Monthly close checklist for ecommerce brands: seven steps before you report the month

Meet Dana. She runs a made-up coffee roaster that sells on Amazon and Shopify.

The month ended on Friday.

On Monday morning, her lender emails. How did last month go?

Dana opens the dashboard. Sales up 12%. Profit $93,000. She hits reply.

Two weeks later, her bookkeeper closes the month.

Profit was $59,500.

Both numbers came from real data. Only one of them was finished.

Now Dana has to write that lender a second email.

A monthly close is the routine that turns a month of moving numbers into final ones, and you should not report a month until it is done.

For a brand on Amazon, Shopify and maybe Walmart or TikTok Shop, the close has more moving parts than a shop with one till. Every channel pays on its own clock. Fees land late. Refunds come back weeks after the sale. This post gives you a seven-step checklist, with what a red flag looks like at each step. Then we walk through where Dana’s missing $33,500 went.

What “closing the month” means

To close a month is to finish booking everything that belongs to it, check it against cash and stock, and lock it. After that, nobody changes it without a written reason.

Two ideas make the close work.

The first is the source of record: the one place you agree is the truth for each number. For cash, that is the bank. For what Amazon paid, it is the settlement report. For stock, it is the count.

The second is accrual timing. Each sale, fee and refund goes in the month it was earned, not the month the cash moved. A December sale refunded in January is a December refund. Without this, every month borrows from the next. The IRS describes the accrual method the same way. Income counts when earned and expenses when incurred, so the two match (IRS Publication 538).

The checklist at a glance

Now each step, with the red flag in more detail.

Step 1: Tie marketplace payouts to the bank

Amazon pays you through settlements, on a schedule Amazon sets. Each one lists sales, fees, refunds, ad charges and money held back. It ends in one deposit to your bank. Amazon’s developer docs say the settlement report shows the dates it covers, each charge and fee, and the deposit date (Amazon’s developer docs).

For each settlement in the month, find the matching bank deposit by date and amount. Do the same for Walmart, TikTok Shop and any other marketplace.

Use the settlement report, not the orders report. The orders report shows what customers bought. The settlement shows what you were paid. We walk through the gap in Amazon settlement report vs orders report.

Watch the edges. A settlement often spans two months. Split its lines into the month each sale or fee belongs to.

What a red flag looks like: a settlement with no matching deposit, or a deposit you cannot trace to any settlement. Also watch for a hold, called a reserve, that keeps growing. Amazon can hold back part of a payout. If that held amount climbs each month, cash is stuck and you should know why.

Step 2: Tie store payouts to the bank

Your own store pays you through a payment processor, such as Shopify Payments, Stripe or PayPal. Each payout bundles many orders, minus fees and refunds.

Shopify lets you pick a daily, weekly or monthly payout schedule. Its payments activity report shows transactions, fees and payouts for any date range (Shopify Help Center). Both were true as of October 2026.

Match each payout to a bank deposit, the same way as step 1. Then compare total store sales for the month with total payouts. They will not be equal. Fees, refunds, timing and gift cards all make a gap. But you should be able to explain the gap line by line.

What a red flag looks like: store sales well above payouts, and you cannot say why. Common causes are orders marked paid that never were, a payment app you forgot about, or a large chargeback. A chargeback is when a customer’s bank pulls the money back.

Step 3: Book fees and refunds in the right month

Here is where it gets expensive. Fees and refunds are where profit hides.

Amazon charges referral fees, fulfillment fees and storage fees. Storage for one month is often charged in the next. Payment processors take a fee on every order. Refunds can arrive weeks after a sale.

Move each one into the month of the sale it belongs to. If you book them when they are paid, a strong month looks better than it was, and the next month looks worse.

For how fees stack up per unit on Amazon, see Amazon fees per unit.

What a red flag looks like: fees or refunds as a share of sales jump or drop sharply with no business reason. A sudden drop often means fees went in the wrong month. A sudden jump can mean a real fee change, which is worth catching early.

Step 4: Update landed cost

Landed cost is the full cost to get a unit onto a shelf you can sell from. That is the factory price, plus freight, duty and the cost to get it into a warehouse.

At each close, check whether any of those moved. A new shipment at a higher freight rate means a higher cost per unit from the day that stock started selling. Record the new cost and the date it begins. Our guide to COGS and landed cost shows how to build it.

What a red flag looks like: one unit cost used for months while freight bills went up or down. Also watch for products with no cost at all. A product with zero cost looks like pure profit. It is not.

Step 5: Count stock

Your books say how many units you should have. Your warehouses say how many you do have. These drift apart. The IRS asks businesses to take a physical count at reasonable intervals and adjust the books to match (IRS Publication 538).

Compare your system count with what each location reports. Include Amazon warehouses, your own warehouse or third-party warehouse, and stock still in transit. Book the difference. Units that are lost, damaged or too slow to sell at full price get written down, which means their value is cut and the cut becomes a cost.

A full count every month is a lot of work. Many brands count fully once a quarter and check their biggest products every month.

What a red flag looks like: a gap between books and warehouses that grows each month. One bad month can be a timing issue. A steady climb usually means units are being lost, sold without being recorded, or never arrived.

Step 6: Accrue ad spend

Ad platforms, agencies and creators bill on their own schedules. An agency may invoice two weeks after month end. A creator may be paid on delivery.

An accrual fixes this. At close, estimate each cost that belongs to the month but has not been billed. Book it. When the real bill arrives, correct the estimate.

One more trap. Amazon keeps adding ad sales to a week after it ends. Its ads reporting FAQ says sales data is restated 1, 7 and 28 days after a purchase (Amazon Ads reporting FAQ), as of October 2026. That changes your return on ad spend, but not your cost. Book the cost in the right month. Wait for the sales to settle before you judge the return. See why Amazon ad sales numbers are not final.

What a red flag looks like: your biggest sales month shows your lowest ad cost. That is rarely true. It usually means the bills for that month landed in the next one.

Step 7: Reconcile, then report

To reconcile is to check that two records of the same thing agree. Now check the whole month.

• Do total sales by channel tie to payouts, plus the gaps you explained?
• Do fees, refunds and ad costs tie to their source accounts?
• Does stock at the start, plus what you bought, minus what you sold, roughly equal stock at the end?
• Does cash in the bank match what the books expect?

Only when these agree should you report the month. Then lock it.

What a red flag looks like: the month’s totals move after you have reported them. If last month’s profit changes every time someone opens it, the month was never closed.

A worked example: the month that looked great

Back to Dana. Illustrative numbers only. This is a made-up coffee roaster that sells on Amazon and its own Shopify store.

On the first Monday of the new month, her dashboard showed this for last month:

Here is where the $33,500 went. Amazon sales fell because some orders were cancelled after day 3. Shopify sales fell for late refunds. Storage fees for the month landed in the next settlement. A new shipment came in at a higher freight cost. And the agency bill arrived on day 12.

None of this was hidden. It was just not in yet. The day-3 number was 56% higher than the closed one. That number already went to Dana’s lender. It was wrong in a way nobody could see on day 3.

For how to build contribution by channel, see contribution margin for Amazon and Shopify.

Where software helps, and where it stops

Most of the close is matching. Payout to deposit. Fee to sale month. Cost to date. Software is good at that.

Synthesis connects stores, marketplaces, ad accounts and books like NetSuite. It checks numbers against their source. Amazon sales tie to settlements, and ad spend ties to each account. Its answers also say when a month is still in flight, so a half-finished month is labeled, not reported as final.

It does not replace your bookkeeper. It cannot count boxes in a warehouse, decide which stock to write down, or estimate a bill it has never seen. Those are judgment calls. The close is still a person’s job. Good tools just make the matching part faster.

Your close checklist

Print this, or copy it into your task tracker.

1. List every payout for the month, from every channel.
2. Match each marketplace payout to a bank deposit.
3. Match each store and processor payout to a bank deposit.
4. Split payouts that span two months.
5. Move each fee and refund into the month of its sale.
6. Update landed cost for any product with new freight or factory prices.
7. Check every product has a cost above zero.
8. Compare system stock to each warehouse and book the gap.
9. Write down lost, damaged and slow stock.
10. Accrue every ad, agency and creator cost not yet billed.
11. Reconcile sales, costs, stock and cash.
12. Report the month. Then lock it.

The short version

A month is not finished when the calendar turns. It is finished when every payout ties to the bank, every fee and refund sits in its month, cost and stock are current, and late bills are booked.

Close first. Report second. A number that arrives two weeks later and holds still is worth more than one on day three that keeps moving.

This is general guidance, not accounting advice. Your bookkeeper or accountant should set the close that fits your business.