posted on November 20, 2001 05:29:37 PM new
All right I give up. I need advice from someone smarter than me. I have looked at ebay software and though it may be great I don’t need listing help. I need a better post sale accounting method. I hand send winner e-mails and manually log replies. I post PFB manually, none of which is a real big deal but then comes the bookkeeping. I use excel to account for no sale lots, and lots that sold. Of lots that sold I log how much, ebay costs, credit card costs, Imaging costs and Net sale. I have to hunt for all that data at several locations and put data in by hand. Once I know my net sales minus my no sale costs only then do I know if I am working for eBay or myself. I have tried percentages, ebay 10%, Imaging 1.3/4%, CC 3.3% etc. It don’t seem to work
There has got to be a better way of sales accounting. If you have cracked this nut would you please point this poor old seller in the right direction?
posted on November 20, 2001 06:34:23 PM new
I use Seller Assistant (most of my auctions are ebay) and it speeds up post auction management considerably
As far as accounting goes, I custom designed something in a database program called Filemaker pro. By simple search/sorting, I can determine at any time how much I am paying paypal, ebay, my merchant account, yahoo, etc. It also provides a nice packing slip and invoice.
I'm not an excel expert, but I know there are ways to make it act like a database. If you have the microsoft office package, you can also use Access and have it do similar things. The learning curve is a little steep, but it saves a lot of work in the long run.
posted on November 20, 2001 09:14:27 PM new
one question- do any of you account for salary,benefits,office rent,insurance,depreciation of pc,scanner,camera and other operating expenses such as phones,internet service provider,travel??
do you prepare profit and loss statement??
what do you do with the profit or rather retained earnings??
posted on November 20, 2001 09:29:59 PM new
I recommend AuctionTrakker. Get the Seller's Edition with Inventory and Posting. It really does EVERYTHING that I want to do. As long as you keep an accurate inventory, they have a Sales Reporter that can tell calculate itemized profit for you. Another user built a report that also figured out Paypal and eBay fees using a basic formula. Since the backend database is Access 97, you could get into the data and play with it as you wish.
I know people that import the data into QuickBooks for business tax accouting.
posted on November 22, 2001 09:23:45 AM new
Hello All;
Thank you all for your input. Yes I do year-end profit and loss statements and include all items listed and then some. The question in my mind at least, was a better way to do after sale accounting. I looked at Tracker and shooting star. Tracker would be fine if I was a newbe but again I only have problems with post sales accounting and I don’t want to start over with a huge amount to learn (some the hard way). Shooting star looks attractive. I have an e-mail out to them, which I hope they will answer tomorrow. I guess I will just continue on as is, the old hard manual way. With fewer buyers, increasing volume seems the answer, which leads to larger and larger post sale accounting problems. It seems that you all are not doing much better than I. Again thank you for looking at this thread. Dave
