Sales Tax CollectedNot Revenue
Gross Sales$10,000

You See One Number

The deposit lands in the bank and is booked as revenue. It balances, so nobody looks again. Keep scrolling to take it apart.

Platform Fees, $360

Deducted before the money reaches you, so they never look like a cost. Booked as a deposit, your largest single expense line simply does not exist — and you cannot answer the question that matters: is Amazon or Shopify actually more profitable for this product?

Refunds, $900

Netted out of the payout rather than recorded against the original sale. Both your gross sales and your refund rate vanish. A product returning at 22% looks identical to one returning at 2%, right up until the quarter it takes your margin with it.

Reserve, $600

Money you have earned that the platform is holding — typically a rolling percentage released weeks later. It is an asset you own and it belongs on your balance sheet. Ignored, your cash position is understated and your forecast is wrong in the direction that hurts.

Sales Tax, Inside the Deposit

Collected inside the same deposit. It is not revenue — it is money you are holding for a tax authority. Recorded as income it overstates your earnings, hides a growing liability, and leaves you exposed the moment a registration threshold is crossed.

Six Questions, No Email Required

The Books Check

Answer honestly. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no form at the end — you either recognize yourself in the result or you don't.

Why This Keeps Happening

The Numbers Look Fine Until the Day They Don't

It is the end of the quarter. You open the dashboard.

Revenue is up. Ad spend is up a little more. Margin is roughly where it was last quarter, so nothing looks broken.

You decide to push harder on the channel that appears to be working.

That decision is being made on numbers nobody has checked.

Because the payouts were booked as deposits, the fee rate on that channel has never once appeared in your accounts. The refund rate on your best-selling product is netted invisibly into the same line. The reserve the platform is holding is not on your balance sheet at all.

None of it is fraud. None of it is even unusual. It is what happens when someone competent at bookkeeping meets a settlement report they have never been trained to read.

Six months later your accountant asks for cleanup before filing. The cleanup turns up the fee rate. And the channel you doubled down on turns out to have been the worse of the two the entire time.

That is the six months you do not get back.

The diagnostic exists so this gets caught in forty-eight hours instead of at year end. It costs nothing, and if your books are clean we will tell you that and leave you alone.

Get the Free Diagnostic

What We Do

Accounting, Bookkeeping and Back-Office Operations

Bookkeeping →

  • Monthly Categorization and Reconciliation
  • P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow
  • Catch-Up and Cleanup of Neglected Books
  • QuickBooks Online and Xero Setup or Migration
  • NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Business Central and Odoo
  • Year-End Packaged for Your Accountant

E-Commerce Accounting →

  • Settlement Reconciliation — Shopify, Amazon, Stripe, PayPal, Walmart, Etsy
  • A2X Setup and Ongoing Management
  • COGS, Inventory and Landed Cost
  • Sales Tax Threshold Monitoring
  • Margin by SKU and by Channel

Back-Office Operations →

  • Accounts Payable — capture, coding, payment runs prepared for your approval
  • Accounts Receivable, Aging and Collections
  • Expense Management and Receipt Chasing
  • Order and Fulfillment Coordination
  • Vendor and Supplier Coordination

Reporting →

  • Monthly Management Pack with Commentary
  • KPI Dashboard and Channel Profitability
  • 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
  • Budget Versus Actual with Variance Notes

What We Don't Do: tax returns, tax advice, audit, payroll processing, or anything that needs a licensed accountant's signature. We are not a certified or chartered accounting firm. We get the books clean so your accountant can do that part properly — and we are happy to introduce you to one.

Where Everyone Starts

The Free Books Diagnostic

We look at your actual books and tell you what is wrong with them. No charge, no obligation, and the report is yours whether or not you work with us.

1  Grant Access

A read-only user in QuickBooks Online, Xero or your ERP, or an export if you prefer. Our NDA is signed before we look at anything.

2  We Review

Reconciliation status, categorization, settlement handling, COGS and inventory, and how sales tax is recorded.

3  You Get a Report

Two to three pages in plain language within 48 hours. Every finding quantified with your own numbers.

4  You Decide

A fixed price to fix it and a monthly figure to keep it right — or take the report and fix it yourself.

Request Your Diagnostic

Read-only means we can see the books. We cannot move money, change banking details, or alter anything. Revoke access in two clicks.

Pricing

Published, So You Can Work Out the Answer Yourself

Set it to your business. No quote form, no "contact us for pricing".

Your Tier
Standard
Monthly Bookkeeping$549
E-Commerce Add-On$400
$949
per month · annual prepay saves 10% ($10,249 a year)

Cleanup Projects

Fixed price, quoted from your diagnostic. From $750 for up to six months of backlog. Multi-channel cleanups $3,500–7,500.

Dedicated Seat

A named full-time bookkeeper or operations associate embedded in your business. Quoted after the diagnostic.

Service Businesses

Agencies, contractors and professional practices use the same tiers without the E-Commerce add-on.

Cleanup is completed before any monthly retainer begins. We will not take on messy books at a monthly rate and quietly do a worse job.

Security and Trust

You Are Handing a Stranger Access to Your Books

So here is exactly what that access is, and what it isn't.

Read-Only for the Diagnostic

A Read Only user in Xero, a Reports Only user in QuickBooks Online, a view-only role in your ERP, or an export. We can see the books and change nothing.

NDA Before Access

Signed before we look at anything, including for the free diagnostic. A written data security policy is available on request.

One Named Person

Your account is handled by a named individual, not an anonymous pool. You will know who is in your books.

No Money Movement

Monthly work needs accountant access to categorize and reconcile. Banking stays with you: we prepare payment runs, you approve and execute them, and we never hold, transfer or disburse client funds.

Your Data Stays Put

We work inside your own accounting system rather than a copy of it, and no bank credentials are ever shared with us. An export, if you send one, is handled under our written data security policy.

Revoke in Two Clicks

Access is granted by you and removed by you, instantly, from inside your accounting software. You are never locked in.

About

Where the Team Is, and Why It Matters

Workostic is a team of accountants and operations specialists based in Islamabad, Pakistan, working your business hours wherever you are. We are straightforward about that, because it is the reason the pricing works and because you would find out anyway.

In practice that means a named person online during your workday, not a call center — someone who knows your channels, your inventory and your close.

We would rather you judged us on the diagnostic than on our address. That is precisely why it is free.

Questions People Actually Ask

How Is This Cheaper Than Hiring In-House?

A full-time in-house bookkeeper runs well into five figures a year once benefits and employment costs are counted. Our team is in Islamabad, so the same work costs a fraction of that. We are not the cheapest option available and do not try to be — you can always pay less for someone who has never seen an Amazon settlement report.

I Already Have a Bookkeeper.

That is fine. Worth asking them one question: when were your platform payouts last broken out into gross sales, fees, refunds and reserve? If the answer is vague, the Free Books Diagnostic is a useful second opinion. If your books turn out to be clean, we will tell you so.

Can You File My Taxes?

No. We are not a certified or chartered accounting firm, and we do not provide tax advice, prepare returns, or sign anything. We prepare clean, reconciled books so your accountant can do that work properly and quickly. If you need one, we can introduce you.

Do You Handle Payroll?

No. Payroll is a specialist function with its own compliance exposure and it sits outside our scope. A dedicated payroll provider will handle it better, and we can suggest one. We will reconcile the payroll entries into your books either way.

What Software Do You Work In?

QuickBooks Online and Xero, plus NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Dynamics 365 Business Central and Odoo — with A2X for settlement reconciliation and Dext, Ramp or Expensify for expenses. We work inside your existing system, and we are not an implementer for any of them. Systems We Work In.

How Quickly Can You Start?

The Diagnostic takes 48 hours from access. Cleanup projects typically start within a week of the quote being accepted and run two to six weeks depending on backlog and volume.

Worked Examples

Nine Services, Each One Worked Through

One typical situation per service, with the figures. These are illustrations built on our published prices and the same arithmetic as the calculators above. None is a client result.

Bookkeeping
E-Commerce Accounting
Back-Office Operations
Reporting
Monthly Bookkeeping1 of 9

A Loan Payment Booked Entirely as an Expense

A marketing agency with about 220 transactions a month, in QuickBooks Online.

Booked as Expense in a Year$28,800
Actual Interest in a Year$6,000

After a year, expenses are overstated by $22,800 and the books still show $22,800 of debt that has already been repaid. Categorizing alone never catches this. Reconciling the loan does.

Show the Working

The Situation

Each month the full $2,400 loan payment is categorized as an expense. Only $500 of it is interest. The other $1,900 repays the loan and belongs on the balance sheet.

What We Do

Reconcile the loan account to the lender’s statement at each close, split every payment into principal and interest, and correct the earlier months with documented adjustments.

Monthly Loan Payment$2,400
Of Which Principal$1,900
Expenses Overstated Over 12 Months$22,800
Loan Balance Overstated$22,800
Published PriceStandard, $549 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Catch-Up and Cleanup2 of 9

Nine Months Behind With a Filing Deadline

A single-channel Shopify store with about 250 transactions a month, last reconciled nine months ago.

Transactions Unreconciled Today2,250
Unreconciled After the Cleanup0

The backlog is 2,250 transactions. Because it runs past six months, it is priced as a fixed quote from the diagnostic, not from the $750 starting point. The monthly figure of $749 begins only once the cleanup is finished.

Show the Working

The Situation

The accountant has asked for clean books before filing. Nine months of bank activity and Shopify payouts are uncategorized, and nobody is sure the opening balances are right.

What We Do

Run the free diagnostic, quote a fixed price, then work month by month in order so each month builds on a reconciled one. Every adjustment goes in a log the accountant can follow.

Months Behind9
Transactions to Work Through2,250
Cleanup PriceFixed Quote
Typical DurationTwo to Six Weeks
Monthly Figure Once Current$749

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Setup and Migration3 of 9

Moving Off QuickBooks Desktop Without Losing the Thread

A wholesale distributor with eight years of history in QuickBooks Desktop.

Receivables in the New File$186,450
What Customers Actually Owe$184,200

Receivables are $2,250 higher in the new file because two customer credits did not carry across. Found at cutover, it is a small correction. Found by a customer chased for money they do not owe, it is a harder conversation.

Show the Working

The Situation

The conversion reports success. Nobody has compared the two files, and the first invoice run in the new system is next week.

What We Do

Compare the trial balance, receivables, payables and inventory between the old file and the new one at the cutover date, trace each difference to its source, and document what did not carry across.

Receivables in the Old File$184,200
Receivables After Conversion$186,450
Difference Found at Cutover$2,250
Traced ToTwo Customer Credits
Published PriceFixed Quote

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Settlement Reconciliation4 of 9

A Month of Shopify Payouts, Taken Apart

A Shopify store with $250,000 a month in gross sales.

Revenue in the Books$213,500
Gross Sales for the Month$250,000

Gross sales were $250,000, not $213,500. The fee rate is 3.6% and the refund rate 9.0%, both invisible before. $15,000 of reserve is an asset the balance sheet never showed, and $10,000 of sales tax was sitting inside revenue.

Show the Working

The Situation

Every payout is recorded as sales for the amount that reaches the bank. The books show $213,500 of revenue for the month and no fee expense at all.

What We Do

Run each payout through a Shopify clearing account, tied to the payout report: gross sales and sales tax in; fees, refunds, reserve and the bank deposit out. The clearing account returns to zero, or something is missing.

Deposits Received$213,500
Gross Sales$250,000
Platform Fees$9,000
Refunds$22,500
Reserve Held$15,000
Sales Tax Collected$10,000
Published Price$200 a Month, Plus $350 A2X Setup

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Inventory and COGS5 of 9

Margin Measured on the Wrong Cost

A brand importing 2,000 units per shipment and selling at $19.00 a unit.

Margin on Supplier Price68.4%
Margin on Landed Cost58.4%

Each unit costs $7.90 to land, not $6.00. Margin is 58.4%, ten points lower than assumed, and a discount that looked safe at 68.4% needs a second look.

Show the Working

The Situation

Margin is worked out from the supplier’s invoice. Freight of $2,200, duty at 7.5% and $700 of handling are booked as general expenses when the bills arrive.

What We Do

Add freight, duty and handling to unit cost for each shipment, hold inventory on the balance sheet, and recognize the cost as units sell.

Supplier Price per Unit$6.00
Freight, Duty and Handling per Unit$1.90
Landed Cost per Unit$7.90
Margin on Supplier Price68.4%
Margin on Landed Cost58.4%
Gross Profit Overstated per Shipment$3,800
Published Price$250 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Accounts Payable6 of 9

The Same Invoice, Sent Twice

A business receiving about 120 supplier bills a month.

Sitting in the Bills Inbox$7,720
Actually Owed$3,860

The run that reaches you for approval contains the invoice once. You approve it and release the payment from your own bank. We never do.

Show the Working

The Situation

A supplier emails an invoice for $3,860, then sends it again two weeks later attached to a statement, under a different file name. Both copies land in the bills inbox.

What We Do

Code each bill, then check supplier, invoice number and amount against everything already entered before it can join a payment run. The duplicate is flagged and held, and the supplier statement is reconciled to confirm only one is owed.

Invoice Amount$3,860
Copies Received2
Held Before the Payment Run$3,860
Payments Released by UsNone
Published PriceFrom $300 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Accounts Receivable7 of 9

Fifty Days to Get Paid

A business-to-business company invoicing $200,000 a month on 30-day terms.

Collection Time Today50 Days
Agreed Target35 Days

Each day of collection time holds about $6,575. Bringing 50 days down to 35 would put roughly $99,900 in the bank that is currently sitting with customers. The sales are the same, collected sooner.

Show the Working

The Situation

Invoices go out when someone remembers, and follow-up happens when cash gets tight. Customers are taking 50 days to pay.

What We Do

Send invoices on a fixed schedule, review aging every week, and follow up on an agreed cadence: a reminder before the due date, a polite follow-up after it, then direct contact. Payment plans and write-offs stay your decision.

Receivables Outstanding$330,000
Average Daily Invoiced Sales$6,575
Current Collection Time50 Days
Target35 Days
Cash Released at Target$99,863
Published PriceFrom $300 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Management Reporting8 of 9

Sales Up, Gross Profit Down

A multi-channel seller with about $450,000 a month in gross sales.

Sales This Month+4.7%
Gross Profit This Month−1.7%

Sales rose 4.7%, but refunds rose 19.9%, lifting the refund rate from 7.7% to 8.8%. Gross profit fell 1.7%. The commentary names the cause in the month it happens. What to do about it is your decision.

Show the Working

The Situation

The statements arrive each month and show sales growing. Nobody is asked to explain them, so nobody notices gross profit slipping.

What We Do

Issue a management pack on a fixed date, with comparatives and a written commentary on what moved and why, built from reconciled books.

Gross Sales$452,300, Up 4.7%
Refunds$39,700, Up 19.9%
Refund Rate8.8%, From 7.7%
Gross Profit$172,400, Down 1.7%
Published Price$250 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Cash Flow Forecasting9 of 9

The Same Order, Four Weeks Later

A seller holding $150,000 in cash and planning a $150,000 inventory order.

Lowest Cash, Order Paid in Week 5$20,000
Lowest Cash, Order Paid in Week 9$61,000

Paid in week 5, the order takes cash down to $20,000. Paid in week 9, when the platform releases $25,000 of reserve, the lowest point is $61,000. The forecast shows both. Whether the supplier will wait is your call.

Show the Working

The Situation

The order is due to be paid in week 5. Average monthly cash flow looks comfortable, so nobody has checked it week by week.

What We Do

Build a 13-week forecast from the reconciled books, timing receipts, payments, the order and a platform reserve release in the weeks they land, then show the order in a second position.

Weekly Receipts and Payments$42,000 and $38,000
Reserve Release Expected$25,000 in Week 9
Lowest Balance, Order Paid in Week 5$20,000
Lowest Balance, Order Paid in Week 9$61,000
Published Price$300 a Month

Illustrative scenario, not a client result.

Request It

Start Your Free Books Diagnostic

Six fields. We reply within one business day with the access instructions and our NDA. Nothing happens to your books until that NDA is signed.

No card, no obligation. We reply within one business day. Your details are used only to run the diagnostic and are never shared.

“Every product we quote to our biggest customers starts with Bilal’s numbers. He works back from the shelf price through freight, duty and outbound charges, so we know where the margin sits at each volume tier before we quote.”
Flingerz logoFlingerzClient of Bilal, Workostic’s Founder, Since 2022
“Bilal has run the back office for FitDog since 2022: the books, payables, receivables and the monthly reports. I can ask him anything about the numbers and get a straight answer.”
FitDog logoFitDogClient of Bilal, Workostic’s Founder, Since 2022

Find Out What Is Actually in Your Books

Read-only access, 48 hours, a written report. No charge and no obligation.

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