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🧔‍♂️ WHO IS FREE TO GROW CFO

Outsourced CFO and Bookkeeping services for profit-focused DTC brands.

Scaling a DTC brand is stressful.

With messy books and no CFO on your team you run the risk of…

-Hiring too quickly

-Buying too much inventory

-Scaling ad spend unprofitably

-Running out of cash

And that leads to stressful, sleepless nights. We don’t want that for you.

Free to Grow CFO has given hundreds of DTC brands a plan for scaling alongside healthy profit and cash flow. Our plan will work for you too.

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🎤 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Free to Grow CFO’s Head of Accounting, Ruben Galindo, to break down one of the most common—and most dangerous—issues in DTC: inaccurate financials that lead to bad decisions.

They walk through where most brands go wrong with revenue recognition, including why booking deposits as revenue distorts your P&L and how missing components like refunds, discounts, fees, and sales tax can completely misstate your margins. Jon and Ruben also unpack the complexity behind reconciling multiple payment processors, and why most accounting setups fail to capture the full picture of what’s actually happening to your cash and expenses.

The conversation then shifts into the hidden challenges inside merchant accounts like Shopify, PayPal, and Amazon—where fees, ad spend, and vendor payments often get missed or misclassified—creating gaps between reported profit and reality.

This episode is a practical look at why accurate financials aren’t about accounting—they’re about having numbers you can trust to make better decisions as you scale.

Key Takeaways

-If your numbers aren’t accurate at the line-item level, you can’t trust them to guide growth decisions.

-If you’re not reconciling payment processors properly, you’re missing real expenses hitting your business.

-Booking cash deposits as revenue hides refunds, fees, and timing issues that distort your P&L.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Ruben Galindo- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubengalindo241086/Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

Transcript

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00:00 Intro to The Free to Grow CFO Podcast

00:36 Common E-commerce Accounting Challenges

01:40 Common Issues in Revenue Recognition

06:05 The Complexity of Payment Reconciliation

17:36 Understanding Inventory Accounting

21:36 The Importance of E-commerce Expertise in Accounting

22:10 Final Thoughts

Do Your Brand's Financials Feel Wrong? Here's the Fix