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Annethrifts:
Yes FedEx is the way to go with using the Home Delivery option.
Go to the Ebay section for shipping just like you normally do. In the field that is showing the USPS name there should be a down arrow. Click on that and a two line drop down choice appears. The USPS top line and then FedEx the second line. Click on FedEx and a different set of data fields will replace-appear instead of the usual USPS. Now select your type of service using that fields drop down selection and select Home delivery, then select using your own packaging, then input the dimensions, weight, insurance if over the free min. amount and click calculate and you should see the shipping costs with your Ebay discount.
Print that label, apply and take to your local full service FedEx location [not a drop box] and Walgreens is now accepting drop offs also but call and make sure #1 if they do at your closest one, and #2 their pick-up time. You could miss it. Some pick up fairly early. Ours is around 10:00 AM. But we have a full service only a couple of miles down the road.
Good luck
Mike at MDCGFA
Here is an update from the Ebay Main Street Government Relations on the Internet Sales Tax Developments.
Thought I would publish for those who did not sign up for the updates or sign Ebay’s petition.Important Internet Sales Tax Developments
Hi Michael,
As an eBay Main Street Member, you are probably well aware of the June US Supreme Court ruling on Internet sales tax that overturned the long-standing physical presence sales tax collection standard. Since the Supreme Court ruling, eBay has been pushing hard for a federal solution that provides a common-sense solution that protects small, Internet-enabled businesses. eBay seller and Small Business Ambassador Network member Chad White testified before Congress in support of these efforts.Last Friday, federal legislation was introduced that attempts to address the uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court ruling. Led by Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren and Jeff Duncan, this bipartisan solution aims to provide a clear and sensible framework for collecting sales taxes from remote businesses that sell online and would exempt small businesses until such a framework is in place. At the same time, eBay announced that it had collected over a million signatures from Americans like you in support of such legislation. Click here to read more.
Additionally, eBay posted this announcement to the Community Board last week that may be of interest to you if you sell on eBay. As eBay continues to advocate for a federal solution, this post outlines how eBay will handle the collection of sales tax for sales into several states that now have sales tax collection laws in place.
As always, we will continue to keep you informed as this issue evolves.
Sincerely,
The eBay Government Relations TeamMike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
09/18/2018 at 2:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48895Yep.. You’re welcome. It also has an inventory tab that we used to enter each item we bought as we brought it back to the office. The one thing that is VITAL to any and all of these APPs and Processes is that you come up with a unique and individual way of assigning a unique number to each piece or lot if grouping to every inventory item. We use pre-numbered tags with a few spaces for additional write in data. But even a consecutive numbered tape on or tie on tag will do. For proper inventory reporting and tracking every item you buy and list for resale should have it’s own separate number associated and assigned to it. Even if you buy table, bag or tray lots, when you separate the items out, come up with a cost per item as discussed here on SL many times, and then assign a unique number to each item and it’s cost.
That number will need to go into EAT along with the cost of that item in order for the proper analysis of cost of item sold, monthly, annual cost of your inventory, how many items you have, how many have sold, and things like that.
Also we have built into our system our own unique SKU number which tells us the item number, how much we paid for it, when we bought it and where it is located. It took us a while to work out a good system for that, but we have been using it for a few years now.
In my opinion, Inventory Tracking, Inventory Managment all goes hand in hand with Inventory Costing.
Just my opinion and that and $.50 will get you 1/3 of a fried chciken drumstick. A Southern Boys favorite, well besides smoke, wet style BBQ Pork Country Style Ribs. 🙂 🙂
Mike at MDCGFA
09/18/2018 at 11:52 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48883Yes.. EAT – Easy Auction Tracker will do a whole lot of this for you automatically. We used it for years when we had the antique booths. For $50 a year, it interfaces with Ebay, Pulls down all of your listings, then tracks the cog, COGS, the current value of items listed, and has places for other input and SKU numbers, inventory control, etc., etc. They have plenty of video / demo pages.
The nice thing about the author-developer of EAT is that he has most of the multiple tabs set up with MACRO’s and Automatic Formulas. All you have to do is click on the Download tab either monthly, weekly or daily and after the Ebay download then click on the Profit Tab and there it is. Everything except the Sell Through Rates we talk about presented for you. It will even present you the numbers in chart form.
It will only go back 90 days when you first start so if you buy it now, you will get numbers back to approx. early june, then will get the numbers from today forward every time you click the update tab. They even have a fall Sale that will be discounted and then for current subscribers, in the fall each year, you get the new update for I think about half price +/-.
This is a great APP for those that want to know COGS, seperate shipping costs, what is the profit before and after shipping costs, what is the value of my current inventory, what is the listed Sales price of all inventory listed, and other things with the least amount of calculations for you, and the easisest learning curve of all of the 3rd party APPs.
We use WonderLister and have used SixBit but changed, Mark S uses WonderLister and Troy of course uses SixBit. These are very robust programs and have a fairly larger learning curve.
But for none number types, those with limited time, those that want things automated and don’t mind $25-$50 bucks a year, the EAT is a great place to start with knowing your numbers.
The author of EAT will also add columns for you and add custom things, but at a small cost of course. If you know how to build spreadsheets then you can custom it yourself, which is what I did.
the new mantra.. KYN .. “Know Your Numbers”!
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
09/17/2018 at 11:35 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48804Just give me a copy of that budget, a ruler and a red magic marker! 🙂
mike at MDCGFA
09/17/2018 at 9:20 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 377: Talking Numbers with TSatt (Troy) #48792T-Satt for President!
Sue.. Send it out and move on.
We had 3 “Ooopsies” we call them in the past few months. I thought Ebay would not list items at $1.00 or less so I was using $1.00 on my templates – drafts and accidentially listed a pair of shoes that were going to be $40, a Dooney and Bourke purse that was supposed to be $64 dollars and a ceramic bowl that was supposed to be $24.75 and all of those sold for $1 each. I just shipped them.
The solution to my particular case was to use a very small number and Ebay would bounce it if I accidently hit list – publish. We now use $.09 on our templates.
It is part of the learning curve and also some of the uncontrollable loses, like dropping things, having items stolen [in our old antique booths], just have to categorize it as shrinkage and move on.
By sending it out, you avoid any negative anything.
Now you ask for a cut off point in our case, just personally maybe $100 give or take. That would cover most of our inventory, but we do have a few $300 and up items. But under $100, grit your teeth, keep listing and try to minimize the business errors.
As Jay says, legally and ethically, you are just better off sending it to them and maybe write a short note, saying they got a great deal due to a clerical error.
And it’s over with.
Set an alarm in your contact manager for 1 year from today and when it goes off, ask yourself was the last 12 months a success or failure, and if a failure was it because you lost a $50 or $100 bill 12 months earlier.
I’ll talk with you then 🙂
A Southern boy’s half baked opinion, which usually gets me in hot water. LOL 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Yeah I am on the same page with everyone. Just saying that defining NET in Tony 2 times formula is difficult at best and is very hard to define without detailed tracking. And those with a simple program like Quicken or Go Daddy can automate everything once set-up. No body wants a surprise at year end, that is why you pay quarterlies.
In any case I went from being in the Red earlier today to being in the Black with a 6 second process, clicked on update, and Quicken downloaded all new cash deposits and captured any new expenses, even Sue’s purchases two hours ago, into in our accounts and also pulled in all credit card movement and Bingo, we are back in the black again. Literally took seconds. Pretty simple to me.
So for new comers, the formula is very loosey goosey. T2T formulas states for $1,800 a month one would need 4,000 items at the same sell through rate and cost per item. We have little over a 1,000 items and Gross approx. $3,000 that. That’s because we started focusing on higher sales price items several years ago when you put forth that theory. Pay more, sell higher, work less, make more.
So I counted in T2T scenario whereby the formulas relies on 5 What Ifs. That is a lot of what If’s for me.
Even if one plays the game that most antique booth guys do is the Cash in My Pants game. My receivables [cash from sold items is in my left pocket] my payables is the cash in my right pocket, when I buy something or will spend for something, even rent, gas, food, I put the expected amounts in that right pocket, and at the end of the month I hope my left pocket is larger than my right pocket. The booth guys were always telling me there was not enough money in their right pocket, then when I ask how much do they pay for their booths, how much gas do they burn coming out to their booths twice a week, how often do they buy new tires for their car that they wear out, how many paper towels and windex and magic markers do they buy. No one ever knew. That’s about as simple as it gets.. Pants on the ground, pants on the ground.. 🙂 🙂 LOL
BINGO INDY Sales. I showed I was in the BLACK last month. We don’t have any personal needs right now. P&L showed a surplus so we spent about $2,000 first few weeks of Sept. and now we are in the red again as well as year to date because we have been spending a lot more on inventory.
Also on the Ebay Seller Dashboard is a section that shows some of this and it shows that the overall expense of Ebay is a lot more than we throw around here on SL. It on the Ebay selling cost area of the Sellers Dashboard. Interesting how Ebay breaks it down, now add on top of all of there numbers, one’s own categories and costs and it will take up a lot of that Gross Profit number.
Yep.. If you factor in everything that is an expense.
You say: “I honestly dont know how to create the complicated spreadsheets and reports I hear you guys discuss.” ….. Well you are already doing it.
I hear Ryanne say that at the end of the month, she sometimes has to go and categprize things that GDB missed. The other items not missed have already been categorized by her. So you are running what is called a Journal entry bookkeeping system. You said GDB furnishes a P&L. Bet you dollars to donuts there is a category that says uncategorized. Once everything gets into it’s category then, there you go, you are putting everything into a category. You are doing the exact same thing. Again dollars to donuts you have every expense put into a category so when you give your summary sheet to your accountant he has the areas to fill in on your tax return.You are doing category accounting you just may not know it. I would doubt very seriously if you have a misc. category that shows $85,000 worth of expenses that are not assigned to a category. Dining, mortgage, utilitizes [whether you break it out or not by type of utility]. Bet you Ryanne has already set all those up when you guys first started with GDB and she only has to tag those that don’t automatically fall into those categories.
NOE just Google avg. net profit of corporations which can be any small business also. Or better still NET Profit of americas small business. Actually here’s one result for you.
>>> ” Each employee in a small business drives the margins lower. One study found that 90% of all service and manufacturing businesses with more than in gross sales are operating at under 10% margins, when 15% to 20% are likely ideal.Aug 2, 2017″And yes, you can make zero on a sale but not on an item by item bases. We all just read that RTWV showed ZERO=$0 Zip at years end. I did not say just 10% on a one time $30 dollar single item. I said on a basis of total gross sales. If you expense everything you can, like RTWV and we do, we both run our business at close to Zero. I even evry one or two years run our business in the red. I do it by design. So with that in mind, Year to date our P&L shows a Gross Sales figure of $20,035.22 our Cost of buying inventory is only $5,271 but our NET PROFIT is showing a loss to us [in the RED by -$2,471.63]. So HOW CAN THAT BE! Well therein lies the secret of detailed business expenditures just as RTWV said above. They took a trip BUT did buying while they were on the trip. Bet you agagin, dollars t donuts that trip went into “business expenses”, may not, but as said above, the business is intewined into our way of living.
Ask Mark Twes about this and he will tell and show you the secret.You need a new sofa for your rental. You buy 2 of them for $200 each. You buy with your business money or card. You put one in the farm house, you replace your current couch with the second one you bought and now you have a new couch, BUT you create an inventory tag for it, you use your house as the storage of it, you sit on it and you list it for sale. I will sell anything in my house for the right price. AND nobody says you have to list it for sale this year, Sit on it for a year then maybe put it on Craigs lList for $5,000. Whatever. But it was expensed, you bought it, are using it “until sold” and so far have made zero on it.
Mobile Oil type Corp. live in the single didgits for Net Profit. So do most large Corp. but they make billions. One safe haven is to buy famous artwork. It is an investment piece for $32 million dollars. They won it, it will appreciate but they also donate it so a Museum and Bingo, tax write off. Ever heard of the J. Paul Getty Art Museum as in Getty Oil Corp.? Same concept only on a huge scale.
But it is not complicated. And I don’t disagree that using weekly numbers can be of value when you are looking at specific type of things. But you can stare at the minute details a little too much also. Most don’t buy stock then watch the ticker tape every hour on the hour. But if it tells you something then it is still OK.
What I am saying is that many dont categorize their expenses, or don’t categorize into correct categories, but still bet Ryanne does when she reviews those expenses on her monthly reconcillation.
Here is a good question to ask mark Tewes, If I make $50,000 next year how can I show a loss at year end. He will then show you the magic formula. Exepnse everything you can, legally. What is legal, that is what I pay my CPA for, and guess what, he has the answers.
Boy, didn’t want to wade into the weeds so deep. Been a while, but guess I dig my own holes when I do.
TTFN … mike at MDCGFA
Sharyn.. Funny. Worse thing we have at our local Kroger grocery store is a StarBucks inside. Wife Susan walks in the door and first thing she does is buy a Large / Grande Latte, Mocha, something sweet, super hot something, something at about $4 per cup. I can buy a whole can of coffe for less than that on sale. I can’t go shopping with her, she hates it. I am looking at every unit price sticker, searching on my phone for coupons, looking for BOGO’s, taking way to long. She sneaks off to the store so I won’t hear her and ask to go along. I slow her down and she says, all I do is complain about the prices. AND SHE IS RIGHT!!!! LOL 🙂 🙂
MC at MDCGFA in ATL GA
Exactly Inglewood. That is why using an accounting program for your whole financial picture and a P&L is so important. A P&L does show you an exct picture of where your profit is and if you are running your business in the red or the black and by how much.
I like to keep my NET Porfit as low as I can. I try to run my business as close to a break even point as I can, but everything in our lives can’t be expensed, but you will be surprised how much can be.
We do expense out our office space from our personal space. We use approx. 50% of the square footage of our house for work. So 50% of our mortgage, taxes, all utilities, yard, house maintenance, everything is expensed against the business. Most of our auto expenses is business related. So keeps our NET PROFIT lower due to those expenses being deducted from the GROSS income.
Mark Twese “Not Your Dads Accountant” explains a lot of this in his articles and interviews with Jay and he also has some downloadable booklets.
And BTW, doing your business accounting correctly is a standard part of running any business, large, small, [part time, full time. If you don’t understand it all then as J&R say and do as well as many other SL members, seek out a CPA and get an apointment and go over all of this.
As Tony 2 Times originally said, “if you want to grow”, then to do this is to get a handle on a proper accounting procedure.
These SL weekly number don’t do a whole lot for me. One reason i never post ours. Doesn’t mean a whole lot about the bottom line. What would trip my trigger is for everyone to post their P&L from their accounting app every quarter. Would love to see J&R P&L for the last 5 years!!! LOL 🙂 :-). Sure make a $100k per year gross, but what was their bottom line??? Obviouslt their Retained Earnings or OCRA Account has been sufficient enough to allow for “Plowing Funds Back Into” their business which happens to be Real Estate Investment. This is their accountants way of showing them how to reduce the bottom line that they have to pay taxes on, and by plowing back into their business, they are re-investing for the future. Their profits will come through landhold capital improvements which they have done on 2 properties and are now doing on a third, appreciation in value but from the increase in property values and building equity, and then from the profit made at resale.
Which mark my words they will probably do when they do retire!! No kids probably to inherit their “empire”, so can you imagine when it comes time for J&R to “DOWNSIZE”…WOW!!! They worlds largest yardsale!! LOL 🙂 :-). I won’t be there to see it because I am 69.5 years old, but the time will come for them to “Divest”.
A Souhtern Boy running off at the mouth who should be listing and building our nest egg, but worth may expressing my opinion. And opinion is all that it is.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta, Ga.
I agree but the problem for most is the calculation of that NET PROFIT NUMBER.
If you sell and item for $50 and it costs you $10 to buy it, subtract that $10 from the $50 and you get $40, well that is nowhere near the end of it. I use an accounting program and so do most business that have a COA [chart of accounts] that takes into account the categories that all of your business expenses go into. My COA has about 25 to 30 line items in it.
Most busineeses average about 10% of their GROSS SALES that end up as NET profit. If one can avg. 15%-20% you are the rare few. Most corporations are only in the single digits.
So the Sell through rate is easily found, so is how many you sold for the month and the 12 month avg. of those items, but the next number, most people and I am going to go out on a limb and say 90% of sellers can not accurately come up with the real net profit per item.
Here is using J&R rentals as an example and this includes a term called capacity. Take their farm house.
Their capacity is 365 nights rental. They can’t rent for more nights than that because that’s all the days there are in a year. So if they rent every night of the year for 1 year.That’s a 100% sell through rate = 365 sales at $150 per night = $54,750 per year max. GROSS, now down to that net number? What does it cost them per day to run that Farm House Rental. The expenses are not per day but “Periodic”
Labor [cleaning help], electricity, heat, water, laundry, soap, mortgage, taxes, interst, replacing lost-stolen worn out items, depreciation, legal fees, phone costs, accounting fees, etc., etc. So then what are they actually NETTING OUT PER DAY and what are they actually then paying themselves per day?So the cost per item is the actual cost of an item, the auto expense to go to that auction or estate sale, the box you ship it in, the tape you use, the label you buy to print on, the cost of the printer ink, the label, the electricity used to keep the lights on in your office, the bank fees, your accounting fees at year end, part of your automobile insurance that is used for business, cleaning supllies, paper towels, silver polish, dryer sheets, soap, magic markers, staples for your stapler, pencils, pens, storage tubs, tape measures, rulers, calculators.. etc., etc. Granted some of these are one time purchases, but in the year they are purchased they are EXPENSES that goes agaginst your business which comes out of those gross sales numbers.
Now those using QuickBooks, Go Daddy, Quicken any type of real accounting programs that allow the set up of a COA or Categories as some call it allow the lumping togather of all of these extrememly small items, but the individual costs are still there, just lumped into those categories.
The real way to know what you are making is to use an accounting approach and pull a Profit and Loss sheet. That will show you the picture. If you are OCD and want to see that Net profit per week, then pull your P&L at weeks end, I do ours monthly and also shows what percentage of our gross sales each category is using. i.e. is our Office Supplies 7% of our gross sales, then if I want more NET PROFIT one way to accomplish that is to REDUCE those PERCENTAGES per category. Buy less office supplies, electricity, turn off the lights, use less tape per box, travel less miles to acquire the merchandise. This is the way large companies reduce costs, is by reading their P&L, looking at the percentages of GROSS SALES each category [line item of expenes] was using up and tell everybody to knock off the over spending and cut back on costs.
That is why when large company see over spending the fastest and easiest way to immediately reduce costs is to lay-off or fire people. Dump 30 people of Friday and come Monday morning, you have reduced your costs via Payroll cuts by XX percentage.
Not knocking your formula, but you said it was simplified. Well, extremely simplified and for the real business minded would not be of a whole lot of help. For those not accounting inclined it could give a false sense of security when it comes to what you are NETTING out of the business.
Here is a very simple way to accomplish the same thing it is called OCRA [Operating Capital Reserve Account]. Every business large or small should have this. A business savings account in other words.
Start on Jan 1st with a separarte savings account. At months end take every dollar in your paypal account and put it in the savings [operating Capital Account]. Then at the end of the year take the amount in that account and split it in half. Half is your salary for the year and the other half is for your company. That is your operating reserve funds for the coming year. Every business deserves to be treated as an entity and should be being paid just like you are.
I really belive why so many stores open and close each year on all platforms, Ebay, Etsy, any of them, is the fact that most people who start these businesses do not understand business.
All of this is just one Sotherners opinion and that with $.50 will still only get you that half a cup of coffee.
Respectfully responded to and no offense intended at all. Just the sharing of 50 years of running a business and one of those being an 18 million dollar plant.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta [for the SEO Gods and another wall of Text for Jay] LOL 🙂 🙂
09/13/2018 at 1:49 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Projection screen, Models, Penguin hot/cold server, Desk lamp, Mailbox #48707Hey Steve.. We have a Westbend Penguin Stainless Ice Bucket currently listed in our stores. But have it at $69.99 and MO. Guees we should adjust that based on what you mentioned. yep, there were lots listed, many have sold. We always list at over the higest price sold which ever is higher Ebay or Worthpoint. That allows us to run a Sale and take offers on top of that to boot. But at $69.99 we may be “too” high.
Thanks for the info. missed the doggies and Kitty this time around.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Hey Sonia:
Yep, we offer free returns and on the few that we have had, we had the options to refunds partial, complete, without with shipping. And of course there is a work around for backing out the shipping in either direction and that is select partial refund and input the amount of the item only and don’t include the shipping to or from.There is a big red caution that also states the obvious, don’t do any type of refund until you have gottent the item back, opened it and inspected for yourself.
we have selected that we wish to review every return and use an RMA Number. [“Return Authorization Number”] just like we did in the prining company. We just use our SKU number.
mike at MDCGFA in ATL
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