Before Black Friday, the books need three things: October closed and reconciled on every channel, a landed cost on every SKU you plan to sell, and a stock count by warehouse you can trust on the evening of November 25. Inventory needs one more: days of cover at event velocity, per location, not per SKU in total. Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, 2026, Black Friday on November 27, and Cyber Monday on November 30. Work backward from those dates. The steps below are grouped by phase and by channel.
The inventory readiness work that should have happened in September is in the Q4 inventory readiness checklist. This one is the final three weeks.
Phase 1: Clean books before the volume arrives (by November 13)
- Close October on every channel. Reconcile each marketplace payout and each Shopify payout to the bank deposit. An unreconciled October becomes an unreconciled November, and November will carry far more transactions.
- Enter landed cost for every SKU you will sell. A blank COGS field means every margin report for that SKU is wrong, and Black Friday is the week you will rely on those reports most.
- Check which FIFO layer will be selling. If the last purchase order landed at a higher cost than the one before, the holiday units carry the higher cost.
- Create accounts for promotion costs. Deal fees, coupon fees, and affiliate commissions should each have a home in the chart of accounts, so they do not disappear into a catch-all "fees" line.
- Decide how ad spend will be accrued. Ad invoices for November clicks can arrive in December. Choose now whether you will accrue them to November.
Phase 2: Channel-specific checks (by November 20)
Amazon
- Load holiday fees into your margin model. Amazon's Holiday 2026 Seller Central announcement states peak fulfillment fees apply from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027, averaging $0.32 per unit over non-peak, with the 3.5 percent fuel and logistics surcharge on top. Deals in Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday carry $100 per promotion plus 1.5 percent of promotional sales, capped at $5,000. The per-unit effect is worked through in what a holiday promotion costs per unit.
- Confirm inbound shipments are received, not just shipped. The same announcement set October 28 as the arrival date for Amazon-optimized FBA shipments for the event. Anything still in transit counts as in-transit inventory on your books until it is received.
- Plan for January returns. Under Amazon's 2026 extended holiday returns policy, announced on Seller Central in October 2026, items purchased November 1 to December 31, 2026 can be returned until January 31, 2027. Set a return reserve or at least a note that December profit is provisional.
Shopify
- Know where markdowns appear in reports. Shopify's Finance reports help page states that discounts are not related to compare-at prices. If you mark products down by changing the price and showing a compare-at price, the markdown never appears in the Discounts column. Only discount codes and automatic discounts do. Track compare-at markdowns separately, or your discount rate will be understated.
- Test a payout reconciliation on a high-volume day. Use a recent busy day and confirm you can tie orders, refunds, and fees to the deposit. The method is in reconciling Shopify payouts to bank deposits.
Walmart Marketplace
- Note the return window. Walmart's Marketplace Learn release notes from August 31, 2026 say most items purchased from October 1 through December 31, 2026 can be returned through January 31, 2027.
- Watch WFS storage age. Walmart's WFS fees page lists October through December as the peak holiday period, when items stored longer than 30 days pay an extra $1.50 per cubic foot per month on top of the $0.75 base rate.
- Expect cash late. Walmart's payment processing guide says payout generally occurs every 14 days, and in most cases payments for orders arrive in the payout cycle after they ship or deliver, about 28 days later. Black Friday cash from Walmart is a late-December event.
TikTok Shop
- Track affiliate commissions as their own line. TikTok Shop's settlement report guide shows affiliate commission, affiliate partner commission, and affiliate shop ads commission as separate fee columns. Map each to an account.
- Understand the refund rule. Per the same guide, for orders created after April 15, 2025, commissions are typically paid to creators on the 15th day after delivery, later if your settlement period is longer. A refund before that point returns the commission to you. A refund after it does not.
eBay and Temu
- Check your return policy settings on eBay before the event, including whether you offer extended holiday returns, and record the window you chose.
- Confirm both channels are syncing to your books and that fees post to the same accounts you use for the other marketplaces, so channel margins compare like for like.
Phase 3: Stock cover at event velocity (by November 23)
- Calculate days of cover per location. Total units across the business hide a stockout in one place.
Illustrative numbers. Take a seller with 1,200 units of a top SKU: 700 at FBA, 500 in its own warehouse shared by Shopify, Walmart seller-fulfilled, and TikTok Shop. Normal velocity is 50 a day on Amazon and 40 a day across the other three channels. Last year, the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday ran at three times normal.
- FBA at event velocity: 150 a day. 700 divided by 150 is 4.7 days of cover.
- Own warehouse at event velocity: 120 a day. 500 divided by 120 is 4.2 days of cover.
Both locations run out on the fifth day, Cyber Monday, the day it matters most. FBA cannot be topped up in time. The warehouse is a choice: decide now which channels get the units left on the last day, or cap the TikTok and Walmart listings so higher-margin Shopify orders get the stock. Moving warehouse units into FBA would only shift the shortfall.
- Snapshot inventory by warehouse on the evening of November 25. This is the count every event-week sale gets measured against. ConnectBooks inventory tracks stock by warehouse, values it on FIFO, and treats transfers as in transit until received, so the snapshot shows where units are.
Phase 4: During the event (November 26 to December 1)
- Read margins two days behind. Amazon Ads help pages say sales metrics can take 12 to 48 hours to populate. Give every channel's numbers the same two-day lag before acting on them.
- Check refunds and cancellations daily on Walmart and TikTok Shop. Walmart's performance standards set a cancellation rate of 2 percent or below and an on-time delivery rate of 90 percent or above.
- Do not book event revenue from dashboard figures. Book it from settlements and payouts, which carry the fees.
Phase 5: The week after (December 1 to 7)
- Reconcile every channel's first post-event settlement or payout.
- Run per-SKU contribution for the event days against the two weeks before.
- Write down what each promotion was expected to do and what it did, while you still remember the plan.
All six marketplaces in ConnectBooks, Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop, and Temu, sync settlements to QuickBooks or Xero; the full list of connections is on the integrations page. The work in this checklist is what makes those numbers worth reading in December.
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