Industries · Wholesale & Distribution
Wholesale & Distribution Accounting Services
Your warehouse holds the answers, your books should be able to read them.
Miami is the trade gateway of the Americas, and the warehouses of Doral, Medley, and Miami Lakes prove it daily: importers bringing consumer goods in from Asia, exporters staging products for Latin America and the Caribbean, and regional distributors feeding retailers and contractors across the Southeast. Wholesale margins are earned in single digits, which means the companies that thrive are the ones whose numbers are precise enough to find them.
Distribution accounting lives and dies on inventory. Landed cost, product plus freight, duty, brokerage, and inland transport, determines true margin, and companies that cost inventory at invoice price alone systematically overstate profitability on imported lines. Add sales tax resale certificates, multistate nexus as e-commerce channels grow, inventory shrink that nobody measures, and bank lines secured by borrowing-base certificates demanding monthly reporting, and the back office becomes as strategic as the sales floor.
Integris Accounting brings Big Four-trained rigor to closely held distributors. We implement inventory costing that captures full landed cost, produce margin reporting by product line and customer, prepare the monthly financials and borrowing-base packages your lender requires, and plan taxes around inventory methods and entity structure. Bilingual service is a genuine advantage in Miami's import-export community, and it is standard here.
The landscape
$100B+
in trade flowing through the Miami customs district annually
30,000+
wholesale and distribution businesses across Florida
50+
countries trading through South Florida gateways
Core services for wholesale & distribution
The challenges
What makes wholesale & distribution accounting hard
Landed cost nobody fully calculates
Freight, duty, brokerage, and drayage can add a fifth or more to invoice cost on imported goods. Distributors pricing off supplier invoices alone believe in margins that do not survive contact with reality.
Margins averaged into meaninglessness
A blended gross margin across thousands of SKUs hides the losers. Without margin reporting by product line and customer, sales teams keep pushing volume on items that quietly cost you money.
Bank lines demanding reporting discipline
Inventory- and receivable-secured credit lines require borrowing-base certificates, aging schedules, and covenant compliance on a monthly clock. Late or sloppy packages erode the lender confidence your growth depends on.
Sales tax exposure across channels and states
Resale certificates must be collected and current, and e-commerce or out-of-state sales can create nexus obligations distributors never registered for. The liability accrues silently until an auditor totals it up.
Our approach
How we help
Full landed-cost inventory accounting
Freight, duty, and import charges capitalized into inventory cost systematically, so gross margin by product finally reflects what goods truly cost to put on your shelves.
Margin analytics by SKU line and customer
Monthly reporting that ranks product lines and accounts by true contribution, giving sales management the hard evidence to reprice, renegotiate, or retire the freight-eating losers.
Lender-ready monthly packages
Timely financial statements, agings, and borrowing-base certificates delivered accurately on the bank's schedule every month, protecting the credit line that funds every container you order.
Sales tax and nexus management
Resale certificate discipline, exposure reviews as your sales channels expand, and registration guidance where obligations exist, replacing silent liability accrual with a managed compliance footprint.
Inventory method and tax planning
Costing method selection, shrink and obsolescence write-down timing, and entity-level planning coordinated so the balance sheet, the tax return, and the bank all tell one consistent story.
FAQ
Wholesale & Distribution accounting, common questions
What should be included in my landed cost calculation?
Everything required to get goods ready for sale: supplier invoice, ocean or air freight, customs duties and tariffs, brokerage fees, insurance, and inland transport to your warehouse. Those costs belong in inventory, flowing to cost of goods sold as items sell, not expensed when paid. Distributors who make this switch usually discover certain imported lines were several margin points weaker than they believed, and reprice accordingly.
My bank wants reviewed financial statements. What does that involve?
A review is a CPA engagement providing limited assurance, deeper than a compilation, lighter than an audit, involving analytical procedures and inquiries about your numbers. Lenders commonly require reviews as credit lines grow. Preparation matters: inventory records, reconciliations, and cutoff procedures need to be defensible. We perform reviews and, just as importantly, get your monthly accounting to a standard where review season is uneventful.
How do I know if I have sales tax obligations outside Florida?
Since the Wayfair decision, most states impose economic nexus once your sales into them exceed thresholds, commonly around one hundred thousand dollars annually, even with no physical presence. Distributors selling through e-commerce platforms or shipping direct to out-of-state customers cross these lines without noticing. We review your sales footprint by state, identify where obligations exist, and manage registration and filing so exposure stops accumulating.
How often should a distributor take a physical inventory?
A full annual count is the floor, but well-run operations layer cycle counting, a rotating count of sections weekly or monthly, so the perpetual records stay trustworthy year-round. Shrink, receiving errors, and mislabeled bins otherwise accumulate into an ugly year-end surprise that distorts margins and taxes alike. We help design the count program and book the adjustments so your inventory number is always defensible.
Where we serve wholesale & distribution
Talk to a CPA who knows wholesale & distribution
Price every container on its true landed cost, call (305) 497-0552 to sharpen your distribution numbers.