Bookkeeping for businesses in Commerce, CA

Short answer: A bookkeeper for Commerce, CA businesses keeps the books for distributors, light manufacturers and warehouse operators in QuickBooks, Xero and more. Freight and import costs go into inventory, cost of goods ties to your counts, and payroll is split by location. Each month you get a profit and loss, a balance sheet and a short list of questions.

A city built around industry

Commerce is a small city about six miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. The city says industry covers more than 60 percent of its land, and about 1,800 businesses operate inside its 6.6 square miles. It sits on the Santa Ana (I-5) and Long Beach (I-710) freeways, with rail spur service from BNSF and Union Pacific, and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are a short truck run away.

Older heavy plants have given way to a mix of light manufacturing, warehouses, offices and retail. For the books, that means goods coming in by container or truck, stock sitting on racks, and crews working in more than one building.

What Commerce books usually need

• Landed cost: freight, drayage, duties and broker fees added to the cost of the goods they brought in.
• Inventory in the books that agrees with your warehouse system or your last physical count.
• Cost of goods sold that moves with sales, so gross margin means something each month.
• Forklifts, racking, trucks and trailers set up as assets, with each loan or lease on its own schedule.
• Payroll from your provider split by location or department, including overtime and temp labor.
• Separate books for a property company and an operating company, with rent and transfers recorded in both.

What Commerce owners ask us for

• Warehouse and logistics bookkeeping: Commerce warehouses run on forklifts, racking, trucks and temp labor. Assets on loan schedules and payroll split by building also give you the headcount that, with square footage, sets the city license fee.
• Import/export bookkeeping: With the ports a short truck run away, many Commerce distributors bring goods in by container. Freight, broker fees and duties belong in the cost of that stock, not in a shipping expense.
• Catch-up bookkeeping: When a Commerce company's books are a year or two behind, we rebuild the missing months first. Inventory and landed cost come into line before the monthly close begins.

The Commerce business license

Every business that operates in Commerce needs a city business license, issued through the Finance Department's Business License Division. Under the municipal code, the fee is figured from two things: how many people work for the business and the square footage of its enclosed space. There is a set minimum and maximum, and the amount is adjusted each January for inflation, within a cap. The city also notes that it has no gross receipts tax.

Each branch or separate place of business needs its own license. If you run two buildings, keep a headcount and a square footage figure for each one. Payroll reports split by location give you the employee numbers without a scramble at renewal time.

Rates, due dates and penalties can change. Check with the City of Commerce Business License Division before you file or renew.

A typical cleanup: freight booked as an expense

Picture a Commerce distributor that imports finished goods by the container. For two years, every freight bill, customs broker invoice and duty payment went straight to an expense account called shipping. Inventory in the books was whatever the last bookkeeper typed in at year end. The result was a profit and loss that swung from loss to profit depending on when containers landed, and a gross margin nobody believed.

The fix starts with the shipments. We match each broker entry and freight bill to the purchase order it belongs to, then add those costs to the inventory they brought in. Next we tie the inventory balance to the warehouse system count and post the difference as an adjustment your CPA can see. From then on, cost of goods sold follows the units you actually shipped, and freight to customers stays a selling expense.

Duty amounts and tariff codes come from your customs broker. We record what was billed and paid.

How it works

1. Short call You describe the business, the software you use and how far behind the books are.
2. Access We connect bank and card feeds and get read access to your inventory, payroll and freight records.
3. Catch up Past months are rebuilt first, with landed cost and inventory brought into line.
4. Monthly close Each month every account is reconciled, and you get reports plus a short list of open questions.

Nearby

We also work with businesses in Vernon, Montebello, Bell Gardens, East Los Angeles and Downey.

• Vernon
• Santa Fe Springs
• Downey
• Whittier

Bookkeeping services in Commerce

• Bookkeeping cleanupWhen the books exist but nobody trusts them, cleanup finds what went wrong and fixes it at the source.
• Catch-up bookkeepingMonths behind, or a full year, the missing months get entered and reconciled from your statements.
• Emergency bookkeepingA deadline that will not move and books that are not ready. Here is how the work gets ordered.
• Monthly bookkeepingEvery month categorized, reconciled and closed, so the numbers you look at are numbers you can trust.
• QuickBooks cleanupA QuickBooks file that no longer matches the bank, fixed account by account and month by month.
• QuickBooks bookkeepingQuickBooks Online kept the way it was meant to be used, so the reports it gives you are right.

Commerce in detail

• Warehouses and 3PLs in CommerceIn Commerce the license follows your people and your floor space, so the books keep both by building.

Questions