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Has anybody figured out how to download the actual shipping cost from eBay? I see that once again if you view order details for an individual record you can see the actual shipping cost, but if you download ebay data the actual shipping cost is not one of the fields downloaded.
I’ve struggled with this – with my very small store – in that I don’t want to have to click on every item to determine actual shipping costs (to get overall real profit). I also don’t really want to manually do it while I’m printing labels, but maybe that’s the way to go. It’s just a few dollars every transaction, but that does add up – and so I’d like to figure out how to track it for real.
Thanks.
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It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with the details of this, but IIRC, the actual cost of shipping isn’t offered up by eBay anywhere except the orders page. There’s no way to programmatically access the data either via eBay’s API.
I used to track the cost by hand. Now I let GoDaddy handle it and try not to think about how my inventory system is technically incorrect on my gross/net numbers each week. COGS is the only tax-related information I get from it, so that’s fine.
If I had to engineer a solution: Currently the data is offered up by PayPal. You would need to cross-reference order IDs. This would only work for USPS shipments. For FedEx and invoice-based shipping methods you’d have to do something else, like parsing the eBay invoice each month.
This is one of my hopes with managed payments and the new API options that are offered: https://developer.ebay.com/managed-payments#finances
I haven’t looked into it much yet. I’ll be forced into MP in July and will likely retool my inventory system to bring in the actual cost of shipping is included in the API.
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It depends how you purchase your shipping.
eBay can show the cost the customer paid for the item plus shipping. You need to subtract out of that what you actually paid. I don’t track per item as it would get too difficult to determine. Rather I use Paypal to sum up the shipping paid per month, and then my credit card statement for any shipping paid at the PO. I keep a spreadsheet showing those total per month and subtract that as part of expenses for my business. There are software solutions that can automate this somewhat better that I may use going forward.
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I use SixBit and it records all this without issue. Recently I began to pull these details from SixBit to my self-built spreadsheet that tracks my orders for accounting purposes. The spreadsheet has columns for Mdse Total, S/H Charged, Sales Tax, Seller Gross, Actual Ship Cost, Tracking Number, etc. Previously I entered the actual cost manually into my spreadsheet.
So all of the data is in Sixbit ; it seems they are getting all from the eBay API.
I prefer my own external spreadsheet for accounting purposes.
I buy most of my labels on eBay and they are paid thru Paypal. I’m scheduled for eBay managed payments mid-July.
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I finally have an answer to this.
SixBit uses “GetSellingManagerSaleRecord” as documented here: https://developer.ebay.com/devzone/xml/docs/reference/ebay/GetSellingManagerSaleRecord.html
This is only available to premium store (& higher) owners. Looks like I would need to pay $15.99/month for access to it.
eBay: “You want access to basic data about your transactions? That’s gonna cost ya, buddy.”
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