What happened at Lezzet
I opened the business checking account with $0 in April 2026, and a business credit card soon after. Then I let the books drift. By October the profit and loss report was wildly wrong, and I threw it out.
What was wrong, and it's the same list most new businesses have:
- An "opening balance" from the bank that counted thousands of dollars of card charges twice.
- Payouts recorded as income. Amazon and Shopify payouts landed in the bank and got labeled as sales, on top of the sales the integrations had already recorded.
- Expenses in the wrong place. A software subscription was filed as a business asset.
- A downloads folder full of statements, some current, some not.
The fix took one focused session: delete the phantom balance, match every payout to the sales it came from, recategorize the mistakes, and keep one folder of current statements.
The money setup that works
- Separate everything. One business checking account and one business card. Never pay business costs from a personal account, or personal costs from the business.
- Connect the bank and card to your bookkeeping software (QuickBooks Online or Xero).
- Connect your sales channels (Shopify, Amazon) so sales arrive as their own records.
- Match, don't categorize. When a Shopify or Amazon payout hits the bank, match it to the payout record. It is not new income.
- Close each month. Once a month, compare every account to its statement, then save the statement to one folder named by date.
Numbers to know
- Profit per order, per channel. A $25 bag doesn't earn the same on your site, on Amazon after fees, and as a subscription renewal. Work it out for each.
- What a customer is worth vs. what it costs to get one. Lifetime profit divided by acquisition cost, called LTV to CAC. A common target is 3 to 1. Ours started far below that, which told us to stop scaling ads and fix repeat purchases first.
Free things you should claim
- A D-U-N-S number from Dun & Bradstreet. Free. Apple, some marketplaces, and lenders ask for it.
- A small business certification, if you qualify. On Amazon it earns a "Small Business" badge on your listings. Ours costs about $25 a year through an approved certifier.
What bites you later
- Tax time with messy books costs far more in accountant hours than a monthly close ever would.
- Mixed personal and business spending weakens the liability protection your LLC is supposed to give you.
- Not knowing profit per channel lets you grow the channel that loses money.