Cash leaves on buying day; the stems have about a week
Fresh product is paid for at the wholesaler, or at the flower auction in Mississauga, days before any of it sells, and whatever does not sell gets dumped. So the useful ledger question is never just what the shop sold. It is what was bought, what sold and what hit the bucket, week by week. We expense fresh stock as it is purchased, the honest treatment for product that turns in days, and run hard goods such as vases, floral foam, ribbon and giftware as counted inventory, because those hold their value between counts.
Shrink gets its own line, fed by a one-minute dump log: date, product, reason. Over-ordered roses, a failing cooler compressor and a weak batch from a new supplier are three different problems, and burying all three inside cost of sales hides every one of them. A few months of the log turns buying day from habit into a decision.
The same data, reported weekly, answers the margin-per-stem question: what a rose cost landed, what it earned in a wrap versus an arrangement, and how much of the buy never earned anything at all. That is the number a buying day should be judged on, not the till total.
Wedding money is a debt until the event date
A retainer taken in October for a June wedding is not October revenue; it is money the shop owes back until the flowers are delivered. Booking it as sales inflates the slow season, flatters the busy one, and makes event pricing look better than it is. Our End-to-End Accounting engagement, bookkeeping, payroll, reporting and tax filing together, keeps event money on the balance sheet until it is earned and costs each wedding in the month it happens.
| Moment in the booking | Where it sits in the books |
|---|---|
| Retainer received at signing | A customer-deposit liability, not sales |
| Balance invoiced before the event | A receivable with HST; still not earned revenue |
| Event delivered and set up | Revenue recognized, retainer applied against the invoice |
| Couple cancels, retainer kept | Income on the cancellation date, treated as including HST |
| Stems bought for the event | Job cost matched to that wedding, not to the counter |
One wording detail matters more than it looks. For HST, a true retainer is not taxed until it is applied to the bill, while an invoiced progress payment is taxed when invoiced; the contract decides which one you took. We make sure the contract and the books say the same thing.
Wire orders: the bank will never match the till
Teleflora and FTD settle on a statement, not per order. Orders you filled for other florists, orders you sent, commissions and monthly fees all net down to a single deposit or withdrawal, and booking that net figure as sales misstates revenue, expenses and margin in one stroke.
We post the statement in its parts: wire-fill revenue on its own line, outgoing fill costs and network fees as selling expenses. Counter trade, event work and relay work stop contaminating each other, and the bank reconciles cleanly against all three. House accounts for funeral homes and event venues add a fourth thing to watch, receivables; an aged list in the month-end pack keeps sympathy work from quietly becoming an interest-free loan. Who accounts for the HST on a relay order is a filing question with its own logic, covered on our florist tax services page.
A monthly close built on tools already in the shop
The daily summary from FloristWare or Lovingly posts into QuickBooks Online, wholesaler invoices arrive through Dext, and proposals from Curate tie stem lists to jobs so event costing is not year-end archaeology. Payroll for designers and drivers runs in the same monthly rhythm; how a delivery driver should be classified is a question we settle early rather than repair later, and the filing side of it lives with the tax return.
Month-end lands as three margins on one page: counter, events, wire. A solo studio florist working from one cooler and a bench may not need all of that yet; CPA Quick Support at $99 a month keeps a CPA on call for the questions in between. Anything fuller is scoped and quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
