Introduction
If you sell on Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, or any combination of marketplaces, you already know the problem: your accounting does not keep up with your business.
Orders come in around the clock. Fees get deducted automatically. Refunds happen without warning. And somewhere under all of that activity, you are supposed to understand whether your business is actually profitable — today, not three weeks from now when the next bank deposit lands.
Most ecommerce sellers solve this by connecting their marketplaces to accounting automation software. Two names come up constantly: A2X and Entriwise.
Both Entriwise and A2X will stop you from manually entering transactions. Both will reconcile your payouts. Both will save your accountant significant time.
But whether you are an ambitious founder who needs real-time SKU profitability to survive the early stages, or a scaling enterprise with a CFO and investors to answer to, the differences between Entriwise and A2X are huge.
This guide walks through every meaningful difference, explains why each one matters, and makes the case for why Entriwise is the stronger long-term platform — especially for businesses that take their financial reporting seriously.
TLDR: Why Choose Entriwise over A2X?
For growing ecommerce businesses, the choice between Entriwise and A2X often comes down to accounting depth and scalability:
- Inventory & COGS: Native inventory management integration for tracking inventory and automated Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) ensures accurate gross margins and balance sheet integrity.
- Amazon SKU-Level Profitability: Granular Amazon profitability analytics let you see exactly which Amazon products are making money after variable commissions, FBA fees, and ad spend — per SKU, using actual COGS from QuickBooks.
- Daily Posting: Entriwise posts transactions daily, ensuring your P&L is always current, unlike A2X’s 14-day settlement-based delays.
- Accrual Architecture: Built for professional accrual accounting, ensuring your financial statements are investor-ready from day one.
- Native Transactions: Entriwise creates real Sales Receipts and Invoices, not just summarized journal entries, preserving your audit trail.
- Enterprise-Ready: Seamless paths from QuickBooks Online to QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise and NetSuite mean you never outgrow your accounting automation.
First: What Entriwise and A2X Actually Do
Before comparing them, it helps to understand what accounting automation software is actually solving.
When you sell something on Amazon, you do not immediately receive the money. Amazon holds it, pools it with other activity over a period of time, deducts fees, and eventually sends you a lump sum. That lump sum — called a settlement — might cover two weeks of activity and mix together sales, refunds, storage fees, advertising credits, and a dozen other line items.
If you try to record that manually in QuickBooks, you end up with one entry per deposit — which tells you almost nothing about where your money came from or went.
Accounting automation tools solve this. They connect to your marketplace, pull in all the transaction data, and push properly categorized accounting entries into your books automatically. This is especially useful for Amazon Seller Central QuickBooks Online integration which many sellers start with.
Both A2X and Entriwise do this.
Where they differ is in how they do it — and those differences have big consequences for businesses that are growing, raising capital, preparing for an exit, or simply trying to understand their numbers accurately.
Entriwise provides deep integrations for Amazon Seller Central accounting integration, Shopify accounting automation, and Walmart Seller Center integration, focusing on professional-grade accounting standards.
Advantage 1: True Inventory Sync and COGS Automation
This is where the platforms diverge most significantly in terms of strategic capability.
What A2X does with inventory
A2X does not natively synchronize inventory. It will reconcile your revenue and fees, but it does not automatically record the cost of goods sold, track inventory quantities, or update your balance sheet with inventory asset values.
This means that businesses using A2X for accounting still need a separate system — or significant manual work — to handle inventory accounting. COGS gets posted manually, or through a third-party integration, or not at all.
For businesses with a handful of SKUs selling in modest volume, this may be manageable. For businesses with hundreds of SKUs, seasonal inventory, FBA storage, returns, and bundled products, it quickly becomes a significant gap.
What Entriwise does with inventory
Entriwise is built with inventory integration as a native capability.
When a sale occurs, Entriwise does not just record the revenue. It simultaneously:
- Reduces the inventory asset account for the units sold
- Records the cost of goods sold for those specific units
- Updates inventory quantities in real time
- Handles refunds and returned inventory correctly
This means your balance sheet reflects actual inventory value at any point in time — not just at the moment your warehouse does a physical count. And your P&L includes accurate COGS, which makes gross margin a meaningful number rather than an estimate.
Why COGS accuracy matters more than most founders realize
Here is a scenario that plays out frequently in growing ecommerce businesses:
A founder looks at their accounting system and sees $2.5M in revenue and $800K in expenses. Gross margin looks healthy — around 68%.
But COGS has not been tracked accurately. When an accountant audits the books, they discover that $1.1M in inventory was sold but never expensed. Real gross margin is actually 32%.
This is not a small discrepancy. It changes the entire financial picture — and if it surfaces during acquisition due diligence, it can kill a deal or dramatically reduce the purchase price.
Entriwise’s inventory sync prevents this scenario by keeping COGS current, accurate, and automatic.
Advantage 2: Amazon SKU-Level Profitability Analytics
Once COGS is tracked accurately, a powerful capability becomes available: per-SKU profitability analysis for Amazon Seller Central.
This is specific to Amazon Seller Central. Unlike other platforms with flat fees, Amazon’s variable commissions, FBA fulfillment fees, storage costs, and advertising spend vary significantly at the SKU level. Without granular tracking, a product that looks successful on the surface might actually be losing money after all fees are accounted for.
Most ecommerce businesses know their total revenue. Fewer know which products are actually profitable.
This is not because founders are careless. It is because the data is spread across multiple systems — ad platforms, marketplace reports, accounting software, warehouse management — and pulling it together manually is time-consuming and error-prone.
Entriwise’s architecture, because it posts transactions at the product level and tracks COGS per unit, enables granular margin analysis at the SKU level.
For founders, this means knowing which products to invest in and which to phase out — based on actual numbers, not intuition.
For CFOs, this means the contribution margin data needed for pricing decisions, promotional planning, and capital allocation is available inside the accounting system, not on a spreadsheet that someone updates monthly.
For accountants, this means inventory and COGS are in the ledger where they belong, not estimated at year-end during tax preparation.
Advantage 3: Daily Posting vs. Settlement-Based Summaries
This is the most visible difference between the two platforms, and it has a downstream effect on almost everything else.
How A2X works
A2X is designed around settlements. When Amazon closes a settlement period and sends you a payout, A2X generates a summarized entry and posts it to your accounting system. That entry reflects the total sales, total fees, and net amount for the entire settlement period.
To its credit, A2X does split these journal entries into two when a settlement straddles two months, attempting to align sales with the correct month for reporting.
However, this “splitting” approach still falls short on two fronts:
- Information Lag: Your books only update when settlements close. If Amazon pays you every two weeks, your financial statements are effectively stale for 13 out of every 14 days.
- Payment vs. Fulfillment Decoupling: While splitting works for Amazon’s relatively predictable shipping-to-payment cycle, it fails on marketplaces like TikTok Shop, eBay, or Shopify. On these platforms, you are often paid before or long after products ship. Because A2X remains tied to the payout event, it cannot accurately reflect revenue on the day it was actually earned (accrual) versus the day it was collected.
How Entriwise works
Entriwise posts accounting data daily.
Instead of waiting for a settlement to close, Entriwise pulls activity from Amazon Seller Central each day and posts it into your accounting system. Revenue, fees, refunds, and adjustments are all reflected on the date they actually occurred.
This might seem like a small logistical detail. It is not.
For business owners, it means you can look at your books on any given day and see actual performance — not a stale snapshot.
For accountants, it means month-end close is cleaner. There are no multi-week settlement periods straddling two months and requiring manual adjustments to split them correctly.
Think of it this way: if you ran a retail store, you would ring up sales every day and record them every day. You would not wait for your payment processor to send you a monthly summary and record it as a single line item.
Daily posting also solves the common “month-end straddle” problem. For settlements that open in one month and close in the next, Entriwise automatically attributes revenue to the correct period. You no longer have to wait for a settlement to close before you can finalize your previous month’s books.
Daily posting is simply how sound accounting works — and Entriwise brings that discipline to marketplace accounting.
Advantage 4: Accrual Accounting by Design
This is the single most important accounting-methodology difference between the two platforms. It is also the one that most non-accountants understandably gloss over — until it causes a problem.
Cash vs. accrual: a plain-language explanation
Imagine you sold $50,000 worth of products in March. Amazon will pay you that money in April (or in two separate April settlements, depending on timing).
Under cash-basis accounting, that $50,000 shows up in April — because that is when you received the money.
Under accrual accounting, that $50,000 shows up in March — because that is when you earned it.
For a small business sending simple invoices, this distinction may not matter much. For an ecommerce business with significant revenue, rapid growth, and multiple stakeholders looking at financial statements, the distinction is enormous.
A2X and cash-basis alignment
Because A2X is built around settlements — which represent cash payouts — its architecture naturally reflects cash timing. Revenue appears when it is paid, not when it is earned.
This creates a set of well-known problems:
- Monthly P&L figures are distorted because they reflect payout timing, not sales timing
- Comparing performance month-over-month becomes unreliable
- Expense recognition can be misaligned with the revenue it supports
- EBITDA calculations are skewed
- Investor reporting requires manual adjustments
- Preparing GAAP-compliant financials requires significant additional work
For a business being valued on a multiple of EBITDA, distorted monthly figures are not a minor inconvenience. They can directly affect valuation negotiations.
Entriwise and accrual-basis alignment
Entriwise is accrual-based by design.
Revenue is recognized on the date of sale, not the date of payment. Fees are recognized in the period they are incurred. Adjustments are reflected when they occur.
This means:
- Monthly P&L is accurate — March shows March performance
- Revenue recognition follows GAAP standards — important for financing and M&A
- Expense matching is correct — costs align with the revenue they support
- Financial statements are investor-ready without manual period adjustments
- Forecasting improves because historical data reflects operational reality, not payment cycles
Accrual accounting is not an advanced feature reserved for large businesses. It is the standard for any company planning to raise capital, attract investors, seek debt financing, or be acquired.
Furthermore, Entriwise applies this accrual methodology consistently across all segments of your business:
For a CFO trying to produce consolidated financial statements, this consistency is a requirement, not a preference. You no longer have to manage a “Frankenstein” ledger where Amazon is recorded on an accrual basis while Shopify is settlement-based (cash). Starting with a unified accrual architecture now eliminates a painful and expensive transition later.
Advantage 5: Real Accounting Transactions, Not Journal Entries
This distinction is technical, but its practical consequences are significant enough that it deserves a plain-language explanation.
What is a journal entry?
In accounting, a journal entry is a two-sided record that moves amounts between accounts. It is the most fundamental unit of bookkeeping. Accountants use journal entries to make corrections, allocate costs, and handle complex transactions that do not fit neatly into the standard transaction types.
Journal entries are powerful and necessary — but they are also abstract. They bypass the normal workflow that accounting software uses to track customers, manage receivables, and produce certain types of reports.
What A2X creates
A2X creates summarized journal entries. When it posts activity from your settlement, it creates an accounting-layer abstraction that moves money from one account to another.
This works for reconciliation. It does not work as well for operational accounting, customer-level reporting, or clean integration with inventory systems.
What Entriwise creates
Entriwise creates native accounting transactions — the same types of records that an accountant would create manually:
- Sales Receipts in QuickBooks Online
- Sales Orders and Invoices in QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise
- Cash Sales and Invoices in NetSuite
These are not abstract ledger movements. They are real transactional records that live in your accounting system the way transactions are supposed to live there. This is particularly important for complex setups like QuickBooks Online vs. Desktop Enterprise.
Why does this matter?
Because proper accounting transactions integrate with everything else in your accounting system. They flow through accounts receivable workflows naturally. They appear in customer aging reports. They support accrual accounting correctly. They are audit-friendly because they look like what they are: sales.
When a due-diligence team, an auditor, or a lender reviews your books, what they see in Entriwise-powered accounts is clean, recognizable transaction history. What they see in journal-based accounts is abstracted summaries that require interpretation.
For a founder preparing for acquisition, or a CFO managing an audit, or an accountant building a clean set of books from which to derive financial statements — this difference is not cosmetic. It is architectural. This structural integrity ensures your business is always audit-ready and passes financial due diligence without the need for manual “reconstruction.”
Advantage 6: Native Integration with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, and NetSuite
A2X integrates with QuickBooks Online and several other accounting platforms. But there is a meaningful difference in integration depth — particularly when it comes to QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise and NetSuite.
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise: The Powerhouse for Inventory
While QuickBooks Online is popular for its accessibility, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise remains the gold standard for e-commerce businesses with heavy inventory requirements. It isn’t just an older version; it is a more powerful engine designed specifically to handle the complexities that QBO often struggles with.
For sellers with multi-location warehouses, advanced pricing rules, or thousands of SKUs, QBD Enterprise offers a depth of inventory tracking—including bin locations, barcode scanning, and FIFO costing—that isn’t natively matched by QBO.
Entriwise understands this distinction. Entriwise’s native QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise integration doesn’t just “push data” into the system — it speaks the language of QBD’s robust architecture, creating proper Sales Orders and Invoices that preserve the functional power of the platform. If you’ve chosen QBD Enterprise for its superior inventory capabilities, Entriwise is the software that respects and enhances that choice.
NetSuite is the enterprise destination
For businesses scaling past $10M, $20M, or $50M in revenue, NetSuite is often the destination. It is the most widely deployed ERP system among mid-market companies, and it handles complexity that QuickBooks cannot: multi-entity structures, advanced inventory management, revenue recognition modules, and financial consolidation.
Entriwise has a native NetSuite integration.
A2X does not offer native NetSuite integration at the same architectural depth.
For a business planning to migrate from QuickBooks Desktop or Online to NetSuite in the next few years, starting with Entriwise today means your automation infrastructure is already future-proof. The platform speaks the language of all three industry standards — QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, and NetSuite.
For a CFO managing technology stack transitions, this reduces one significant integration risk.
Who Should Use Entriwise?
Ecommerce founders
If you are running an ecommerce business and want financial reports that reflect what is actually happening — not what happened two weeks ago when your last settlement closed — Entriwise gives you daily visibility into revenue, fees, and margins.
You do not need an accounting background to benefit. You just need to care about knowing your numbers.
CFOs and finance teams
If you are responsible for financial reporting, you need accrual-based books, period-accurate revenue recognition, and financial statements that would hold up under scrutiny. You need a system that produces the same quality of data whether you are filing tax returns, presenting to a board, or going through a capital raise.
Entriwise gives you that. A settlement-summary journal tool does not.
Accountants and bookkeepers
If you manage multiple ecommerce clients and spend significant time at month-end adjusting for settlement periods, splitting multi-month entries, and estimating COGS, Entriwise reduces that work substantially.
Native transactions, daily posting, and accrual alignment mean your close process is more systematic and less judgment-dependent.
High-SKU-count sellers
If you have more than a few dozen SKUs and need accurate per-product margin data, Entriwise’s inventory sync and COGS automation gives you financial-statement-grade profitability data by product — not just at the business level.
Businesses approaching an exit or financing
If you have any expectation of raising capital, seeking acquisition, or entering into a significant financing arrangement in the next two to three years, the quality of your historical accounting will be scrutinized. Starting with accrual-based, transaction-native accounting now avoids the expense of retro-fitting your books later.
Summary Comparison: Which Solution Is Right for You?
To be direct about what each platform does well and where it falls short:
A2X is a strong tool for early-stage, cash-basis businesses with a single channel and low transaction volume that primarily need simple payout matching and rely on an accountant for manual year-end adjustments.
Entriwise is the better choice when:
- Inventory & Amazon SKU Profitability are critical for managing margins and growth
- Daily Visibility into revenue and fees is needed for real-time decision-making
- True Accrual Accounting is required for audit readiness or external stakeholders
- Native Transactions (Sales Receipts/Invoices) are preferred over abstract journal entries
- Multi-Channel Consistency is needed across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, and TikTok Shop
- QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise or NetSuite is the current or target accounting system
- Scale and Exit Readiness are priorities for the business owner
At-a-Glance: Entriwise vs. A2X
| Feature | A2X | Entriwise |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory & COGS | Manual / Multi-tool | Native & Automated |
| Posting Frequency | Every 14 Days (Settlement)¹ | Daily (Real-Time) |
| Accounting Basis | Primarily Cash / Split Journal | True Accrual by Default |
| Transaction Type | Summarized Journal Entry | Native (Sales Receipt/Invoice) |
| Amazon SKU Profitability | None | Granular for Amazon (Inside Entriwise) |
| Enterprise Journey | Stops at QBO | QBO → QBES → NetSuite |
¹ A2X settlement-based posting frequency for Amazon Seller Central.
Getting Started
Entriwise offers integrations for Amazon Seller Central, Shopify, Walmart, eBay, and TikTok Shop — connecting to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, and NetSuite.
If you are currently using A2X and considering a switch, the migration is straightforward. Your historical A2X data remains in your accounting system as-is; Entriwise picks up from a clean start date and posts forward, so there is no need to reconstruct prior periods or restate historical books.
If you are starting fresh, setting up Entriwise correctly from the beginning means you are building on the right foundation from day one — without the expense of correcting it later.
The goal is not just to reconcile yesterday’s payouts.
The goal is to build financial infrastructure that reflects today’s operations and scales with tomorrow’s ambitions.
That is what Entriwise delivers.
Conclusion: Build Your Business on a Professional Foundation
Choosing an accounting automation tool is about more than just matching payouts to bank deposits. It’s about building the financial nervous system of your business.
If your ledger only receives signals once every two weeks in abstracted summaries, it is operating with a dangerous “loss of signal.” Every delay in data is a delay in your ability to react to a problem or double down on a winner.
By moving beyond simple settlement matching to Entriwise’s daily, accrual-based, native transactions, you gain more than just automation — you gain a platform built for the scrutiny of auditors, the demands of investors, and the complexities of multi-channel scaling.
Whether you are optimizing for Amazon QuickBooks Online integration, expanding on Shopify QuickBooks Online, or scaling to NetSuite ERP integration, Entriwise ensures your books reflect the reality of your operations.
If you are ready to stop settling for the 14-day delay and move to the professional standard for ecommerce accounting, it is time to make the switch.
Ready to see the difference for yourself? View Entriwise pricing or sign up for a free trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Entriwise better than A2X?
While both tools automate marketplace accounting, Entriwise is the superior choice for sellers who require daily accrual accounting, native inventory/COGS automation, and SKU-level profitability to drive growth. A2X is often sufficient for very early-stage sellers who only need basic settlement matching and do not yet require granular, real-time financial visibility.
Does Entriwise support QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise?
Yes. Unlike many cloud-based tools that only support QuickBooks Online, Entriwise has a native integration with QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, preserving its advanced inventory and pricing features.
How does Entriwise handle Shopify and TikTok Shop?
Entriwise provides consistent, daily accrual posting across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, eBay, and TikTok Shop. This ensures your financial statements are uniform across all channels without manual data splicing.
Can I switch from A2X to Entriwise mid-year without disrupting my books?
Yes. Most businesses complete the transition within a single billing period. Your historical A2X data remains in your accounting system as-is; Entriwise picks up from a clean start date and posts forward from there, so there is no need to reconstruct prior periods or restate historical books.
Does Entriwise support businesses selling on more than one marketplace simultaneously?
Yes. Entriwise provides unified, daily accrual posting across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, eBay, and TikTok Shop — all into a single accounting system. Each channel’s revenue, fees, and refunds are properly separated and consistently posted, giving you consolidated financials without manual data splicing.
How does Entriwise handle FBA inventory vs. merchant-fulfilled inventory?
Entriwise tracks both fulfillment types. FBA inventory values, storage fees, and inbound shipment costs are recorded separately from merchant-fulfilled stock, so your balance sheet accurately reflects inventory held at Amazon fulfillment centers alongside your own warehouse inventory.