Ebay keeping accounts, spreadsheets etc

magic57

Help!
I registered as a business seller a few months ago. I'm trying to get my head round excel spreadsheets to make sure I keep careful accounts. I think I'm making things far too complicated. What columns do I need and should I note the ebay fee and paypal fee for each item? Or do I just do the totals at the end of the month?

I'm getting in a bit of a tangle so any advice would be appreciated!

kevinyork

No hard and set rule as long as it captures all your income and expenditure. If all your payments are via Paypal you could use their monthly reports which can be imported into spreadsheet format. They contain all your income, refunds and Paypal fees. Ebay then produce a statement of your monthly ebay fees which you can use.

chemical.galaxy

I have a spreadsheet which I update daily and tot up weekly just to keep track of how I am doing. Columns are:
Date sold, BUYER, Item, Price paid, Price sold, Ebay FVF, paypal fee Post Office fee, Profit/loss


And a monthly account which I use the Paypal report, Ebay report, outgoings for the month, Post office fees and stock in hand.

Would love to know how others do it!

I was going to ask about stock in hand for HMRC: if I have £6000 of stock on Ebay - retail value, not what I paid - then what do I need to declare in April?

magic57

Thanks for you help.

kevinyork most of my purchases are via Paypal but not all. I use a bank card to pay for the postage most of the time and sometimes use the card online. I had a look at the paypal reports today and they seem very helpful.
My columns are much the same as yours chemical.galaxy except I haven't got the buyers name down.
It's certainly interesting to know how others manage their accounts and filing etc. Organisation is not my strong point!

Thank you.

marie-20

chemical.galaxy wrote: »

I have a spreadsheet which I update daily and tot up weekly just to keep track of how I am doing. Columns are:
Date sold, BUYER, Item, Price paid, Price sold, Ebay FVF, paypal fee Post Office fee, Profit/loss


And a monthly account which I use the Paypal report, Ebay report, outgoings for the month, Post office fees and stock in hand.

Would love to know how others do it!

I was going to ask about stock in hand for HMRC: if I have £6000 of stock on Ebay - retail value, not what I paid - then what do I need to declare in April?

I discused the stock matter with my accountant and he advised that you either declare it as the purchase price or the retail price at the time - which ever is lowest but generally only one or the other and not both (retail value would be useful if you had a lot of seasonal stock left I guess) as your stock in hand is counted as an 'Income' so you will pay 20% (or 29% depending on your personal circumstances with regards to NI contributions) in tax on it so at £6K you'd pay £1,200 but at cost of say £4K you'd only be liable for £800 - obviously the above figures depend on whether you are making a profit or loss overall amd a few other factors. Hope that all makes sense!

I used to do my account pretty much like all of you however I no longer do due to the time it takes - I now print off a monthly Paypal report, eBay invoice, Amazon sales report and my RM invoice and enter either weekly or monthly totals. That said I do keep a daily running total of my RM spend as it is unmanageable for me otherwise as I like to know EXACTLY how much money I've got left and even with our PPI account we are spending around £120 a day and that's with average weights of under 100g on large letters @ 54p for 1st class! Without our PPI account we would be spending at least double a day as about 1/2 of our things weigh between 120 - 160g taking them into the next bracket and few a day weigh over 500g but then the rest only weigh between 10 and 75g giving us an average weight of under 100g

Stock in hand for me personally is a nightmare and I will be doing a stock take in the next couple of weeks as I have no idea of the value at the mo TBH which is terrible but we turn over such a high amount of stock that it's hard to keep on top of but I'm sure we'll get there with it all!

magic57

Thanks for the advice everyone. I really appreciate it. :A

Obviously_the_best

I had the long and torturous task of doing a stock take last week, luckily I keep my warehouse stupidly well organised, turns out I have in excess of 200k in my warehouse (retail value), think, if I could shift all of that in a day , I'd be rich!!!

chemical.galaxy

marie-20 wrote: »

I discused the stock matter with my accountant and he advised that you either declare it as the purchase price or the retail price at the time - which ever is lowest but generally only one or the other and not both (retail value would be useful if you had a lot of seasonal stock left I guess) as your stock in hand is counted as an 'Income' so you will pay 20% (or 29% depending on your personal circumstances with regards to NI contributions) in tax on it so at £6K you'd pay £1,200 but at cost of say £4K you'd only be liable for £800 - obviously the above figures depend on whether you are making a profit or loss overall amd a few other factors. Hope that all makes sense!

I used to do my account pretty much like all of you however I no longer do due to the time it takes - I now print off a monthly Paypal report, eBay invoice, Amazon sales report and my RM invoice and enter either weekly or monthly totals. That said I do keep a daily running total of my RM spend as it is unmanageable for me otherwise as I like to know EXACTLY how much money I've got left and even with our PPI account we are spending around £120 a day and that's with average weights of under 100g on large letters @ 54p for 1st class! Without our PPI account we would be spending at least double a day as about 1/2 of our things weigh between 120 - 160g taking them into the next bracket and few a day weigh over 500g but then the rest only weigh between 10 and 75g giving us an average weight of under 100g

Stock in hand for me personally is a nightmare and I will be doing a stock take in the next couple of weeks as I have no idea of the value at the mo TBH which is terrible but we turn over such a high amount of stock that it's hard to keep on top of but I'm sure we'll get there with it all!

Thanks - stock in hand is a bit of a pain for me as well as I have over 300 different items listed and they change all the time