Bookkeeping for LA County warehouses and logistics firms

Short answer: Logistics bookkeeping in Los Angeles County records revenue by client and by service, such as storage, pick and pack and freight. Pass-through freight is kept apart from your own margin. Equipment loans, forklift leases, shift payroll and temp agency bills are recorded so you can see cost per order or per pallet each month.

Close to the ports, thin on margin

Goods that come through San Pedro Bay often stop in a building in Commerce, Vernon, Carson, Santa Fe Springs or City of Industry before they reach a store or a front door. The operators of those buildings range from a family-owned warehouse with two docks to a 3PL running three shifts for a dozen brands. Freight brokers and drayage dispatchers often work from small offices nearby and handle large carrier payments with a small staff.

What these businesses share is volume with thin margins. A few cents per order, a missed accessorial or one slow-paying client can decide whether a month makes money. Books that lump all revenue into one line cannot show where those cents go.

Revenue split the way you bill it

We set up income accounts that match your rate sheet, then tag each invoice to the client. A typical setup looks like this, and we adjust it to the services you actually sell.

Pass-through freight and broker money

A freight broker or a 3PL that books parcel and LTL shipments for clients collects a lot of cash that belongs to someone else. If carrier costs and the matching client charges are mixed into general income and expense, revenue looks large, margin looks tiny and nobody can say what the business earns on its own work.

We record carrier bills and the matching client charges so you can see gross billings, carrier cost and your net margin per load or per shipment. Carrier payables are aged like any other bill, and quick-pay or factoring fees go to their own account.

For payments made after December 31, 2025, the IRS raised the base 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC reporting threshold to $2,000. We keep W-9s on file for owner-operators and other carriers so your preparer has what they need in January.

Equipment, trucks and the debt behind them

• Forklift, racking and yard truck purchases recorded as fixed assets, with the loan set up as a liability and each payment split into principal and interest.
• Equipment leases recorded the way your CPA chooses, with the lease terms kept in a file next to the books.
• Dock equipment repairs kept apart from new equipment, so your CPA can decide what to depreciate.
• Trucks of 55,000 pounds or more taxable gross weight flagged for the IRS Form 2290 highway use tax, with the payment recorded against each unit.
• Fuel, tolls and maintenance coded by truck when you run your own drayage or delivery fleet.

Payroll across shifts and temp staff

Warehouses often run a mix of direct employees on two or three shifts plus workers from a staffing agency at peak. Payroll comes from one system and agency bills arrive weekly as invoices. We record both against the department or client they served when your timekeeping can split it, so labor cost per client is visible.

Each agency invoice is compared with the hours your supervisors approved before it is paid. Overtime and shift differentials go to their own accounts, so a busy season shows up as a labor line you can plan for next year.

California's warehouse quota law, AB 701, covers employers with 100 or more employees at one warehouse distribution center or 1,000 or more statewide, and agency workers can count. That is an HR and legal matter; we only keep the payroll records tidy.

Cost per order and cost per pallet

Once revenue is split by service and labor is split by client, the math for unit cost is simple. Labor, packaging and a share of rent divided by orders shipped gives cost per order. Rent, utilities and racking divided by average pallets stored gives cost per pallet position. You supply the order and pallet counts from your WMS, and we bring the cost side from the ledger.

Those two figures help when you quote a new client, renew a contract or decide whether to take on a brand whose orders are small and fussy.

The month, step by step

1. Gather billing and activity Client invoices, WMS activity exports, carrier bills and agency invoices for the month come into the ledger.
2. Tag by client and service Revenue and direct costs are coded to the client and service line they belong to.
3. Reconcile Bank, card, equipment loan and payroll clearing accounts are tied to statements and reports.
4. Send the numbers You get profit and loss by service, revenue and margin by client, receivables aging and cost per order or pallet.

Warehouse logistics by city

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

Where we work

We keep books for businesses across the City of Los Angeles, the Westside, the Eastside, the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the Gateway Cities and the South Bay.

• Alhambra
• Arcadia
• City of Industry
• Commerce
• Diamond Bar
• Downey
• Downtown Los Angeles
• East Los Angeles
• El Monte
• Koreatown
• Lincoln Heights
• North Hollywood
• Pasadena
• Pomona
• San Fernando Valley
• Santa Fe Springs
• Santa Monica
• Sherman Oaks
• South Bay
• Van Nuys
• Vernon
• West Covina
• West Los Angeles
• Whittier
• Woodland Hills

Questions