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Inventory

Inventory tracking, valuation, and management for businesses

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10 min read

Medical Spa Bookkeeping: Why Your MSO/PC Split, Membership Revenue, and Injectable Inventory Need Their Own Books

Med spas that book prepaid packages as day-one revenue, expense injectables on purchase, or run the MSO and PC through one bank account produce financials that fail audits and due diligence. This guide covers keeping separate books per entity with reconciled intercompany balances, recognizing package and membership cash as deferred revenue per delivered session, capitalizing neurotoxin and filler as inventory until use, and a monthly close checklist that ties POS unearned balances, physical counts, and management fees to the ledger.

Mike Thrift

healthcarebookkeepingrevenue-recognition
11 min read

Your Nonstick Pans, Stain-Resistant Rugs, and Waterproof Jackets May Now Be Illegal to Sell in Six States

On January 1, 2026, at least six states — Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Vermont, and Washington — began enforcing bans or reporting rules on products with intentionally added PFAS, and the laws reach anyone who sells or distributes covered goods, not just manufacturers. A state-by-state guide for retailers covering affected categories, supplier certifications, ship-to-state segmentation, and the bookkeeping for compliance costs and inventory write-downs.

Mike Thrift

complianceinventorysmall-business
10 min read

Elevator Service Company Bookkeeping: Costing Every Callback at the Burdened CET Rate

How elevator service companies job-cost full-maintenance and exam-and-lube contracts per unit — booking prepayments as deferred revenue, costing callbacks at a burdened CET mechanic rate of 85 to 100 dollars an hour rather than the 52-dollar wage, carrying truck stock as inventory, and pricing renewals from twelve months of callback history.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingjob-costingsmall-business
11 min read

Flea Market and Secondhand Vendor Bookkeeping: When Your Weekend Booth Becomes a Real Business

Flea market and secondhand vendors owe Schedule C income tax plus 15.3% self-employment tax once net earnings pass $400, and most states require a seller's permit or transient vendor license for regular booth sales. This guide covers the Section 183 hobby-vs-business test, per-item cost-basis records that survive an audit, the state sales tax permit patchwork, and the 2026 thresholds for Form 1099-K ($20,000 and 200 transactions) and Form 1099-NEC ($2,000).

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingside-hustlesmall-business
11 min read

Flipping Cars as a Side Hustle: Dealer License Limits, Curbstoning Laws, and the Books That Keep You Legal

How many used cars you can flip before your state calls you an unlicensed dealer (Illinois 4, Michigan 3, California no safe harbor, FTC Used Car Rule at 6), why title jumping is illegal everywhere, what curbstoning fines and dealer bonds cost, and how to keep per-VIN books that treat flips as Schedule C inventory subject to 15.3% self-employment tax.

Mike Thrift

side-hustlelicensesbookkeeping
9 min read

Furniture and Cabinet Tariffs Rise to 50% in 2027: A Retailer's Guide to Repricing Inventory Before the Hike

Section 232 duties on imported kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities double from 25% to 50% on January 1, 2027, and upholstered furniture rises to 30%. This guide walks retailers through per-SKU landed-cost math, classification review, supplier renegotiation, tiered price architecture, and the UNICAP rule that capitalizes duty into inventory so a pre-buy hits cash before it hits the deduction.

Mike Thrift

tariffscustomsinventory
10 min read

Record Beef Prices in 2026: How Restaurants and Butcher Shops Can Reprice Without Losing Customers

Ground beef hit about $6.75 a pound and steak $12.80 in May 2026, with the U.S. cattle herd at a 75-year low of 86.2 million head and relief unlikely before 2028. This guide shows restaurants and butcher shops how to recost every beef item, spread increases across the menu, move down the carcass, and track item-level margin after the change.

Mike Thrift

restaurantcost-of-goods-soldpricing-strategies
10 min read

Returnless Refunds: When 'Keep the Item' Beats Return Shipping — and How to Book It

A returnless refund is a sales allowance, not a return. No inventory comes back, so nothing gets restocked and COGS stays put. This guide gives the per-SKU break-even math for when letting a customer keep a $40 item beats paying return shipping, the exact double-entry bookings for restocked returns, keep-it refunds and unsellable returns, the sales-tax posting, fraud guardrails, and the three metrics that show whether the policy is working.

Mike Thrift

e-commercerefund-managementinventory
12 min read

Feed Mill Bookkeeping: How to Account for Custom Grinding, Blending, and Ingredient Inventory

A feed mill's books must separate customer-owned grain from mill-owned inventory, record custom-grind fees as service revenue rather than inflated purchases and sales, cost each batch from ingredient lots through COGS, and make shrink and moisture variances visible — this guide walks through the ownership test, four revenue streams, lot-level inventory records, and a 10-step month-end close.

Mike Thrift

agriculturebookkeepinginventory
12 min read

Greenhouse Grower Cost Accounting: Allocate Space, Heating, Labor, Shrink, and Crop Turns to See Profit per Plant

A cost-accounting framework for greenhouse growers that allocates overhead by square-foot-weeks, splits heating and labor by crop, and tracks shrinkage by cause — so pricing rests on cost per marketable plant, not cost per plant started. Includes a worked example where $240,000 of shared costs over 320,000 square-foot-weeks yields a $0.75 occupancy rate.

Mike Thrift

agriculturecost-managementexpense-allocation
12 min read

Holiday Light Installation Bookkeeping: Make Six Busy Weeks Fund the Whole Year

A holiday light installation business can collect most of its annual cash in six weeks and still run dry by August. This guide builds the bookkeeping system that prevents it — a 12-month cash forecast with three scenarios, job-level costing, customer deposits held as liabilities until earned, an asset register for reusable lights, mileage and labor records, and a daily-weekly-monthly close routine that survives the rush.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingseasonal-businesscash-flow
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