20/11/09 eBay Powersellers Secrets Newsletter

“In this week’s newsletter Amanda  stumbles upon a fantastic application that she wishes she had discovered sooner.”

Hello!

When I started my eBay career a few years ago, I really didn’t have much of a clue about accounting and how I should best keep track of all my eBay sales, stock costs and all the other accounts information that I knew was required but always gave me the terrors when I started thinking about it! 

Because of this, I ended up keeping a somewhat crude version of my incomings and outgoings, all hand-written in a small blue book that became more and more dog-eared by the day until as my sales grew, it became clear to me that this wasn’t quite the right way to be keeping my accounts in order and I really should do something drastic.

The thing is, detailed accounts didn’t really interest me – what I was interested in was money in the bank – and I am ashamed to admit that as I concentrated on researching products and sourcing hot items and getting them listed on eBay as quickly as possible, the figures became somewhat neglected.

So, in a moment of inspiration, I did it the lazy way and I enlisted an accountant to untangle my jumbled mess of numbers, screwed up bits of paper and receipts and have happily let him deal with it all ever since! The easy way out I know, and although this meant that my accounts were sorted, I never really knew at the start exactly how much money I was making or not. Not the best way to go about running a business I know!

I was reminded of those first mad few months a couple of weeks ago when a reader emailed me asking if I would suggest a good, simple accounts package that they could use purely for keeping track of their eBay sales. And it got me thinking that this is an area that is often overlooked.

It’s all very well me telling you how to research and source products, how to list and how to maximise your eBay sales, but it’s also important for you to understand your profit and loss figures and be able to get a clear picture of this at any time quickly and easily without involving dog-eared note-books and tiny scraps of paper.

So, a few weeks ago, after I had received the email, I did a bit of research and discovered an accounting software application which is verified by eBay and specifically suits eBay sellers like you and me and also which at a glance looked good. You’ll notice I say ‘looked’ rather than ‘looks’ here. Well that’s because unfortunately, when I delved a little further I realised that it was not compatible with eBay.co.uk only eBay.com, which was rather disappointing.

I got side-tracked then (no doubt with listing products as quickly as possible rather than worrying further about accounting matters) and put it on the back-burner.

But all is not lost, because I revisited that same site earlier this week and was pleased to find that it has recently been expanded to all eBay users – yes that includes you and me here in the UK and you can sign up directly via their website. Great news for you.

So, not wanting to recommend something to you that’s a load of old rubbish, I signed up myself to give it a go and to see exactly what it can do for you and your eBay business, and I have to say I found it absolutely brilliant. It was something of a revelation to me to be honest – I couldn’t tear myself away from it - and it’s so simple to use. I’ve been messing about with it all week (when I should have been getting on with other things like completing my new eBay advanced home study course – more on that coming soon!) and I have to say that in my opinion it will definitely make your life much simpler if you don’t already have any accounts software in place.

Now obviously as I’ve said, that’s just my opinion, so having trialled it myself, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about this application now so that you can decide for yourself whether it could help you keep your accounts in order. I do need to point out though that you will need to sign up to eBay Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro to use this application if you are not already subscribed.

You need to go to www.outright.com which is an original eBay verified Selling Manager Application which can help you simplify and streamline your everyday business tasks. Best of all its totally free!

What you get is a simple, free, online book-keeping package, perfect for small home businesses such as eBay sellers like you and me. It will help you track your sales and expenses and see how your eBay business is doing. You can write off your eBay business expenses, track the money you spend on stock and keep your eBay sales history for as long as you like and I so wish that I knew about this when I started selling on eBay because quite simply it would have saved me a lot of time and messing about.

You certainly won’t need to know anything about accounting (as I’ve said, I don’t!) to use Outright and there’s no technical jargon or confusing charts. You simply automatically import your sales and expenses information from eBay and PayPal and it’s really easy to add other business expenses and information in manually if you need to. Then just a few clicks and you can navigate through your accounts and view what you need to.

Now, as I’ve said, this application has only recently expanded to include eBay UK so, once you have registered and then logged in, just go to the ‘Settings’ tab and make sure you change the default country from US to UK. This will allow you to do your accounting in sterling. As this is new to the    UK, you can’t yet calculate your tax but I am assured that this feature will be available in the very near future.

What’s really important though is that Outright works with your UK eBay and PayPal accounts with no report limits and will also identify duplications between eBay and PayPal data and so only records your transactions once.

I tested this by downloading my eBay sales and my PayPal sales as two different accounts and sure enough there were no duplications. This is especially useful if you have a website and use PayPal as your website payment processor as you can track non-eBay sales this way and so keep all your accounts in one place.

To be honest, I found that you can pretty much put your book-keeping and accounts onto auto-pilot with this application as once you have given permission to Outright to access your eBay and PayPal accounts your figures are updated daily as if by magic!

• I automatically imported my eBay sales and expenses, including all listing, final value and PayPal fees.  
• I easily input my business deductions including the purchase costs of my stock.  
• I viewed instant reports that let me see how much money I am making, who my best customers are and where I am spending the most money through my business.  
• I manually input my expenses and invoices by typing them in directly in either the Income or Expenses sections.  

And I did all this within 10 minutes of registering for free!

I also tested the ‘Reports’ function and it’s very straight forward giving you at a glance profit and loss figures, income by customer which shows who gives you the most business and also the costs by vendor which shows you exactly where your money goes. These reports are always available online and you can download them so that you have your own records backed up on your computer.

I also discovered that I can set my account up to give full access to my accountant so that he always has up-to-date information available. What this means is that apart from adding any manual entries such as for cheque, postal order or bank transfer payments you’ll never have to struggle with your accounts again. Result!

So, if you would like to take a look at this free, eBay verified application go to www.outright.com and take the tour.

As always I wish you the best of success,

Amanda

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I produce this newsletter on the understanding that these are my own personal opinions and experiences, which are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. I cannot be held responsible for any error in details, accuracy or judgment whatsoever. 

© Amanda O’Brien 2009 

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