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Howdy:
We have been a sub S Corporation since 2001 and have also had a Sales Tax Exemption Certificate. I would like to bring to your attention “Resell Exemption”. Note the word “Resell”. We use our Certificate all the time for the purchase of inventory that we are going to resell. We use at all thrifts [that take them], estate sales, auctions [especially auctions] and any retail or wholesale distributor.BUT THEY ARE NOT NO TAX Cert. They are to be used only for merchandise that you are going to resell. Each state places sales tax on items but with a cert. they will with hold that tax and the burden of collecting the tax for the state then falls of you. There is where when you resell, you then have to charge the tax and then file monthly and send it to the state. No the BIG ISSUE that is political right now is that most of us sell online and across state borders and we currently don’t then have to charge that tax, re-coup it and send it in. BUT who knows what the future holds on that topic.
If you are buying supplies for your business, like shipping, cleaning, shelving, storage stuff, anything other than for resale then you can’t use your Tax Exempt certificate and you have to pay tax on the goods bought. So in other words, tax exempt only for COGs.
Here is another tid-bit that is a downer. Once you file with your state and get a number, you then have to file a monthly report to your Dept. of Revenue and declare all of your Sales for the month. Then you have to declare how much of it is “exempt” from state sales tax. Since we sell everything we buy online the only sales that have to have state sales tax paid on them [as of this time until congress changes things or [IF] is what we sell right here in the state of Georgia.
So be-prepared that as you move into the world of operating like a real business for all the extra administrative chores that come along with it. So think hard if you buy enough and would save enough to make the hassle of filing 12 monthly Dept. of Revenue reports, listing all your monthly sales, them subtracting all that are exempt, then shopwing and paying the state tax you collected on it to your state. So far this year we have only paid about $15 sales tax to GA but had to file 12 reports. And if you are late, there is a $30 penalty. All because we have a Resell Tax Exempt Certificate.
Just food for thought mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Yep, I do exactly the same thing only I use TeamViewer and my laptop. Take it into the garage storage area and as I find empty spots in my plastic bin system, I place the item in a bin that has enough space and then, enter that BIN Number into my spread sheet.
Team Viewer is a remote access program that allows one to connect to any other computer. Many tech reps use it to connect to clients computers to repair problems remotely. I just click on TeamViewer, enter my master P/W and then I have complete control of my whole office desktop PC. I can do my accounting in QuickBooks, open Excels Inventory spread sheet and enter the BIN number there and also I keep WonderLister open and can enter anything I wish like the custom sku number or start, end or edit listings if I am on the road.
I like it because I have a big screen on my laptop, not a cell phone screen and I have access to all of my MicroSoft Office programs, Publisher, Outlook e-mail client for 6 different e-mail servers all in one spot. I also use two monitors on my office rig and with TeamViewer I can switch back and forth between both of those two monitors and see everything I have running on either of those. Anything I can do on the office PC I can do on the laptop as I am tied into that computer. I can even set-up multiple people on an open session and then they can watch me do demonstrations on how I use various software to run my business or I can even take control of their cursor-mouse and trouble shoot their computer or solve their problems for them from here. I have created several spread sheets for my friends right on their rigs from my office for them, wrote all the formulas and then showed them how to enter data.
Remote Access is great. Also I think MicroSoft even has it’s own version of this as well as there are other program that compete with TeamViewr. It is FREE by the way. mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
It is a Windows based program. It is a very powerful relational database and runs on MicroSoft’s SQL [Structured Query Language .. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. SQL is used to communicate with a database. According to ANSI (American National Standards Institute), it is the standard language for relational database management systems.] This and other good information is on their web site’s FAQ page along with other Tabs and Screen Shots. This program can do so much it is just hard to cover everything in any type of synopsis.
At $25 per month I believe it is the most powerful, flexible, comprehensive program out there for the price. I have previewed programs that can do what WonderLister does but at a cost of over $100 and even more per month. I have learned how to program it by setting up my own rules to create my own inventory system like I used to have in Turbo Lister. And ways to handle all of my templates [about 75 different templates] in various category specific folders. I can sort filter, view any way want and it also handles financal matters also. but it is not an accounting program like our Quickbooks and Quicken programs. mike in Atlanta
Guess now that you hit the 5,000 level you would need the GOLD Plan. We use the Silver Plan at $25 per month which allows for up to 5,000 listings which gives me and many others plenty of room to grow. Currently with about 700 current listings we can have about 4,300 more.
mike in AtlJay: Found some of my old posts on WonderLister from back around May of 2016. So to make some of that data available to new members and also searchable in this new forum format I am posting so spliced information from a much longer thread and follow-up discussions on listing software.
I spent over 3 years using TurboLister and all that while was always looking for something better. tried several through the years and WL just blows all of them away. It took years to find. These are the same management team that built BlackThorn for Ebay. They were on Ebay’s Payroll for years. Then Ebay left TurboLister long ago, then several years ago, stopped there financial interest in BlackThorn [which Ebay offered prior to SMP] and abandoned the Blackthorn team. I found them by chance about a year and a half ago and they had formed this new company and built WonderLister. It is TurboLister and Blacktorn all rolled into one then shot up with Steroids.
There are just so many good things that WonderLister does that I would do it an injustice to try to remember them all and list here, but here is a bullet list.
Why Wonder Lister?
Save money by preparing and saving your listings in advance, then, submit to eBay during free listing promotions
Customizable data export is suitable for import into any eCommerce website around the world such as Amazon, Etsy, etc.
Twitter Integration boosts your sales as your listings receive extra exposure through social networking websites
Stores all your data on your local network for as long as you want
World class technical support – at absolutely no cost to you!
Subscriptions start at just $10 per month!
Cassini friendly, which results in greater visibility of your listings in eBay searches
Covers every aspect of your online business – from creating listings to managing orders to leaving feedback
Ultra fast performance – 300,000 listings show up in the grid in under 10 seconds! Competitive products take as much as 28 minutes on the same hardware.
Works on most Windows platforms – Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 / 2012, Windows 10,
Features you don’t get on eBay
Social media marketing and submission to Twitter automatically from WonderLister
Handle Multiple stores [accounts] and automatically synch between them.
State by state tax information for tax time
Permanent emaill, home address and phone numbers of every one of your customers
Reach additional buyers using social networks. Wonder Lister is fully integrated with Twitter, so, you can tweet your eBay listing on your twitter account(s).
Customizable views
Create listing, listing templates and sales views to display focussed information. For example, an active listing view, an ended listing view, an ended – unsold listings view, etc.
Bulk Duplicate
Create a master listing and bulk duplicate, edit each duplicated listing in Simple Editor and submit all at once to eBay!
Powerful Search Capability
While eBay allows you to search by a few pre-defined fields, Wonder Lister allows you to choose one and more fields to search.
Export your data to Amazon/Etsy
Export your templates and listings as a flat file. All columns as well as their names are fully customizable. Thus, you can create your export data files such that they can be directly imported in Amazon, Etsy, and other merchant sites.
Custom fields
Allows you to define your own fields for Listings and Sales. The values entered in such fields can also be used in creating eBay’s description!
Customizable Invoice Template
Customize how you want your invoice to look, and use custom fields in the template, if you’d like.
Multiple eBay accounts
Add as many eBay User IDs to Wonder Lister as you wish. Wonder Lister’s is capable of showing all your listings and sales for all user IDs together or by a specific User ID.
Data retention
Keep your data on your computer for as long as you want! One year, two years, however long, it’s your call.
Excel style editing
Edit your listing inside the grid they are displayed in, similar to an Excel spreadsheet.
User defined folders
Create your own folders and sub folders at any level. Define your own criteria for which listings (or sales) should automatically be displayed when you click on the folder.
Bulk Editing
I can create as many templates for as many different categories as I want and save for as long as I want
I can create as many drafts as I want and again they will save for as long as you want.
You can create different named folders to store your templates and drafts in like Women’s Shoees, Men’s Jewelry, clocks, plates, you just have no limits with this database with regards to drafts and templates and their storage.
Customize different views so you can see your data in many different ways. Save and name those views so at the click of a button you can view your sales, inventory, fees, COGS, Active, sold listings any way you want and with as many various columns as you want..So, WonderLister can do a ton of stuff and if you want things a little different, shoot an email to tech support and they will change or add your suggestions very quickly. I have had them make changes to their program to accomodate us Ebay Unique, One of Kind Sellers and they have done it in a quick time frame. Sort of like they customized the program to fit my needs.
Here is their web site. You can also call these guys, they list a contact phone number which is darn near impossible on other venues. http://www.wonderlister.com/
Their phone number: (1) 408-471-6886So now hopefully all this data will be searchable and available to members who are interested in using more powerful listings tools.
Hope this provides some alternatives to those members interested in such.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Jay, I have posted numerous times to this type of topic over the last year. Please go to the WonderLister.com web site and check them out. If you have any questions shoot an email to them and you will get an answers within a very short time. I did a post [will see if I bookmarked it] earler this year or end of last year which outlined everything I do with WonderLister. Tons of reports, financials, listings, everything Ebay allows and more. My wife works in the Template area I created for her downstairs while I work on other listings and submissions to ebay and photos upstairs. On the Wonderlister.com web site there is a chart that shows what all it can do. But I invite you to check it out. Plus they have a Trial period, everything in your stores will import into the program. Give it a look see. mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
We are in the process of opening up an Etsy Store and because of that we have just started to shoot all of our items with “props”. We have a 20% neutral gray back drop with a thin wire zip line that we can pull various colored cloths across to give a textured and varied colored combination in the background. We combine that with items “props” such as floral bunches, wood, fruit, wine bottles and such. We are going to use these curated shots for both Ebay and Etsy. It only takes a few seconds to pull a prop or two out of the prop box under our photography table and we are good to go. We think these look much better than the stark white floating look.
As a disclaimer we have a fine print line in the description area of our Ebay listings that states all extraneous items other than the object described in the title are props and are photography purposes only and are not included with the purchase. mike in Atlanta
Hey MP from TN. I used to live in Collierville, TN and worked in Memphis for a few years, long ago.
To answer your question [on a computer-unsure how this will work on a cell phone]. But from your dash board their is a major area called, “Listings”. In this area it has a line that says “Active Listings” and shows the numbers of “Active Listings” you have in your store. Click on this and it brings up a “grid structure view”, [much like a spread sheet view] of all of your listings. There should be a column that says “start date”. If not this whole area can be customized by clicking the “Customized” word up toward the right side off to the right of the Large Font saying “Manage Active Listings”. Here you can select to add the column “Start Date”, but you only have to do this IF you don’t already have the column “Start Date” showing. Now, notice there is a small arrow beside the column name, “Start Date”. Click on this button and it will sort your complete listings [everything you have active] by date. Click it once to sort from oldest to newest, click it again, and it reverses the order and shows you the newest to oldest. Then from there you can click any item you wish to take any action on, either as a single item or in sme sort of “bulk action” if you wish.
That should do it for you. mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
You answered your last question above the other day. You said, Free Shipping is a psychological thing, a perception of value of getting something for nothing, even if it is not for nothing. Everybody knows it is built in, but the shipping is not rubbed in their face as an extra “add on”.
What got me thinking about this whole thing the other day when I posted was that my brother in law said what Terri said above. He said he will sort every search for Free Shipping and makes his purchases from there. I said what about unique, one of kind items, he said he guesses he just would not see my items to decorate his home, he would select from what “was” presented, those being all with Free Shipping. He said he still wins and I would be the looser not him as a buyer, again even him admitting knowing the shipping is built in.
Lastly he brought up the point that when he does a search for some things he gets way too many results, thousands he said. Way to many to look through so he filters-sorts. He said that it is the one thing he can have “control” over in this crazy “I am going to sell stuff to customers online world. He can control not being presented with what feels is just an add on and he also doesn’t trust that it is at cost and in most cases inflated. He is correct, I always mark up my shipping. But I don’t care what he thinks, shipping is a profit center for almost every company I have been with and is so with my store.
Then he finished by saying once he gets his Free shipping lists he will many times also filter on the left by putting a cap on what he wants to spend. Again feeling like he has some control by eliminating those that price high and think they are better than others or have a fancier looking design to their stores.
So that is what got me to thinking and post the original thoughts about Free Shipping above. mike at MDC Galleries in tlanta
I just “Subscribed” and as you say .. “we’ll just see what happens”! I imagine it will be similiar to using RSS Feeds on the old blog. I just hit subscribe to the RSS Feeds each week on the two viedoes that were posted and every “post” then was forwarded to my Outlook. Don’t know how we can really cross reference it except by opening every post on the forum and see if it was also sent to my Outlook. But so far 2 posts have been sent to my Outlook in the past 3 or 4 minutes. Also will see if my own posts like this one is sent over? .. mike in Atlanta
Good Morning Linda:
See if this helps… In the upper right corner of your SL account. The main Page, you will see your Name. Think it says, “Howdy, then your name”. Cursor over your name and you get a drop doen list. High light “Edit my Profile”. Then scroll scroll down [a good distance] and you will see the area for “Profile Picture”, then a small print line under that saying to add or change your picture click this link to go to “Gravatar”. Click that and you open in a new window at the WordPress site. At this point if you don’t already have an account you may wish to read the info. tabs. If not and you have an account, then click sign in.Then I believe [going fro memory] there is an edit picture on the left side bar or you go straight to it, in any case this will put you where it says, add picture. Find one photo on your computer and add it here.
I think this will get it done for you or at least get you real close.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Hey Linda.. just got around to a reply, was busy yesterday adding a new shelving unit up in my over the garage office.
To highlight and lay some ground work for what was going through my head when I brought this topic up again was this. I buy something for $.50 or a $1.00. Then I start working on my price that I will list at. I don’t buy or list anything that I won’t be making at least 10 times my money on or more. So I am now at $10.00, then I pile on top of this enough room so that I can run Sales on my items, sometimes at 30%-35% off, or to be able to take a low-ball offer and still make our 10 times the money, so I build that onto my price, so now I am up to $18, then I know with my 30%-40% TRS discount I can ship a 3 or 4 lb. object anywhere in the USA Priority and in a box for $7, $8 or $9.00 +/- so I put $10 dollars onto my $18 and I arrive at $26.00. Now that has a ton of “fluff” built in already.
But now the risk factor, you state what if I get a return. First let me tell you about my store stats. Been doing this since 2002 [14 years]. We have only had 3 items broken, 2 returns and Zero negative or neutral feed backs in 14 years. I think the chance of a return is pretty low. But still as you say “what if”. Well even so, look at how much we mark up our inventory. Sky high and it sells. Buy for a dollar and sell for $28. Don’t you think I could absorb a $16 dollar return? And especially if only a couple per year.
Now for more ground work. At our now closed 6 booths we averaged 1 damaged-broken item per months for over 3 years. We found almost 50 items broken beyond repair to resell. That was over $1,000 is lost sales opportunities. Then throw in “Theft” on top of that. retail stores call this shrinkage. In their chart of accounts they even have a line item for it in their annual budgets. Employee thefts, customer theft and breakage. Now to breakage, have you ever broken something yourself? We sure have. I dropped a box last year, the bottom fell out, it was all dinner plates to a full set of China!!! Guess what, it was all old, vintage Limoges!!! Now we not only lost those plates but it also killed off selling the whole complete set. Now that is factored into the overall annual year end profit and lost. Just as any returns or broken items would be in shipment, theft, OR RETURNS. It is a business write off and it comes under our COA [Chart of Accounts as “Errors and Omissions”].
Now to top it all off Ebay “claims” a 20% or higher Sell Rate for those that offer 1 day shipping which we do, are TRS [which we are] and offer Free Shipping [which we don’t]. One would think that a 20% increase in annual Sales of say [let’s pick a number, say $20,000 a year] which would be approx. a $4,000 increase in Sales. One would think the $4,000 +/- increase [or even 10% at $2,000] would more than offset any shiiping fees we would have to pay for returns. especially at such a low rate of returns as ours. If we increased Sales by 10% [$2,000] do you know how many Return Shipping fees we would have to “eat” to equal that? At eve a high rate of $20 per return shipping fee we would have to have a return of 100 items, that’s 2 per week. Just no way in heck that would ever happen.
I think, now just my opinion, but store owners need to look at their “overall” business on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis with regards to total profit and loss. Not item by item or even this by the week approach. That is like buying stocks in the stock market then staring at the Stock Ticker Tape each day. But a discussion on this topic will divert us into using proper accoutning software not Go Daddy Bookkeeping which only a journal system of bookkeping and not a real General Ledger Accounting Software. We’ll save that for another time and get input form our accoutant memebers.
So with a mark-up of 28 times our money and the possibility of increased sales and the fact that all customers do pay us for the shipping, it is not really “Free” it is already built in, then I ask… “Where is this Totally unacceptable”? I am open to being set straight. Now also remember, as of today, we do not offer Free Shipping on any of our approx. 700 items except for a dozen small parts we get mfg. for us. Just thinking out loud “IF we should maybe start doing it”. At 28 times times the money and many times even more, when does enough profit become enough prfit.
As to the sellers that say I must remain “competitive”. We have many items we sell that there are not any others like them on Ebay, or very few. That is Jay & Ryannes point, price high and wait to the competition disappears, if there is any others. If I see other items that have sold for $37, I then want to get $37, I will price my identical item at about $60 to allow for a 40% off sale or a low offer or to include FREE SHIPPING.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta.
Hey Linda:
Yes we went through this with a long thread sometime last year. Myself and a few others had a long discussion on the Ebay Engineer, his video and that he was part of the team that designed [built] the Cassini search engine. For the group here it was evident of the split into two camp. Those that did believe the engineer, that they built Cassini to start to by pasws on “Stale” listings he called them and those that remained active, ever changing and being refreshed. I won’t rehash all that was said at this point.But the division here at SL was those that thought it just wasn’t so and those that believed the guy, those that interpreted his statements in different ways and those that said it was just to laborous to be ending and relisting their listed items. Several of us here, including myself, use other [3rd party] listing software instead of Ebay or the now defunct TurboLister [I told everyone that TL was horrible as compared to other 3rd party programs anyway that do the same thing and much better]. Anyway, with the third party software one first sorts by ending today, then in a grid view just like Excel, you click and drag down to highlight all those listings ending today and use one click and end. Those then show up in a seprate window in a grid view and you can edit anything you want line by line, [prices, title, specifics] or just leave them as is. Then click relist and my program then relists them in seconds. That way they start over, get a new Ebay ID number, Cassini Search Engine thinks they are brand new, gives them a “Newly Listed” bump and also a newly listed symbol on the listing and reposts. Remember some people think they have already looked at all the old listings in a certain category and they have their searches now set-up just for only the new listings popping up. This way they get to see all of your newly listed items as “brand new listings”.
Yes the views and watchers get reset, but according to the engineer that is a good thing. Old listings with many viewers and not sold is not desirable and that is what Cassini is looking for so it can by-pass giving any extra bump or extra showing of those items in Best Search views.
Ryanne mentioned that you can only do 250 listings at a time in Ebay. Well yep that is why I use a 3rd party application. I don’t have this many listings, but you can do thousands at a time if you want to. I know there are some sports stores that have 80, 90,000 or more items listed in their stores. If they want to end and then re-list their inventory using Ebay would just not be possible. But with a 3rd party app, one can list or re-list as many as you want in one shot.
So to end this… there are several members here, including myself, that each morning take a quick look to see which listings are ending today, highlight those in seconds that are over 90, 100 or 120 days old, click end listings, then re-list within a minute or two, then go on about our business.
Jay says, prove that this works and improves sales. I say prove that it doesn’t. The Ebay Engineer-Employee is the one that used the phrases, “Cassini is designed to by pass old non-selling listing, he coined the phrase that they could recognize “stale listings”, he is the one that said he would advise ending old listings and relisting them to get a bump. So, I now do so because I trust that he knows, he helped build the darn thing.
So now on the ending the few listings that I have showing that they are ready for auto-renewal that are over 90 days old, ending them manually myself and re-listing them all within less than a minute.
mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaHey Liz.. Think you maybe skipped dropping in your Total Sales number? Thought I would let you know it is blank. Jay allows for a certain amount of time for us to edit our posts but after a few hours I think that ability is closed. mike at MDC Galleries in atl.
Yeah.. a real good example is in the “Who are You” forum. I get a notification email that a new member has signed up. But then after they introduce themselves, I notice they also start small comments, then you or Ryanne reply and a small dialogue follows. If I don’t go directly to the Who Are You Forum the moment I see a new member sign up then I don’t know about the small dialogue that starts to take place. I viewed a few of these a few minutes ago and found that after introducing them selves, they are posting comments but not choosing to go to one of the Major Forums, but posting under their own new sign up area under Who Are You.
An example of what I just discovered under one of the new Who Are You members, they did a post and it talked about their places of sourcing. Seems like that post would have served the community as a whole to be posted under the Inventory Sources Forum. So if I had not have clicked on his Introduction I would not have discovered that he said that “St. Vincent DePaul was trying out a weigh and pay by the pound business model just like Goodwill”. He went on to say that he went there and found very little traffic [competition] and he had almost a half an hour before any one else came in to start scavenging the bins.
That is great news and info. which I am going to call St. Vincent de Paul and see if they have any in the Atlanta area, but it is buried in the Forum of “Who Are You” under his Intro and Name. So I am currently going through every members sign up to the Who Are You Forum and Subscribing to every name listed there. But as you said this is just how it is going to work.
I remember Linda Shields asking a few weeks back how she can NOT GET all the posts and notifications and your directions to unsubscribe. Would be neat if there was also a “Subscribe to Everything Under the Sun” button. Then I just delete what I don’t want within Outlook and save in my SL folders what I want by topic. That’s what I used to do from the old blog. I have over 2,700 “saves” within Outlook about every topic I have found on SL since the day you started and I can search it all. I will never be one to ever ask again, how to ship a hat!!! LOL 🙂 mc in atl.
