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Best Software for Ecommerce Bookkeeping: 9 Tools Compared for Accuracy, Automation, and Growth

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Finding the best software for ecommerce bookkeeping is harder than choosing a normal small-business accounting app. Online sellers have to reconcile marketplace payouts, payment fees, refunds, sales tax, inventory costs, and transactions that may arrive in batches rather than matching individual orders.

The wrong setup can make revenue look inflated, hide fees, or leave you untangling deposits at month-end.

This guide compares nine strong options across accounting, ecommerce automation, and higher-volume finance workflows. You’ll learn what each tool handles well, where it can create friction, and how to build a bookkeeping system that stays accurate as your store grows.

What Ecommerce Bookkeeping Software Must Actually Do

Ecommerce bookkeeping becomes difficult because the cash hitting your bank is rarely the same as the gross sale shown in your storefront. Your software needs to preserve that detail without turning the general ledger into an unmanageable stream of transactions.

Reconcile Gross Sales, Fees, Refunds, and Payouts

A normal bank feed shows the amount deposited. Ecommerce bookkeeping has to explain how that net deposit was created. If a marketplace pays you $8,200 after deducting $900 in selling fees, $300 in refunds, and $600 in taxes it collected, recording only the $8,200 deposit loses important information about revenue and expenses.

The better workflow is to reconstruct each payout. Your books should show gross sales, refunds, marketplace or payment-processing fees, tax liabilities where applicable, and the movement of cash into your bank. That gives you cleaner gross-margin reporting and makes reconciliation far easier.

This is where purpose-built ecommerce connectors add value. A storefront such as Shopify or marketplace such as Amazon can generate transaction detail that a bank feed alone cannot interpret correctly. The bookkeeping layer needs either a native integration or a connector capable of translating that activity into accounting entries.

I recommend judging software by how well it matches payouts to deposits, not simply by whether it “integrates” with a sales channel. An integration that imports orders but leaves fees, refunds, reserves, or taxes unresolved can still create substantial month-end work.

Track Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold at the Right Level

Inventory accounting separates product businesses from many service businesses. You need to know not only what you sold, but also the cost attached to those units and the value of stock that remains on hand.

For a smaller store, basic perpetual inventory may be enough. You purchase 100 units, record the inventory asset, and recognize cost of goods sold when units sell. As the business becomes more complex, you may need purchase orders, landed costs, multiple warehouses, bundles, assemblies, lot tracking, or channel-level inventory visibility. At that point, the accounting package may no longer be the best operational inventory system.

The important decision is where your inventory “source of truth” lives. If quantities are managed inside a storefront, warehouse system, or ERP, your bookkeeping software should not create a second competing inventory record unless the sync is reliable. Two systems trying to control stock can produce quantity mismatches and bad COGS.

For most growing ecommerce companies, I suggest separating operational inventory management from financial reporting when complexity increases. Let the operational system manage stock movements, while the accounting system receives accurate inventory values and COGS entries on a controlled schedule.

Produce Books You Can Use for Decisions, Not Just Tax Filing

Accurate ecommerce bookkeeping should help you answer operating questions before tax season. Can you see gross margin after marketplace fees? Are refunds increasing? Is cash shrinking because inventory purchases are running ahead of sales? Are one channel’s economics weaker than the others?

Your core reports should include a profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash-flow view, and enough channel or product detail to investigate meaningful changes. The most useful software also gives your accountant a consistent audit trail from the financial statement back to the payout, order summary, or transaction that created the balance.

This is why transaction volume alone should not determine your tool. A store with 3,000 simple monthly orders may be easier to account for than a business with 600 orders spread across several currencies, marketplaces, fulfillment models, and payment processors.

I recommend choosing the bookkeeping architecture that makes reconciliation explainable. If you cannot trace a marketplace deposit from bank account to payout summary to fees, refunds, and taxes, automation is only hiding the problem.

How to Choose the Right Ecommerce Bookkeeping Stack

The strongest option depends on what you already use, how many channels you sell through, and how much operational complexity sits behind each payout. Think of the choice as a stack rather than a single app.

Decide Whether You Need a Ledger, a Connector, or a Full Finance Platform

The nine tools in this guide do not all compete in the same category. QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Wave are primarily accounting platforms. A2X, Link My Books, and Synder sit between commerce systems and the accounting ledger. Webgility adds deeper multichannel transaction and inventory automation. Finaloop combines commerce-native accounting technology with finance operations, while NetSuite moves into ERP territory.

That distinction matters. If you already have a clean QuickBooks Online or Xero file, replacing the ledger may be unnecessary. Your real problem may be getting Amazon or Shopify activity into it correctly. In that case, an ecommerce connector can be the more practical investment.

If your finance process is breaking because inventory, orders, purchasing, multiple entities, and reporting live in disconnected systems, adding another connector may only postpone a larger systems decision. You may need a broader platform.

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Use this simple test: identify the place where errors originate. If errors begin when ecommerce data reaches the books, improve the connector. If the ledger itself cannot support your reporting needs, change accounting systems. If operational and financial data are fragmented across the company, evaluate a more integrated finance or ERP platform.

Compare the Nine Tools by Business Fit

The table below is a decision shortcut rather than a universal ranking. “Best” means best for a particular operating model, not the tool with the longest feature list.

A practical shortlist usually contains two layers: the ledger you want to keep for several years and the automation layer that makes ecommerce data usable inside it. That keeps you from comparing fundamentally different products as though they were interchangeable.

Evaluate Accuracy Before Convenience

Automation saves time only when the accounting logic is right. Before committing, test one real payout from each important channel. Confirm that gross revenue, fees, refunds, discounts, marketplace-collected tax, shipping, gift cards, reserves, and payment timing are handled the way your accountant expects.

Next, look at the reconciliation model. Some systems post summarized entries per payout. Others sync individual orders or transactions. Summary posting keeps the ledger smaller and often works well for high-volume marketplace sellers. Transaction-level posting can provide more detail, but it can also make the accounting file heavier and increase the number of entries that must be reviewed.

Neither approach is automatically more accurate. The right choice depends on what detail you need inside the accounting system versus what can remain in the commerce platform.

Finally, test exception handling. What happens when a refund occurs after a payout closes, a processor withholds a reserve, or a duplicate connection imports the same period twice? Strong software gives you a clear way to identify, reverse, or remap exceptions without rebuilding months of bookkeeping.

Best General Accounting Platforms for Ecommerce Sellers

These three tools are the accounting foundation rather than specialist settlement engines. They work best when you want a reliable general ledger and are prepared to add ecommerce-specific automation when transaction complexity increases.

QuickBooks Online: Best All-Round Ledger for Many Small and Mid-Sized Sellers

QuickBooks Online is a practical default when you want accounting, bank reconciliation, reporting, bills, and a large ecosystem in one place. Its current ecommerce connectors support major platforms including Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix, and Squarespace, with Shopify and Amazon supporting payout-based reconciliation. QuickBooks also offers inventory tracking on higher-tier plans, although its newer ecommerce connectors do not yet provide two-way inventory syncing across every connected store.

The main advantage is familiarity. Many accountants already work in QuickBooks, which can reduce handoff friction. A growing store can begin with native connections and later add a specialist connector when settlement detail or multichannel volume becomes harder to manage.

The main risk is assuming the accounting platform should also become your complete ecommerce operations system. If you have multiple warehouses, complex bundles, frequent channel-specific adjustments, or heavy marketplace settlement activity, keep QuickBooks as the ledger and add a stronger commerce automation layer rather than forcing every operational process into it.

I would shortlist QuickBooks Online for sellers that want a long-term small-business accounting base and value accountant availability, reporting depth, and integration flexibility.

Xero: Best for a Flexible App-Based Ecommerce Finance Stack

Xero is well suited to ecommerce businesses that prefer a clean cloud accounting core connected to specialist apps. Its ecommerce positioning centers on synchronizing online sales with accounting, while its app marketplace includes tools for sales reconciliation, inventory, payments, and channel integrations. Xero also supports standard accounting functions such as bank reconciliation, bills, reporting, and inventory workflows.

The biggest strength is modularity. You can keep Xero focused on financial reporting while using a dedicated connector for marketplace settlements and a separate inventory platform when your operations outgrow basic stock tracking. That separation is useful because ecommerce accounting and inventory operations often mature at different speeds.

The trade-off is that the best ecommerce workflow may require more than one subscription. A seller who wants a single platform to manage accounting, advanced inventory, warehouse operations, and ecommerce transactions could find the stack fragmented.

I recommend Xero when your accountant already prefers it, when you value a strong app ecosystem, or when you want to build a finance stack from specialized components. It pairs especially naturally with payout-focused tools such as A2X and Link My Books.

Wave: Best for Very Small Sellers With Simple Bookkeeping

Wave is most appropriate for side businesses and small ecommerce operations that need straightforward bookkeeping, invoicing, bank reconciliation, and financial reports without enterprise-level complexity. Wave’s Starter plan covers basic accounting and invoicing, while its Pro tier adds features such as automatic bank transaction imports and receipt capture.

Its appeal is simplicity. If you sell through one storefront, process a modest number of orders, and mainly need clean income and expense records, a lighter accounting platform can be easier to maintain than a sophisticated system with dozens of configuration choices.

The limitation appears when marketplace reconciliation and inventory complexity grow. Wave is not the option I would choose for a seller managing several high-volume channels, complicated landed costs, or a finance team that needs granular operational accounting.

A useful scenario is a new direct-to-consumer brand validating demand with one payment processor and a small SKU catalog. Wave can support the basic books while the owner learns monthly reconciliation discipline. Once payouts, inventory, tax complexity, or accountant requirements increase, moving to a stronger ecommerce accounting stack may be more efficient than layering workarounds onto the original setup.

Best Ecommerce Accounting Automation Tools

These tools solve a different problem: they take messy sales-channel activity and convert it into entries your accounting system can reconcile. They are often the highest-leverage upgrade for sellers who already like their ledger.

A2X: Best for Payout-Based Marketplace Accounting

A2X is built around ecommerce settlement accounting. It connects commerce channels including Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy with accounting systems such as Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage, and NetSuite. Its setup process centers on mapping accounts and taxes, then reconciling the generated entry to the actual payout.

That model is particularly useful for high-volume sellers who do not want every individual order flooding the general ledger. Instead, the accounting entry can reflect the financial composition of a settlement while preserving the reconciliation trail.

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A2X is strongest when marketplace payouts are your main bookkeeping pain point. For example, an Amazon seller receiving net deposits after fees, refunds, reimbursements, and marketplace adjustments can use the settlement report as the accounting anchor rather than trying to infer gross activity from bank deposits.

The limitation is that A2X is not a replacement for your general ledger. You still need an accounting system and a correctly designed chart of accounts. Initial mapping also deserves accountant review because automation will repeat whatever logic you configure. If the mapping is wrong, it can repeat the mistake consistently and at scale.

Link My Books: Best for Guided Ecommerce-to-Ledger Reconciliation

Link My Books focuses on automating ecommerce bookkeeping into Xero or QuickBooks. Its current connection workflow supports sales channels including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, Walmart, TikTok Shop, Square, and WooCommerce, and its core process breaks payouts into sales, refunds, fees, and taxes before matching them to bank deposits.

The platform is attractive when you want a guided setup and a workflow built specifically around ecommerce accounting rather than generic data synchronization. It is especially relevant for sellers and bookkeeping practices that process multiple channels but still want the final financial statements to live in a mainstream accounting platform.

The main decision is similar to A2X: do you want summarized settlement accounting or detailed transaction posting? If your accountant cares primarily about accurate monthly reporting and reconciled payouts, the summarized approach can keep the books cleaner.

Link My Books is a strong candidate for UK and international sellers as well as businesses dealing with marketplace tax complexity, but you should still validate tax mappings for your jurisdictions. Automation can classify data, but it does not replace professional judgment about VAT, GST, sales tax, or cross-border obligations.

Synder: Best for Detailed Payment and Commerce Transaction Sync

Synder is designed to connect payment processors and ecommerce channels with accounting platforms including QuickBooks and Xero. Its integrations include commerce sources such as Amazon alongside payment platforms, making it useful when your bookkeeping challenge comes from multiple processors rather than one marketplace settlement workflow.

The key distinction is transaction detail. A payment-centered business may want each sale, fee, refund, or transfer represented with enough granularity to support customer-level or processor-level analysis. That can be helpful for ecommerce stores, subscription products, and digital businesses where several payment systems feed the same bank account.

The trade-off is volume. Detailed syncing can create many entries, so you need to understand how your accounting file performs as transaction counts increase. More detail is not always more useful. If your team only needs reconciled channel summaries for financial reporting, a payout-based connector may create a cleaner ledger.

I suggest testing Synder with one representative week of activity. Compare the resulting books with your preferred month-end workflow. If your accountant can reconcile deposits quickly and the detail improves analysis rather than creating noise, the model is a good fit.

Best Options for Higher-Volume and Complex Growth

Once bookkeeping problems are connected to inventory, order management, multiple entities, wholesale, or operational finance, a lightweight connector may no longer be enough. These three tools serve progressively more complex requirements.

Webgility: Best for Granular Multichannel Accounting and Inventory Automation

Webgility connects ecommerce channels and marketplaces with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop or Enterprise, and Xero. It supports both detailed order-level posting and summarized accounting approaches, while also offering payout reconciliation and multichannel inventory synchronization. Its current integration catalog spans major storefronts and marketplaces including Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and TikTok Shop.

That makes Webgility useful when accounting accuracy and operational synchronization are intertwined. A seller may want orders posted into QuickBooks, marketplace fees captured, deposits reconciled, and inventory quantities updated across channels from one workflow.

The strength is control. You can design different posting logic for different channels rather than forcing every store into the same accounting treatment. The downside is configuration. Greater flexibility creates more decisions around mapping, transaction detail, tax handling, and inventory ownership.

I would consider Webgility when a business has outgrown a lightweight settlement connector but does not yet need a full ERP. It is particularly relevant for multichannel sellers that still want QuickBooks or Xero to remain the financial system of record while improving synchronization around orders, payouts, and stock.

Finaloop: Best for Commerce-Native Accounting With Finance Operations Included

Finaloop takes a broader approach than a connector. It offers a commerce-focused accounting platform with real-time financials, reconciliation, and an option for managed accounting support. Its current product is built around multichannel ecommerce and retail, including integrations and workflows for Shopify, Amazon, wholesale, retail, and other commerce activity.

For growing brands, the appeal is consolidation. Instead of maintaining a traditional ledger, several connectors, and a separate bookkeeping service, Finaloop aims to bring accounting logic and ecommerce data into a platform designed around consumer brands. Its Amazon integration, for example, tracks orders, fees, refunds, payouts, deferred funds, and inventory-related activity rather than treating the bank deposit as the entire transaction.

This can reduce the number of moving parts, but it is a larger systems decision. You are not simply adding a utility to an existing QuickBooks or Xero workflow. You are deciding whether a commerce-native platform should become central to finance operations.

I would evaluate Finaloop when your team wants faster financial visibility and less dependence on manual month-end bookkeeping, especially if the company is already multichannel and inventory-heavy.

NetSuite: Best for Ecommerce Businesses That Need ERP-Level Control

NetSuite belongs at the top end of this comparison because it combines financial management with inventory, order management, CRM, and ecommerce capabilities. Its SuiteCommerce architecture is designed to connect online commerce with core operational systems, while NetSuite order management supports multi-location inventory visibility and more complex fulfillment workflows.

That scope makes it appropriate for businesses where bookkeeping is no longer the isolated problem. You may have multiple entities, warehouses, wholesale accounts, international operations, procurement workflows, complex revenue processes, or a finance team that needs stronger controls and consolidated reporting.

The disadvantage is proportional to the capability. ERP implementation requires process design, data migration, configuration, testing, user training, and ongoing ownership. A business should not adopt NetSuite simply because transaction volume increased. A well-designed QuickBooks or Xero stack can remain effective at meaningful scale when operations are still relatively simple.

I recommend considering NetSuite when disconnected systems are causing company-wide control problems, not merely because month-end reconciliation takes a few extra hours. The move should solve finance and operations together.

How to Set Up Ecommerce Bookkeeping Software Correctly

Good software can still produce bad books when the setup logic is weak. The implementation should begin with accounting decisions, then move into integrations, validation, and controlled automation.

Build the Chart of Accounts Around Decisions You Need to Make

Start by deciding what you need to measure. Most ecommerce companies need separate visibility for product revenue, discounts, refunds, shipping income, marketplace fees, payment-processing fees, COGS, fulfillment, advertising, and inventory assets. You may also need channel-specific tracking, but avoid creating a separate general-ledger account for every minor variation.

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The goal is a chart of accounts that supports useful reporting without becoming unmanageable. A practical structure separates accounting categories from analytical dimensions. For example, “Marketplace Fees” can remain one expense account while classes, tracking categories, locations, or reporting tags distinguish Amazon from Shopify where your accounting system supports that approach.

Next, define clearing accounts for payment processors and marketplaces. A clearing account represents money earned but not yet deposited. Sales and fees can flow through the clearing account, and the final payout reduces that balance when cash reaches the bank.

This is the heart of clean ecommerce reconciliation. If the clearing account returns close to zero after valid timing differences, the flow is working. If it grows month after month, you likely have missing payouts, duplicate data, incorrect mappings, reserves, or unrecorded adjustments that need investigation.

Connect One Sales Channel at a Time

Connecting every marketplace at once makes troubleshooting unnecessarily difficult. Begin with the channel that generates the most revenue or the clearest payout reports, then complete one full reconciliation cycle before adding the next.

Record a cutover date. This prevents an integration from importing historical transactions that were already entered manually. Duplicate data is one of the easiest ways to overstate ecommerce revenue, especially when a bank feed, native store integration, and third-party connector all import overlapping activity.

After the connection is live, reconcile a representative payout manually. Compare the source report with the accounting entry line by line. Check sales, discounts, shipping, refunds, fees, taxes, reserves, and the final deposit. If one category does not match, fix the mapping before enabling broader automation.

Then document the setup. Record which system owns sales data, which tool posts entries, which bank or clearing account receives the payout, and who approves exceptions. This small implementation note becomes extremely valuable when an accountant changes, a store migrates, or a connector needs to be rebuilt months later.

Create a Monthly Close That Reviews Exceptions Instead of Rebuilding Data

The objective of automation is not to remove review. It is to shift human effort from repetitive entry to exception management.

A strong monthly close begins with bank and credit-card reconciliation, followed by marketplace clearing accounts, payment processors, inventory values, accounts payable, tax liabilities, and any loans or financing balances. Once the balance sheet is credible, review the profit and loss statement for unusual changes.

For ecommerce specifically, compare revenue by channel with source-platform reports. Investigate unexpected jumps in refunds, fulfillment charges, marketplace fees, or payment-processing costs. Review negative inventory, inventory adjustments, and COGS if gross margin moves sharply without an obvious operational reason.

Create thresholds so the team knows what deserves attention. A $4 difference may be immaterial for a large store, while a recurring $4 mismatch across thousands of transactions may reveal a mapping defect. The threshold should consider both value and pattern.

The best setup makes month-end boring: most transactions reconcile automatically, exceptions are visible, and the team can explain the remaining differences without exporting five spreadsheets and starting over.

Common Mistakes, Troubleshooting, and Performance Measurement

Once the system is running, quality depends on controlling duplicate data, monitoring clearing accounts, and measuring whether automation is actually reducing close effort. These checks matter more than adding another app.

Avoid Double-Counting Revenue From Multiple Data Sources

Double-counting often happens when the same sale enters accounting through two routes. A Shopify integration may post the order, a payment-processor integration may post the charge, and the bank feed may then categorize the deposit as sales again. The result can look plausible because cash still reconciles after manual adjustments, yet revenue is overstated.

Map the flow before importing data. Every transaction type should have one authoritative route into the general ledger. The bank feed should usually match or reconcile entries created elsewhere rather than create a second copy of revenue.

The same principle applies to marketplaces. If Amazon orders flow through a storefront for fulfillment but Amazon also provides the actual marketplace settlement, decide which source owns the accounting entry for the sale and which data is operational only.

When troubleshooting, compare three numbers for the same period: source-platform gross sales, accounting revenue, and bank deposits. They should not necessarily be equal, but the differences should be explainable through fees, refunds, taxes, timing, reserves, and other known adjustments.

If you cannot explain the bridge, pause automated posting for the affected channel and repair the mapping before importing more periods.

Watch Clearing Accounts for Unresolved Balances

Clearing accounts are diagnostic tools. A marketplace clearing account should reflect timing differences between recognized activity and cash received, not become a permanent storage place for unexplained amounts.

Review the balance by payout or settlement. Old unmatched amounts usually point to one of a few causes: a missing deposit, a duplicated payout, fees posted to the wrong side of the entry, refunds recorded in a different period, reserves withheld by the marketplace, or a disconnected integration.

Do not “fix” the balance with a generic journal entry unless you understand the cause. That may make the balance sheet look cleaner while destroying the audit trail.

A useful monthly process is to age clearing-account items. Separate current timing differences from items older than one payout cycle. Investigate the oldest entries first. If your ecommerce platform holds reserves, keep those amounts identifiable rather than forcing the account to zero.

This is also a good measure of software quality. A tool that automates thousands of transactions but leaves persistent unreconciled clearing balances is not delivering reliable bookkeeping. Accuracy should be judged by explainability and reconciliation, not by the percentage of transactions imported automatically.

Measure Automation by Close Time, Exceptions, and Reporting Quality

The right bookkeeping software should improve more than data-entry speed. Track whether it shortens the time between month-end and trustworthy financial statements.

Three useful metrics are close time, unresolved reconciliation items, and manual adjustments. Close time measures how many business days it takes to finalize the books. Unresolved items show whether automation is producing exceptions faster than your team can clear them. Manual adjustments reveal how often people must repair mappings or fill data gaps.

You can also monitor the percentage of payouts that reconcile without intervention and the number of integration failures per month. If those measures improve while your accountant spends less time cleaning data, the system is working.

Then connect bookkeeping quality to business decisions. Ask whether you can see channel-level margin quickly enough to change ad spend, whether inventory reports support purchasing decisions, and whether cash-flow reporting reflects upcoming inventory commitments.

A cheaper tool that produces slow, uncertain numbers can cost more than a higher-priced system that gives management reliable information earlier. The value of automation appears when the books become both faster and more useful.

Know When to Upgrade Instead of Adding Another Workaround

Software stacks tend to grow one fix at a time. A seller adds an inventory app, then a marketplace connector, then a reporting tool, then spreadsheets to reconcile the gaps. Each addition may solve a local problem while increasing the number of systems that must agree.

Look for upgrade signals. Month-end still requires repeated CSV exports. Inventory quantities differ between systems. The finance team maintains manual mapping sheets. A new channel requires custom journal entries every month. Reporting across entities takes days. Nobody can clearly explain which system owns customer, order, inventory, or financial data.

When several signals appear together, evaluate architecture rather than another plugin. That may mean moving from Wave to QuickBooks or Xero, adding A2X or Link My Books to an existing ledger, adopting Webgility for deeper multichannel control, or considering a commerce-native or ERP platform such as Finaloop or NetSuite.

The right time to scale the finance stack is before the current process becomes a constraint on growth. Migrations are easier when the books are already reconciled, the chart of accounts is documented, and data ownership is clear.

Which Ecommerce Bookkeeping Software Should You Choose?

The best software for ecommerce bookkeeping depends on where complexity lives in your business. QuickBooks Online and Xero are strong accounting foundations for many sellers, while Wave can work for very small operations with straightforward needs. A2X and Link My Books are especially useful when marketplace payouts are the main reconciliation problem, and Synder fits businesses that value detailed payment and transaction syncing.

As volume and operational complexity rise, Webgility offers deeper multichannel automation, Finaloop provides a commerce-native finance approach, and NetSuite becomes relevant when accounting, inventory, orders, and broader ERP requirements need to work together.

Start with one decision: identify the point where your current books become unreliable or slow. Then choose the smallest system change that fixes that bottleneck without creating a new one. Test it on one channel, reconcile a real payout, document the mapping, and expand only after the numbers are explainable.

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