How To Find an Ecommerce CPA For Your Business
Have you ever wondered how to find your ecommerce CPA?
Do not fret because I will help you out.
I understand that it can be daunting when trying to figure out the right price for your product and if you should hire someone to do this for you or do it yourself.
I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of questions and points for you to consider while selecting an ecommerce CPA to maximize your investment.
Why Deal with a Specialist?
It always feels good to depend on professionals.
Specialists can help you better understand your ecommerce business and prepare for success, making ecommerce compliance more accessible, manageable, and less costly.
Specialist accountants such as ecommerce CPAs do accounting services and ecommerce tax planning and consulting.
The ecommerce CPA will help you do accounting by preparing tax returns and reports, including ecommerce financial statements, business valuation, forecasting analysis, and cash flow projections.
They also know the best ecommerce resources in your area.
These people can help you make the most out of ecommerce opportunities like ecommerce seminars and workshops.
Specialists also understand important ecommerce terms like ecommerce gross profit ratios, business depreciation, and capitalizing expenses.
So if you’re looking for an ecommerce CPA, search no more because Free Cash Flow has the best eCommerce accountants in California!
How to find the right CPA for your business
Ecommerce accounting services are not easy to manage and require a specialist to do this for you.
You can find the right fit by asking these questions:
- How much ecommerce experience do they have?
- How many ecommerce clients have they dealt with?
- What are ecommerce clients’ satisfaction levels?
All these will help you find the perfect ecommerce CPA for your business.
You should be able to trust your ecommerce CPA with everything from payroll to ecommerce compliance.
Ecommerce consultants are also helpful because they can guide you through the ecommerce process, from start-up to success.
Their core competencies are ecommerce strategies, growth tactics, customer relationship management, ecommerce technology, and marketing.
They will give you ecommerce consulting customized to your business requirements, such as infrastructure, e-trading platform, strategic planning, and ecommerce staff training.
Further Reading:
Where to Start Finding the best fit
Many ecommerce sellers looking for more hands-on help welcome handing over their accounts.
But knowing when is right and finding someone with the expertise can be tricky!
So there are two situations to consider.
#1: You’re Making 0 – $20k per month in Sales
The first problem with your ecommerce store is that you don’t have any money and are not sure where to start.
You might be doing all the bookkeeping, or it’s a shared responsibility between spouses. Either way – there must be something better for you than this tedious work!
You’re eager to know how to structure your business most tax-effectively. You want all the basics about local, state, and federal taxes that will help grow it into something big for yourself or maybe even start up some other companies with their infrastructure!
You are focused on ensuring this ecommerce store has everything it needs when growing so there aren’t any surprises later down the the road – especially ones where I owe money because nobody wins.
Amazon FBA is a great way to start making extra money and learning how ecommerce works. It will probably seem unsafe, but if you’ve got an idea of how it should work or what your next steps should be, don’t hesitate!
Nobody has time like now–time’s up on this old clock (and we’re not talking about zombies).
But what is the best solution?
You’re right; you do it; you for your e-commerce, but that d, doesn’t mean they have to handle your bookkeeping.
A proper CPA should be more involved in helping with taxes and filing tax returns which is the bare minimum for any business owner who wants their company’s financials straightforwardly represented during annual audits or other personal engagements well-organized. Hence, there are no surprises come a time of settlement season!
Consider getting an outside professional on board from day one – it’ll become standard operating procedure once things get rolling at some point soon enough.
One of the most important decisions you’ll make early in your Amazon selling adventure is whether or not to have a CPA help with all those tricky tax questions.
But if I were starting from scratch today and had no idea what taxes applied for this type of business, here’s how my understanding would grow:
I’d start by making a phone call with an ecommerce CPA to get low on ecommerce tax basics to understand how Amazon’s ecommerce works.
Then, once I had some experience selling on Amazon ecommerce, I’d hire one to help me with eCommerce sales taxes.
Finally, after building my ecommerce business for some time, I would expand their role into
I know taxes can be confusing, so I refer you to the CPA, whicwhich will help with your basics. Here are some tips on finding just what kind of person would work for you:
Further Reading:
Check to see if you like them and how they operate.
I was shocked when I discovered accountants could have good personalities.
Accountants’ personalities often reflect the type of work they do and how much time they devote to it. Still, some find themselves in more customer-facing roles, which means being approachable to clients or potential ones!
Ask about their credentials and how they work with clients like you
You can do a quick license lookup for the CPA you’re considering.
By doing an online search, it will tell you if they hold themselves out as one, but also whether there are any adverse claims against them (or if their license was temporarily revoked). Most people pass this test without issue!
#2: You’re Making $20k – $50k per Month in Sales
Congratulations on reaching this stage with your ecommerce business! Here is where you’ll find all of your current challenges.
You might be making enough money now to make this your full-time endeavor. That’s awesome, but it also adds some stress on top of everything else because you are fully invested in the success of your business and have employees who depend upon their livelihoods from what they do for work (or at least help provide).
It is hard not having any free time anymore – especially if there has been growth over recent months/years, which requires more dedication than ever!
You’ve heard the horror stories about how Amazon shuts down businesses willy-nilly, so you’re expanding into selling on Shopify to develop your brand and maybe eBay, too.
When you’re running a business, it’s essential to see how your performance is doing overall, as the data in various shopping carts are complex for people at times and can be hard on their sanity if they don’t know what needs to be done with them – procrastinating as I did!
I’m starting to to realize that things may not go well unless we get real help from an accountant or someone who knows more about numbers.
Cash flow can be a concern because you need sales and purchases of inven; I’veo support your business.
But don’t worry, I’ve got this! Talk to the bank about getting a loan so that worrying about cash doesn’t come up as much in your day-to-day operations; however, we’ll need better financial statements (and maybe even some tax documents).
Further Reading
But what’s the solution?
The ecommerce CPA in this space will set up your books and give you some training.
They’ll then let you run the books daily, but they clean things up at month’s end, so it’s more affordable than traditional accountant services! However, be careful- there are lots of false automation claims out there that might seem worth checking into before committing time or money to them.
A monthly accountant is an excellent option for businesses that have a low volume of transactions and complex financial statements.
And As you grow, and more daily ness needs to be managed more daily.
These ecommerce accountants typically don’t have the time or resources for monthly cleanups when they start getting too big; in order of severity:
1) drastically increasing prices.
2) handing over management duties (increases cost).
3) firing outright due to strain put onto company operations.
Tip: If you do it independently for each transaction, they’re probably doing it wrong and setting you up for difficulties later on.
Further Reading
Conclusion
The right,t CPA specialist can help you save time, money and headaches in your business.
Whatever stage of growth or complexity level your company is at, there are ecommerce CPAs who specialize in the type of work you need to do to ensure everything runs smoothly.
If you’re ready to find a CPA for your small business but don’t know where to start, consider these important things when evaluating different firms before making any decidingto choose.
You may be surprised by how much easier it will be than if you were starting from scratch!
If you’re serious about reducing your taxes and increasing your net income, Download our FREE E-book, “9 Most Crucial eCOM Tax Deductions The IRS Doesn’t Want You To Know“.
