eBay Accounting Solutions - The Automated And Free

eBay Accounting Solutions - The Automated Solution
By Ethan L Pepper

Anybody who's sold on eBay for a while has learned that eBay doesn't make it easy to calculate how much money you are actually making or losing. With Final Value Fees, Listing Fees, PayPal Payment Fees, Shipping Costs and Returns it can get to be a bit much. Especially since eBay treats all these different fees and transactions in different ways. For example Final Value Fees and Listing Fees are added to your monthly eBay invoice. However, PayPal Payment Fees are take directly out of the payment itself. Returns are treated like a separate PayPal transaction altogether. Most people rely on Spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel or accounting software like Quicken or Quick Books to handle their accounting. The problem with this approach is that they don't allow you to easily import data from PayPal. Instead you must download files and then edit the results using a CSV file. Which is all very time consuming.

Then there is the simple idea of doing everything on an Excel Spreadsheet. Which I also tried, creating columns for all the different eBay fees, PayPal Fees and Shipping Cost. When you have hundreds of transactions a month though it can become mind numbing to go back through all your PayPal and eBay records and manually transcribe the data. Plus, a simple error can ruin everything. That's when I came across an interesting solution: an accounting application being offered through an eBay third party developer. The application promised to do some pretty amazing things, namely to import all PayPal Payments and eBay and PayPal Fees. Fees would automatically go under expenses and Payments under income allowing you to only enter shipping cost and cost of inventory. It also said that it could create tax information for quarterly or yearly tax payments. I was skeptical but at the time the application was free so I gave it a shot. I must say I was amazed at how much they delivered on what they promised. It become very simple to keep track of expenses and to see how well I was really doing as a seller.

Even though they have recently moved to subscription based service I still believe it is one of the best accounting solutions for eBay sellers. For small monthly fee it frees up much of the time spent on mundane accounting tasks to allow you to focus on what you need to: growing your eBay business.

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Taxes & Accounting For eBay Sellers

Taxes & Accounting For eBay Sellers
By Eruwan Gerry
Here are a few tips on doing your taxes and accounting as an eBay seller:
1. Do not forget, you need to collect sales tax from buyers who live in the same state where you reside (unless you live in one of the handful of states that does not collect sales tax at all, of course). When tax time comes, you need to report to your state's department of revenue, too. If you collect payments through My eBay and PayPal, sales tax is calculated automatically for you and added to the invoices that are sent to your customers.
2. When you set up a business for yourself, whether it is a sole proprietorship or a corporation, you need professional help. A qualified tax accountant can help you set up deductions, depreciate equipment, and create a schedule by which you need to pay your taxes. The hundred or two hundred dollars you might pay for an accountant are more than made up by your savings in taxes and penalties.
3. Be aware of when you need to pay your taxes. April 15 may not be the only tax dateline you need to observe. You need to pay an estimated tax on a quarterly basis when you are in business for yourself, and report business profits or losses.
4. Keep detailed books of your sales data. Do not depend on eBay to be your only source or records. Create a database or a table in a word processing document in which you record sale prices, purchase prices, and other expenses. Make sure you record sales tax, any payroll expenses, your gross profit margin, and descriptions of the items you sell.
5. One of the best kinds of financial records you can keep is a balance sheet. This tracks your assets and your liabilities, and your income and expenses. On one side, you have your equipment and inventory, your cash on hand, and your other assets. On the other side, you record expenses, bills to pay, sales tax, payroll and other liabilities.

Free eBay Accounting Basic Account Management Video

Here is a short video from the folks over outright.com it shows the basic of account management. It explains how to set up new accounts and link them to outright, how to switch between accounts, and how to remove an account from outright.

How To Use Outright.com Reporting Features Video

This video will show you how to use the reporting features on Outright.com. You can see your profit and loss. Expenses and income by category. Reports can be configured by the week, month, year or a custom date range.

Free eBay Accounting Categorizing An Uncategorized Expense

"Uncategorized" is what Outright online accounting uses when it can't figure out which category to use. This video will show you how to organize and categorize your expenses using the free online accounting from outright.com. It is easy and simple to create new categories for expenses and to assign these categories to new transactions.

1. Sign in to your Outright.com Account
2. Click on the Expenses Tab
3. Click on any uncategorized Expense
4. Click on the Category Menu
5. Choose a new Category
6. A check box will appear
7. If you want future transactions categorized in the same way click the box

That's it, now you can easily recategorize your expenses on Outright.com

How To Get Started With Outright Free Accounting Software Videos

Here is a nice detailed video that shows you how to sign up with Outright. It also walks you through the process of linking your accounts like eBay, PayPal and Banking. Then it shows you how to start entering income and expenses.

GoDaddy Takes Over Outright.com

The web hosting company GoDaddy.com has purchased Outright.com which provides free accounting services aimed primarily at small ecommerce sellers. It could be that GoDaddy would like to use the Outright brand as part of a strategy to get ecommerce sellers to sign up for web hosting with the company. Or they may want to change the model to a paid service in the future. However for now no new changes are expected to the outright brand or business model.

Online Holiday Shopping Infographic Brought To You By Outright

The folks at Outright (the home of free ebay accounting) have come up with this nice infographic showing the rising trend of shopping online. Time to ramp up the selling efforts and take advantage of the popularity of ecommerce selling.

Brought To You By Outright.com