Twitter needs more female finance. DTC Twitter needs more ecommerce finance. After some encouragement (ahem, pushing) from people I respect (thanks @obviceo and @Lioranpi ), I’ve decided it’s time to kill 2 birds 🐦 with one accountant. Here is what you need to know about me:

Loved working with the legendary @AaronOrendorff on this. It's value-packed, based on real data from real brands, and sprinkled with knowledge nuggets from some of the most experienced operators and financial gurus in the industry.

As July books close, you're gonna start to hear more about the tariff pain showing up for eCom brands. Why now? The median cash conversion cycle for an 8-figure eCommerce brand is 92.63 days (source: @FinaloopTeam). That means that brands generally have about 3 months of inventory on hand at any given moment. As a result, July likely represents the first time most brands are selling inventory subject to increased duties. And the reality is that brands are absorbing the bulk of these costs: @GoldmanSachs latest estimates suggest: -Foreign exporters absorbed 14% of US tariffs -US companies ate 64% -US consumers ate 22% And the pain is just beginning... Don't be surprised if the next few months the topic surges back into focus as the ire of angry store owners is reignited.

We pissed off a lot of customers. For the past year, TikTok Shop exploded for ecommerce brands. Every week, we got the same question: “When is your TikTok Shop integration coming?” The truth is that for a long time, we couldn’t build it. TikTok Shop was pure chaos. It was a new platform with confusing APIs and constantly changing logic. Sure, we could’ve shipped something fast, but we refused to ship something broken. Some companies rushed to market with half-baked solutions and called it an “integration,” but the numbers din’t match, and the orders didn’t reconcile. Wrong data is worse than no data. So we made the hard call: We’d take the heat, lose deals, and risk churn (my board was thrilled about this one). Instead, we built it slowly and accurately – a real-time, order-level sync built together with the TikTok Shop team. Every week, our support team fielded complaints but we still waited to ship until we were sure it was ready. Now? It’s here. The first and only real accounting integration for TikTok Shop. - Revenue: sales, discounts, refunds - Fees: selling, affiliate, shipping - COGS: matched at the SKU and warehouse level - Fulfillment, taxes, samples: all synced, in real time Every order and every detail, completely reconciled with your full financial picture. Massive thanks to the TikTok Shop team for working with us to make this happen. It was worth the wait and I’d make the same call again.

TikTok Shop is🔥 But behind the scenes? Your numbers are a mess. ❌ Sales & fulfillment? Delayed. ❌ Discounts & subsidies? Hidden. ❌ Fees & commissions? Buried. ❌ COGS & samples? Disconnected. Ecommerce founders need more. We’ve been building the only integration that actually fixes it. Big drop coming. Stay tuned.

The biggest tax handicap founders face? Not knowing what they don’t know. That blind spot = missed cash. Join me @startupcpg to start asking the right questions — and stop leaving money on the table. 💸

📷 Big news: We're launching the Finaloop Ecom Finance Academy — the 1st event built to help DTC brands win in 2025. From surviving tariffs to smarter funding - it’s the financial edge your brand needs. 🎟️Free for qualified brands 📍Austin | June 5 👇 finaloop.com/academy/events/…

This isn't just another post about how the tariff virus will kill you. It's the vaccine. ⚡ INTRODUCING: FINALOOP'S SKU ANALYSIS DASHBOARD Here’s how it works (a thread)

I couldn't be more proud to be part of this amazing company!

🚨🚨 Summary of full @Bench closure/acquisition FIASCO (with some juicy deets, too.)🚨🚨 "Detail-Oriented," "Trustworthy," and "Organized." These are the top three characteristics business owners desire most in a bookkeeper or accountant. Meanwhile, "Careless," "Dishonest," and "Disorganized" sit at the very top of the "least desired" list. Okay, so this wasn’t exactly a survey of all business owners who ever lived – but it is what ChatGPT's most advanced model determined. And it seems pretty spot on, right? Now, imagine your accounting firm spending the last week of the year doing this: >> Announcing its sudden closure on December 27. >> Providing vague and incomplete information about what happens to your financials. >> Referring 11,000 clients to a service (then taking that referral link down and putting it back up... multiple times). >> Announcing an acquisition – by a completely new company named employer.com from the payroll (❗️) space – only to delete that announcement hours later. >> And posting it again on the same afternoon. All of this unfolding in the final stretch of 2024, as eCommerce businesses are scrambling to close their books and prep for tax season. Careless? Disorganized? I’d say so. If you’re a Bench client who feels uncertain about the hands holding your books, I don’t blame you. But I do have good news. At @FinaloopTeam , we’re offering eCommerce businesses transitioning from Bench the smoothest migration possible – for free. Our team understands the unique challenges of eCommerce accounting (COGS, inventory, SKUs, multi-channel sales – you name it). We're ready to step in, simplify your financials, and make sure 2025 starts off strong. The DMs are exploding, but they’re open. Let’s get you sorted. Read ALL about it here 👇👇 finaloop.com/blog/bench-shut… #ecommerce #benchaccounting

- @Bench to Finaloop migration website ✅ - Dedicated onboarding, connection and migration process ✅ - 2024 FREE books close for Bench ecommerce customers who prepaid and got left out of pocket ✅ finaloop.com/migrate-from-be… #ecommerce

You gotta admit the resemblance is uncanny.

This was such a great chat with @youderian. Loved geeking out on ecom finances!

🎉 🔊 BIG NEWS: We're launching "Margin Talks" by Finaloop 🎉 🔊

In the often small-margin reality of DTC, small steps can make a big impact. And I love seeing how relentless, proactive brand owners devise smart ways to run better, healthier businesses every day. So @RaylaRapp and I gathered some of these tried and tested, real-life tips for you. Below are some of them. 🧵🧵👇👇 Oh, and just for the sake of practicalism, this simulation assumes: 130 days into the year (Jan1-May10) $2.6M in net sales up to date And a reasonable 8.6% profit margin. Ok let's go - and we’re starting with sales.

"That's just a tool that just doesn’t exist.” He wasn't wrong. When @ramongberrios said it - on episode #270 of DTC Pod back in April 2023 - it was a 100% true statement. Cut to right now - that statement is 100% wrong :) Because, as some of you already know, last week the amazing @FinaloopTeam released an inventory management solution that was built right into an accounting software. Back when I discussed the vision of doing so - molding inventory and accounting natively into one platform - I was especially excited by how Ramon and @bbols4 immediately - instinctively, inherently - understood why it's such a game changer. “That gets really interesting because you can start getting into better and better forecasting with your cost of raw materials," Ramon said, and continued: "Are you forcing a change in inventory prices for the future? What if volume is X? What's going to be the exact profit margin? Etc." All of these are critical questions any DTC and multichannel brand founder should be asking themselves, and their (usually fractional) CFOs on a regular basis. That's the kind of thinking and strategizing needed to succeed nowadays. That's what we're here to help you all achieve.

This is huge! I'm so proud to be a part of this amazing team. 🚀

Is it time to say goodbye to TikTok Shop? Lots of brands jumped on the TTS wagon but are still dealing with so many unknowns. We wrote you a complete guide to selling on TTS to help make the uncertainties a little less uncertain. finaloop.com/blog/tiktok-sho… Here's the TL;DR: The TikTok ban, the best way to connect TTS & Shopify, how to decode the payouts, and what it means for your finances. Let's go!

The benchmarks & KPIs shared by @Lioranpi and @sam_hillg at @ecommercefuel Live are the start of more transparency in this complex financial world for ecommerce. I hope it paves the way for a lot more similar discussions (and debates) on the topic. @youderian thanks again!

In the last thread, we talked about how to set up your P&L and understanding the difference between your fixed costs and your variable costs. Today we’ll cover the top 4 KPIs to track to measure the health of your business (the importance of fixed vs variable will come up again, so pay attention). Ask a group of 5 ecomm experts - CPAs, marketers, Fractional CFOs - you'll get 10 different opinions on which are the key KPIs a brand should be tracking. There is a lot of noise. A lot of opinions. But I geek out on DTC financials all day, and this is what the data tells me you should be tracking: Contribution margin (broken down between CM for new customers and CM for returning customers/ subscription revenue) Fixed costs Inventory turnover EBITDA % Why are these the key KPIs? Well, it’s based on one key recurring theme I see: Great brands share the following attributes: - Contribution margin from recurring revenue is greater or equal to Fixed costs (i.e., fixed opex financing costs) - Contribution margin from new customers is greater than 0 - High inventory turnover drives positive cash flow. The first thing you’d want to start by splitting up is your contribution margin from recurring revenue (existing customers) and your contribution margin from new customers. Now - in our experience (and based on our data), the most successful brands are set up in a way where their contribution margin from existing customers covers their fixed Operating Expenses Financing Costs, while their contribution margin from new customers fuels the growth and expansion of their business. If you’re able to do this, you’re good. Let’s start with everyone’s favorite KPI - Contribution Margin, or even better, contribution margin %. This should be the north star metric that everyone in your organization is obsessing about. It tells you: The health of your unit economics Whether you should be allocating more resources to variable costs or to fixed costs Whether your products are priced efficiently. I’ve actually seen brands not track this properly, and ultimately sell a product that actually had a negative impact on the brand’s profit every time the product was sold. Crazy stuff! EBITDA % EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. In other words: How much profit from operations did the business make?? It’s a key metric looked at by investors and potential buyers. (For brands that manufacture or have significant CAPEX spend, can also be EBIT%. This specific KPI is something Fractional CFOs will be super focused on in understanding the health of your business. Inventory turnover Alright, let’s talk about inventory turnover. This tells you how many times a company sells its inventory in a given time frame (usually 1 year) If you have a low inventory turnover, it means that your buying too much inventory and selling it too slow If you have a high inventory turnover, it means you have strong sales, and might experience inventory shortages The way you calculate it is by taking the trailing 12 months of COGS, or COGS for a specific period and divide it by the average inventory balance. This is an extremely critical metric for every brand founder, as it helps with measuring the efficiency of your supply chain. … and likewise, from a cash flow perspective, it tells you if you’re locking too much cash into inventory that’s moving too slow CM from recurring revenue > fixed costs Now, let’s jump into the last metric, which is your recurring revenue (RR) minus your fixed costs (FC). This is the metric that helps you determine your expansion budget. If your CM from RR is greater than your fixed costs, you can invest the CM from your new revenue into expansion initiatives. Here’s how you measure this: Now that you know the KPIs you need to track to understand the health of your business, It’s time to as yourself, “how do I know if I’m doing good, bad, or ugly?”. We’ll cover this in the next and last thread of this series…. Follow me @Lioranpi for more content like this.

Here’s the 80/20 of ecom finance that will help you scale to 8 figures 👇🏻 1. Use Finaloop for accurate accounting to understand unit economics 2. Raise your prices and test the effect on net revenue 3. Negotiate longer payment terms and lower prices with suppliers 4. Pay supplier with a 60-90 day credit card (Melio Parker or Amex Plum) 5. Cut SKUs that are low profit & low volume 6. Setup weekly cash flow forecast to drive decision making on ad spend and inventory purchases 7. Setup Line of Credit to draw on when you are short on cash 8. Start building emergency fund of 3-6 months of fixed expenses 9. Measure decisions based on Contribution Margin and Cash Flow 10. Get a fractional CFO to do this right so you can focus on actually operating the business