Tax
Federal and Florida returns, multi-state income and franchise tax, and inventory-method elections that fit how the business actually operates.
Learn MoreIndustries
Sales tax across every jurisdiction you sell into, inventory and margin reporting that survives a lender review, and seasonal cash-flow work for businesses that make most of their year in a few weeks.
What We See
Sales tax is the constant. Since Wayfair every state can require registration once you cross an economic threshold, and each state has its own rules on what’s taxable, what’s exempt, and how a resale certificate travels. A retailer shipping into thirty states has thirty different sets of rules. We map where you have nexus, register in the states that need it, file the returns on schedule, and handle audit notices when they come.
Inventory and margin reporting is the second constant. Which items are moving, which are dead, what’s tied up in slow-turn inventory, and how gross margin holds up by category. Most retail software gives you the raw data; getting it into a form a lender or a private buyer will trust takes a monthly close discipline that most operators don’t build in-house.
Seasonal cash flow is the sector-specific one. Businesses that make sixty percent of their year in the fourth quarter need a financing plan for inventory buys in August and payables that stretch through Q1. We build the model, help you talk to the bank about a line of credit, and keep the tax planning aligned with when the cash actually arrives.
Services for Retail & Wholesale
Federal and Florida returns, multi-state income and franchise tax, and inventory-method elections that fit how the business actually operates.
Learn MoreMonthly close with inventory reconciliation, margin analysis by category, and sales-tax filings across every state where you owe.
Learn MoreCash-flow modeling for seasonal cycles, financing conversations with your bank, and entity structuring when the business expands into new channels.
Learn MoreCommon Questions
Anywhere you’ve crossed the state’s economic-nexus threshold — usually $100K in sales or 200 transactions in a rolling twelve months, though the exact number varies by state. Physical nexus adds to that: inventory in a third-party warehouse (Amazon FBA is the classic trap), traveling salespeople, and trade-show attendance beyond a few days can all trigger a filing obligation. We map the actual footprint annually and register where required, and file voluntary-disclosure agreements to clean up any prior-year exposure.
Weighted-average cost with periodic physical counts is usually the right default for seasonal retail — LIFO’s tax benefits are real but the reporting overhead is real too, and FIFO’s simplicity comes at the cost of a lower-of-cost-or-market write-down every year on the leftovers. We help set up the inventory sub-ledger to tie to the general ledger monthly, so year-end isn’t a scramble to figure out what’s actually on the shelves.
Depends on the spread between the financing cost and the margin on the incremental inventory. A line of credit at prime plus a couple of points is usually cheaper than merchant cash advances or invoice-factoring products, and it keeps the option open to draw and pay down as cash comes in. We build the seasonal-cash-flow model with your lender in mind and help you size the line to the actual cycle rather than a guess.
Contribution-margin analysis by category first — direct cost, freight in, and any variable handling — before you allocate fixed overhead. Fixed costs (rent, most staff, insurance) don’t change with product mix, so allocating them per-SKU makes some categories look unprofitable when they’re actually covering their share of the base. We build the schedule at the category level, revisit it quarterly, and use it for real merchandising decisions rather than as a compliance exercise.
The Vocabulary
Retail & wholesale carries its own accounting vocabulary. These are the items that come up on live engagements, not a glossary.
Costing method selection, shrink measurement, lower-of-cost-or-market write-downs, and seasonal build planning tied to the buying calendar.
Multi-jurisdiction registration and filing, marketplace facilitator rules, resale certificate management, and post-Wayfair economic nexus monitoring.
Landed cost including duty, freight, and brokerage carried into inventory cost rather than expensed, and the margin effect when rates move mid-season.
Lease accounting bringing operating leases onto the balance sheet — right-of-use assets and lease liabilities, and the covenant consequences for retailers with many locations.
The inventory-to-payables cycle, borrowing-base calculations for asset-based lines, and seasonal facility sizing.
Reconciling point-of-sale data to the general ledger and to deposits, and the cash and discount controls that make the reconciliation meaningful.