#cost-of-goods-sold
Learn how to calculate and track cost of goods sold for inventory valuation
A feed store guide to costing bulk feed and bagged SKUs at delivered cost—allocating inbound freight, choosing FIFO or weighted average, counting bulk bins to expose shrink, and reconciling the inventory subledger monthly.
A chart-of-accounts and KPI framework for auto repair shops that separates parts and labor profit, tracks effective labor rate against posted door rate, and books comebacks and warranty work as visible costs instead of hidden losses.
A comic shop is three businesses sharing a register—non-returnable new issues, long-tail back issues, and consignment—so split them in your chart of accounts, book prepaid pull lists as deferred revenue, and capitalize grading fees into inventory instead of expensing them.
A craft brewery accounting guide covering the 2026 federal beer excise tax rates ($3.50/$16/$18 per barrel under CBMA), how to book keg deposits as a liability instead of revenue, and a channel-level chart of accounts that separates taproom, self-distribution, and wholesale margins.
A practical guide for furniture retailers on booking special-order deposits as liabilities, recognizing revenue on delivery under ASC 606, and financing the showroom through seasonal slow periods with floor planning and a 13-week cash forecast.
A plantwide overhead rate cross-subsidizes products — undercosting complex low-volume jobs by 35% or more. This guide shows how to calculate a defensible predetermined rate, reconcile applied vs. actual overhead monthly, and graduate to ABC or time-driven ABC when product and volume diversity make a single rate lie.
How to keep a paint-your-own pottery studio's books honest — allocate firing costs to COGS (roughly $1.32–$2.39 per piece), write down 5–10% greenware and kiln breakage monthly, and treat party deposits and gift cards as deferred revenue until the event is delivered.
Photography studios should book session deposits, retainers, and print credits as deferred revenue liabilities rather than income, expense gear under 2026's $2,560,000 Section 179 limit instead of depreciating it over five years, and track sales tax, breakage, and COGS in separate accounts to see real profitability.
A sign shop bookkeeping guide covering monthly close, job-level costing for materials/labor/overhead, deposit accounting, sales tax on signage, and Section 179 equipment deductions for 2026.
USPS cut its dimensional-weight divisor from 166 to 139 on July 12, 2026, raising DIM weight roughly 19.4% on bulky-but-light parcels and adding a $3 per-parcel fee for missing or inaccurate dimensions on commercial manifests.
A guide to the three bookkeeping fault lines that distort a wholesale distributor's margin and balance sheet — capitalizing freight-in into landed cost, accruing vendor rebates as a contra-COGS reduction instead of income, and tracking consignment inventory by location and ownership — plus a monthly close checklist and journal entries.
How personal chefs and private caterers separate client grocery COGS from household spending, claim the home-kitchen deduction under the exclusive-use test, and job-cost every booking — with target food-cost ranges of 28–38% for weekly meal prep and 25–35% for private dinners.
