Ecommerce Expense Tracker Template

Once the categories are set, log expenses as they occur. For ecommerce, the most reliable workflow is to process supplier invoices the day they arrive, log your platform fees when the monthly statements are issued, and enter ad spend weekly from your ad platform dashboards. Payment processor settlements and marketplace disbursements can be reconciled against your bank statement weekly or biweekly. Most ecommerce operators can get a full month of expenses entered in 30–45 minutes if they're working from bank and card statements — less if they've been logging weekly throughout the month.

The cost categories that require the closest attention in ecommerce are the variable ones that scale with order volume: cost of goods sold, outbound shipping and fulfillment costs, payment processing fees (typically 2.5–3.5% of GMV), and marketplace fees (Amazon charges 8–15% referral fees depending on category, plus FBA fees on top). These costs are often not fully visible until you look at them together — a product with a 50% gross margin can end up with a 15–20% contribution margin after fulfillment, fees, and returns. Advertising and customer acquisition costs add another layer: CAC for ecommerce brands running paid social typically runs $20–80 per new customer, and whether that's sustainable depends entirely on your average order value and repeat purchase rate.