Retail Accounting That Ties Out to the Register
Retail margins are won and lost in the details — shrinkage, COGS, sales tax, store-level labor. Fairlight reconciles the POS to the bank, tracks inventory like it's money (because it is), and shows you which locations and product lines actually earn.
✓ POS-to-bank reconciliation ✓ Store-level P&Ls ✓ Fixed monthly fees
Retail Businesses We Work With
Multi-site retail operators
the businesses we know best: several locations, shared overhead, and the constant question of which stores carry the others.
Specialty and boutique retail
fashion, gifts, home goods — where inventory buying decisions make or break the year.
Food and beverage retail
cafés, markets, and counters with tight margins, perishable inventory, and tip-affected payroll.
Franchise locations
royalty and fee accounting, franchisor reporting requirements, and unit-level economics.
Retail with an online arm
brick-and-mortar plus Shopify, where channels need to be measured separately but reconciled together.
E-commerce accounting →Service-retail hybrids
salons, repair shops, and studios selling product alongside services.
Where Retail Books Fall Apart
- POS-to-bank mismatch — daily sales that never quite tie to deposits once processor fees, tips, and timing differences pile up
- Inventory as a black box — COGS guessed at year-end instead of tracked, so gross margin is fiction eleven months a year
- Sales tax exposure — Florida rates, county surtaxes, and exemption rules applied inconsistently at the register
- Store-level blindness — one P&L for the whole company, so the flagship subsidizes the underperformer invisibly
- Labor cost drift — scheduling decisions that quietly consume the margin, invisible without store-level labor reporting
- Shrinkage and waste — losses that never get measured because the books were never set up to catch them
What Fairlight Does for Retail
- Daily-sales discipline — POS summaries (Square, Clover, Shopify POS, Lightspeed) reconciled to bank deposits, fees and tips accounted for
- Inventory and COGS tracking — periodic counts tied to purchases, so gross margin is a number you can trust monthly, not a year-end surprise
- Store-level P&Ls — every location measured on its own revenue, labor, and occupancy costs, rolled into a company view
- Sales tax compliance — Florida state and county surtax filings handled, exemptions documented, registers configured right
- Retail payroll — hourly teams, overtime, tips, and multi-location staff paid correctly and on time
- Buying and cash flow guidance — CFO advisory on inventory investment, seasonal cash planning, and whether the next location pencils out
The Full Stack, One Firm
Why Retail Operators Choose Fairlight
Multi-site retail is home turf.
Fairlight's founder spent years in senior finance leadership inside multi-site retail and consumer businesses — store-level economics are where we come from.
We measure what registers miss.
Shrinkage, labor drift, and margin erosion only show up when the books are built to catch them.
Fixed fees, published pricing
predictable accounting costs for a business that fights for every point of margin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which POS systems do you work with?
Square, Clover, Shopify POS, Lightspeed, Toast, and most modern systems — anything that produces a daily summary we can reconcile to the bank.
Do you do physical inventory counts?
No — you (or your team) count; we build the process, integrate the counts into your books, and turn them into accurate COGS and shrinkage numbers.
Can you handle our sales tax filings?
Yes — Florida sales tax and county surtaxes are part of our retail packages, including registration if you're opening new locations.
We have three stores. Can you show us profit per store?
That's exactly the point — each location gets its own P&L with its own labor and occupancy costs, so cross-subsidies stop hiding.
Find Out Which Store Is Really Your Best One
Book a free consultation — bring last month's POS reports and we'll show you what store-level books would reveal.