Vista boutiques, Five Points student-driven shops, Soda City Market vendors on Main Street, suburban storefronts across Harbison and Forest Acres, and a growing Shopify and DTC base — Columbia retail spans POS systems, marketplaces, and payment processors. We track COGS, reconcile every channel, and keep sales tax clean.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · Dedicated bookkeeper
Whether you're selling online, in a store, or on marketplaces — we understand how retail finances actually work.
Shopify, WooCommerce, and direct-to-consumer brands need COGS tracking, platform fee reconciliation, and multi-channel consolidation.
Physical stores with POS systems, inventory, and vendor relationships have their own bookkeeping demands — especially when combined with an online presence.
Marketplace platforms take fees, hold reserves, and pay out on varying schedules. Reconciling payouts against sales is a full-time job — unless you have us.
E-commerce and retail businesses face financial challenges that general bookkeepers routinely miss. Here's what we hear from nearly every new client.
Knowing your true cost of goods sold across products, variants, and channels is the difference between a profitable product line and one that's quietly losing money.
Shopify, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe — every platform takes a cut, plus processing fees, plus monthly subscriptions. Without tracking it all, your margin analysis is useless.
Selling in multiple states means navigating different sales tax rules in each one. We monitor your nexus exposure and make sure your records are ready for compliance.
Shopify says one number. Amazon says another. Your bank account says something else. We consolidate every channel into one clean monthly picture.
Every Tides plan includes all seven core services. E-commerce and retail clients get specific treatment for COGS tracking, multi-channel reconciliation, and inventory cost management.
Every account reconciled, every transaction categorized, every month — without exception. You receive a clean P&L and balance sheet with COGS broken out so you always know your true margins.
Monthly reports showing revenue, COGS, gross margin, and operating expenses — so you can see exactly where your business stands.
Every business account and credit card matched and verified each month. No mystery charges. No unresolved transactions. No surprises.
We track vendor payments, supplier invoices, and outstanding balances so your cash flow stays healthy and nothing gets missed.
Months or years behind? We clean it all up before we start your regular monthly service — no matter how far back the backlog goes.
If you have employees, we coordinate payroll processing and keep your tax filings clean and on schedule.
"I had no idea how much Shopify and Amazon fees were eating into my margins until Tides laid it all out. Total game changer."
Questions we hear from retail and e-commerce business owners before they sign on with Tides.
Columbia retail is a different animal than the coast. We work with sellers across Richland County — boutique owners, market vendors, suburban shopkeepers, and DTC founders — and the books reflect how this market actually operates.
The Vista is Columbia's boutique district — independent apparel, home goods, and lifestyle shops where foot traffic, POS reconciliation, and gift-card liability are part of every monthly close. Five Points is a different beast: USC student spending drives a calendar of move-in surges, game-day spikes, and summer dips, and the bookkeeping has to follow that rhythm. Soda City Market on Main Street brings a rotating cast of vendors who sell across booth, online, and wholesale channels at once, and inventory tracking has to keep up with all of it.
Columbia's economic anchors — state government, USC, Fort Jackson, and Prisma Health — give retail here something the coast doesn't have: steady, year-round demand. Cash flow isn't dictated by tourist season the way it is in Charleston or Myrtle Beach, which changes how you plan inventory buys, manage merchant-fee timing, and read month-over-month margin trends. We build books that reflect that steadier baseline so you can spot real shifts instead of seasonal noise.
Beyond the urban core, suburban retail across Northeast Columbia, Harbison, Forest Acres, Lexington, and Irmo keeps growing — and so does Columbia's Shopify and DTC scene. That means multi-state sales tax tracking, marketplace payout reconciliation, and clean separation of Stripe, PayPal, and processor fees. Whether you sell in a storefront, ship from a garage, or both, we keep the numbers tied out across every channel. See more about our work across Columbia.
100% remote bookkeeping for small businesses across South Carolina and throughout the United States.
Tides Bookkeeping specializes in bookkeeping across 12 distinct industries. Industry-specific expertise means fewer errors, better categorization, and a bookkeeper who already understands how your business makes money.
Schedule a free 15-minute call. We'll review your current setup, answer your questions, and give you a flat monthly quote — no pressure.
No credit card required · No long-term contracts · Cancel anytime