AlpyneBryan McGowanFractional CFO
Book an intro callBook a call

Fractional CFO and accounting for DTC and consumer brands

I'm Bryan McGowan. I've been a CFO for 15 years, and I'm an engineer. I run finance and accounting for DTC and consumer brands, and I build the systems underneath it on software I wrote, set up around how your business actually runs. Books that tie out to every Shopify payout. Margin by channel and SKU. Marketing return measured from the ledger. Cash and inventory you can plan on.

Consumer brands tend to break in the same places. How each one should be fixed depends on the business.

Book a 30-minute call

Free intro call · From $3,000 a month · Month to month

Channels I work with:ShopifyAmazonWholesaleRetail

How it fits together
  • Sales channelsShopify, Amazon, wholesale
  • Payouts and bankShopify Payments, PayPal, deposits
  • InventoryPurchase orders, 3PL
AlpyneMatching and rulesAI agents
LedgerQuickBooks Online
Bryan reviewsExceptions only
ReportsChannel margin, cash, close

What you get.

Books that tie out to Shopify.

Shopify pays you a net number. One payout covers hundreds of orders, minus discounts, refunds, fees and chargebacks, plus the shipping and sales tax you collected. When that deposit goes straight to revenue, sales are understated, fees vanish, sales tax shows up as income, and nobody can produce a P&L that matches the store.

Here every payout is split into its parts and posted to the right accounts, on accrual, for every channel you sell through. Preorders sit as a liability until they ship. You see the exceptions, and the books stay current every day.

Illustrative example
Shopify payout · Nov 4 · 214 orders$44,162.40
Illustrative example: one Shopify payout split into the lines it is made of, and the account each one books to
LineAmountBooks to
Gross sales$48,250.00Sales, DTC
Discounts−$4,825.00Discounts
Refunds−$2,310.00Returns and refunds
Shipping collected$1,640.00Shipping income
Sales tax collected$3,105.00Sales tax payable
Shopify Payments fees−$1,512.60Merchant fees
Chargeback−$185.00Chargebacks
Net payout$44,162.40 Matched to bank

Booked straight to revenue, this payout would hide $8,832.60 of discounts, refunds, fees and chargebacks, and count $3,105 of sales tax as sales.

Margin by channel and SKU.

Blended margin hides the channel that loses money. Amazon referral and fulfillment fees, wholesale pricing, and DTC shipping and ad costs all land in one P&L, and at month end each channel disappears into the total.

Each channel carries its own revenue, product cost, fees and fulfillment, and marketing. Drill into any channel by SKU to see which products pay for the rest. That changes where your inventory dollars go, what you discount and which channel you grow.

Illustrative example · October
Illustrative example: one month's contribution margin by sales channel after product cost, fees and fulfillment, and marketing
ChannelNet revenueProduct costFees and fulfillmentMarketingContribution
DTC (Shopify)$310,000−$105,400−$46,500−$93,000$65,100 · 21.0%
Amazon$120,000−$40,800−$42,000−$24,000$13,200 · 11.0%
Wholesale$90,000−$45,000−$4,500−$2,700$37,800 · 42.0%
Total$520,000−$191,200−$93,000−$119,700$116,100 · 22.3%

Amazon is 23% of revenue and 11% of contribution.

Marketing return you can trust.

Every ad platform takes credit for the same sale, and none of them sees agency fees, influencers or content. Platform ROAS can hold steady while the business gets less profitable.

Return on marketing spend is calculated from the ledger, by month, and defined around how your business grows. For most brands that's net revenue over total marketing spend. A subscription brand may need first-order contribution against acquisition spend. Either way, contribution after marketing sits beside it, so you see when more spend stops paying for itself before you set next month's budget.

Illustrative example
Illustrative example: four months of marketing spend, net revenue, return on marketing spend, platform ROAS and contribution after marketing
MonthMarketing spendSpendNet revenueROMS (net revenue ÷ marketing spend)Platform ROASContribution after marketingContribution
Jul$62,000$430,0006.9x3.2x$131,500
Aug$78,000$465,0006.0x3.1x$131,250
Sep$96,000$495,0005.2x3.2x$126,750
Oct$119,700$520,0004.3x3.1x$116,100

Marketing spend up 93%, net revenue up 21%, contribution after marketing down 12%. Platform ROAS held near 3x all four months.

Cash and inventory you can plan on.

Inventory gets paid for months before it sells. PO deposits, balances, freight and duties come due before the revenue arrives, and preorders bring in cash you still owe product against.

You see what's in the bank, what's coming from payouts, what you've committed to suppliers, ads and payroll, and what's actually free, today and across the next 13 weeks. Check it before every PO, every big ad push and every conversation with a lender or investor.

Illustrative example
Cash in bank
$386,000
Payouts expected, next 14 days
$142,500
PO balances due, next 14 days
−$228,000
Ads and payroll, next 14 days
−$151,300
Free cash after commitments
$149,200

Cash in bank includes $64,000 collected on preorders that haven't shipped, held as a liability until they do.

Available with each engagement

General accounting and bookkeeping
Transactions coded, accounts reconciled, month end closed, on accrual.
Inventory and cost of goods sold
Landed cost by SKU, inventory on the balance sheet, and cost of goods that matches what shipped.
Payroll integration
Payroll journals post automatically and land in the right departments.
Cash forecasting
A rolling 13-week cash view, checked before every PO and every big ad push.
Financial modeling
A dynamic, rolling three-statement forecast: income statement, balance sheet and cash flow, driven by your channels and inventory plan.
Investor and lender reporting
Monthly packages, board materials and diligence answers that hold up to people who read financials for a living.
Capital advisory
Inventory lines, revenue-based financing and equity, with the model behind the ask.

Recognize your books in this? Bring them to the call.

Book a 30-minute call

A CFO who writes software.

Without engineering, the usual answer to a payout that nets 200 orders, three kinds of fees and a stack of refunds is a spreadsheet and more hours. I'm an electrical engineer who spent time at Intel, and I wrote Alpyne, the platform my practice runs on. When a brand needs payouts split by channel, margin by SKU or marketing return from the ledger, I build it to fit that brand.

  • Agents do the routine work. They split payouts, categorize transactions and post the recurring entries. When a line needs an answer only you have, it comes to you as a question with the transaction attached. I review the exceptions and the numbers behind decisions.
  • It fits your stack. Shopify, Amazon, your wholesale and 3PL systems, QuickBooks Online and your bank. If you run something else, I connect it.
  • It's built around how you operate. Your channels, your inventory, your preorder and wholesale terms, and the definitions your decisions run on. No two brands get the same setup.
Case study

A Shopify brand selling direct and wholesale, about $5M a year.

The brand had never had accounting. QuickBooks ran on the default chart and Shopify deposits went straight to revenue, so there was no P&L. Investor meetings were two weeks out.

I rebuilt twelve months on accrual, with gross sales, discounts, fees, refunds and returns pulled apart, and set up a chart of accounts for both channels. The owners went into their meetings with working books, margin by channel, a real read on marketing return and an investor memo.

Book a 30-minute call
Working books
2 weeks
Rebuilt on accrual
12 months
Margin split DTC and wholesale
2 channels
Investor-ready before the meetings
1 memo

The two weeks describe this project. Yours depends on your books.

What a fractional CFO for a DTC brand costs.

A fixed-fee setup, then a monthly fee, month to month. You get the scope, price and timeline in writing before anything starts.

Setup

Fixed fee from $5,000

Handover from your bookkeeper, books rebuilt on accrual if needed, payouts and channel accounts set up, and the close.

Ongoing

From $3,000 a month, month to month

I run the finance function, keep the systems current and meet with you on cash, margin, inventory and decisions.

Book a 30-minute call

The same terms as for any other business: how I work with any company. No long-term contract. Standalone system access after the engagement is $499 a month.

Bryan McGowan, fractional CFO

Meet Bryan McGowan.

I've been a CFO for 15 years and have raised more than $250M. I founded Open Water Power, an energy hardware company, and sold it to L-3. Before that I was an engineer at Intel. Cornell engineering and MBA. I write the software my practice runs on.

Book a 30-minute call

Questions DTC founders ask first.

What does a fractional CFO do for an ecommerce brand?

A fractional CFO runs the finance function part time: the books, the close, cash and inventory planning, margin by channel and the numbers behind decisions. For a DTC brand that also means reconciling payouts from Shopify and Amazon, measuring marketing return from the ledger, and planning purchase orders against cash.

Why doesn't my Shopify revenue match QuickBooks?

Because Shopify deposits are net payouts. Each one is gross sales minus discounts, refunds, fees and chargebacks, plus shipping and sales tax collected. Booking the deposit as revenue understates sales, hides fees and counts sales tax as income. The fix is to split every payout into its parts and post each one to its own account.

Should a DTC brand use accrual or cash accounting?

Accrual, for running the business, once you carry inventory, take preorders or sell wholesale on terms. Cash basis matches revenue and costs to the wrong months, so margin swings with your PO schedule. Your tax basis is a separate decision; confirm it with your CPA.

How should preorders and backorders be booked?

Cash collected for an order that hasn't shipped is a liability, usually called deferred revenue or customer deposits. It becomes revenue when the order ships. Confirm the policy with your CPA. Whatever it is, the trigger should come from fulfillment data, so nobody has to remember to move it.

How do you calculate contribution margin by channel?

Start with each channel's net revenue, then subtract product cost, that channel's fees and fulfillment, and the marketing spent to drive it. Done at the channel level, it shows which channels fund growth and which ones only add volume.

What is return on marketing spend, and how is it different from ROAS?

Return on marketing spend measures what your marketing returns using numbers from the ledger, and the right definition depends on the business. For most brands it's net revenue over total marketing spend; a subscription brand may need first-order contribution against acquisition spend. ROAS is the revenue an ad platform attributes to itself divided by that platform's ad spend. Platforms overlap in what they claim and leave out agencies, influencers and content, so ROMS is the number to budget on.

Do our books need to be clean before you start?

No. Cleanup is part of setup when it's needed. The last brand I took on had no accounting at all and had working books in two weeks.

Do you replace our bookkeeper or accounting firm?

I can take over from an outsourced bookkeeper or firm, or work alongside an in-house team and build the systems they run.

What happens to the systems if we stop working together?

They keep running. You can keep the system on its own for $499 a month, and your books stay in your QuickBooks. Nothing is locked to me.

What systems do you work with?

Shopify, Amazon, wholesale and 3PL systems, QuickBooks Online and the major payment processors. If you run something else, ask. Most systems I can connect.

How long does setup take?

Most setups take two to four weeks. My last DTC brand had working books in two.

How much does it cost?

Setup is a fixed fee from $5,000. Ongoing work is from $3,000 a month, month to month.

Anything not answered here, ask me directly.

Book a 30-minute call

Book a free call with Bryan.

Thirty minutes. Tell me how your payouts get booked and what margin by channel looks like today, and I'll tell you straight whether I can help.

Book a 30-minute call
Free introductory call