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Jay,
WTD is Week to Date. I am running this on a daily basis and this give me Week to Date numbers.
Mark
I am also thinking of adding information about partial refunds, feedback, Top 10 items for hit counts, and # of items being watched. The sky really is the limit on this. I am also thinking of doing a last year report for the current week and a YOY comparision. Also, I have MTD and YTD reports in the works.
One note about the field “Proj. Week $” above: What this does is based on my average sell $ till that point in the week, it will predict what my end of the week Total Sales $ will be. I was always doing this calculation when I looked at my Wonder Lister Sales Report, but now it is right there for me. For example, if I have sold $250 after 3.5 days (“# Days so far”), then it would predict that I will sell $500 by the end of the week.
I am really excited about this report for a number of reasons, but main reason is that it will be able to COGS for me at the end of the year. In fact, one side benefit of this is that I can see the possibility of Wonder Lister for my business. I can track everything in the SQL Server database which makes reporting much easier, backups automatic, and everything in one place for an Enterprise system for my business. And another benefit of this is that when I get everything in the database (and I do mean everything) I will be able to do any analysis I want as long as the detail is there to get it. Since I am writing custom SQL, I can slice and dice the data anyway I want and can make it a scheduled job to go to an Excel file and\or print to the printer.
I also developed another daily report this week: the pick list report. The report has the following fields:
Title PurchasedDate Bin container area stack TransactionPrice ActualShippingCost QuantityPurchased AmountPaid Ind_CogSo, this report will tell me exactly where my container is (I have 10 areas, each area has up to 6 stacks of containers in it. This directs me to the exact stack). I also wonder when something sells, how much did I pay for that. This will also tell me that after I load in my COGS to the database.
I already have this report setup to go to Excel automatically at set times of the day thru the Windows Task Scheduler. I can add as many times as I want and can also send it directly to the printer if I want to.
This report doesn’t save me much time right now, but come the busy season, it will save a ton of time. Also, if a bin moves (which happens quite frequently when I merge containers to reclaim space) then I only have to update it one place in the database and everything keeps working correctly.
This may seem like overkill to some people, but I did a lot of this because I needed a year end report for taxes. I had to learn where all the data was located in Wonder Lister.
The goal is to have all my processes in place to update the database a little at a time through my set business processes. Then, at the end of the year it is just a press of a button to get my tax numbers! Also, just about any kind of analysis is possible. One that I thought may be interesting is track how many miles you go for an item. For example, you drive 10 miles to an estate sale and you buy 20 items. That means you drove 20 miles round trip and you bought 20 items. That would be 1 mile for each item. Not super important, but if you are driving too far and not buying enough this would bring that to light. This is just one example of what would be possible to find out.
Just for fun, I just had to know what the most popular first name of the people who have bought from me in the last year and half were. And the results are:
FirstName Count
David 18
john 17
Michael 16
james 15
Robert 14
Chris 13
Jennifer 12
Thomas 10
Daniel 9
Elizabeth 9Mark
08/12/18 – 08/18/18
WTD Sales $ $307.74
WTD Sales # 13
WTD ASP $23.67
Buyer Shipping $ $146.58
My Shipping $ 0
# Days so far 6.97
Avg. Daily $ $44.15
Proj. Week $ $309.06
WTD # Listed 23
WTD $ Listed $1028.84
ASP $ Listed $44.73
Cancelled # 0
Cancelled $ 0
Unpaid # 0
Unpaid $ 0
Refunded # 0
Refunded $ 0
Best Offer # 5
Best Offer $ $81.98
Best Offer ASP $ 16.4I am calling this week Reporting week.
Notice anything different about my reported numbers for the week above? Yes, it is a different format, but there is a reason. This was generated by my new daily flash (or dashboard) report from Wonder Lister (my custom code)! This report was designed to run every day to give me a snapshot of where the business is at each day. I ran it just before Midnight last night. In the future, it will be setup to run automatically just before Midnight and print out to the printer for me. There are 4 fields below that I would like to include in this daily report, but haven’t yet:
Number of Items in the store: 2435
Highest Price Sold: $41 (Members Only Jacket)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 35
COGSI will do another post below about the report.
Mark
I asked Steve a similar question a few weeks back. He said that what he does is estimates the cost of shipping for both speakers and puts that on the listing. Then, when they sell, he prints of the label for speaker 1. Then he goes back an prints another label for speaker 2. Then on the label for each box, he marks Box 1 of 2 and Box 2 of 2.
Mark
Doubly,
When I first started, I got a number of dings like this happen to me because I didn’t know any better.
Nothing happened until someone from a jean company reported an item as not authentic – a violation. When they saw I had had about 4 things on my record, that broke the camel’s back and they gave me a 7 day suspension from listing on ebay. If I had not had those 4 things on my record, I may not have gotten a 7 day suspension.
Then, after 1 year, the violation rolled off and all was forgotten.
The morale of the story is that try not to get too many of things dings in 1 year. Stay away from anything that could cause a violation – especially now. I think you are good, just play it safe till some of these things roll off. I don’t think it is that big of a deal, but do be careful not to rack up too many in a short amount of time, that could be trouble.
Mark
T-Satt,
That was a good one. I had a good laugh.
I loved the part about taking the head off the bear. Put the head out on Monday and the body on Friday (or whatever day that was).
Mark
I was up North Micigan at the in-laws cabin a good part of the week. This is a place where you still pump the water outside from the well – That is my job. Cell phone service is bad to non-existant. It is a really small town and gave me a feel for where J & R live. There was a town festival and I think there were more people there than lived in the town, or so it seemed. I just hung out and did some town things.
My first night there I hit the grocery store (only 1). I saw on the bullitin board that there was a rummage sale at a church. I went to the sale which dodn’t look like much at first, but turned out well. Bought 2 nice bikes for the cabin. I also got my daughter a bird cage with toys for her future bird that she wants. Everything thing was by donation which is sometimes hard. I had to make multiple trips because of the large items. My best find was 2 display cases of golf ball markers from golf courses accross the country. There were 2 cases that look like golf course putting greens with about 50 ball markers each.
Mark
Doubly,
71 listings in a week for a part timer is outstanding! I wish I could list that much as a part timer.
It looks like you are nearly ready to take the plunge and go full time. My advice would be to have several months of living expenses saved, just in case. And of course you will have to take into account the taxes and health insurance. T-Satt said his insurance was around $500/month if I remember correctly, but it is not traditional insurance.
I would think that after you go full time, you would blow away the numbers you are currently putting up.
Mark
All,
It was Steve List on 7/20/18. Here is what he wrote:
“I’ve been fighting the missing picture glitch for the past few days. Out of about 920 listings I had about 100 listings with ether all or all but one photo missing. I used this tool that was mentioned in one of the scavengerlife forums:
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm. I used the fast scan option, then ran the report that shows the number of images in each listing along with titles. I had about 16 that had 0 images and about 75 that only had 1. I plan to call eBay on Friday to complain about not being notified about this problem and to also ask for a reversal of some store fees.”Mark
I also sent the company a message. Let’s see if they confirm that.
I don’t know how much these are worth, but their microfiche cabinets go for some series $$$$$.
Mark
Antique Frog,
Yes, the grey metal strips are magnetic. The dual strips you can see in the last picture.
I think you may have the answer to this!
Marl
07/29/18 – 08/04/18
Total Items In Store: 2,412
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $50 (around)
Total Sales: $523.46
Highest Price Sold: $ 125 (Soccer Trophy – a very large one!)
Average Price Sold: $ 43.62
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 105
Number of Items listed this week: 4Gut Sales Report for the week: Ok sales this week despite the fact that I have gone several days without any significant sales. It was very hit or miss this week for me. When it is good, it is good. When bad, it is really bad.
My process improvement for the week: I am trying to write some code to automatically list my items to ebay that I have in my spreadsheet. I have made good progress, but the Item specifics and photos may be more difficult. I had a similar issue with the Wonder Lister bulk lister from a spreadsheet – they needed so much info, it was easier to do it manually. But my code is going to use my listing templates which already have a lot of the basic information for a particular item.
To Do: Set up all my daily, weekly, and monthly reports to be done automatically at a set time.
Scavenge of the week: I picked up a Vintage American Flyer Train Set for $30. This set is from 1966 and looks nearly brand new! I think I can get upwards of $300 for it. I am trying to find the space and time to set it up with my daughter and try it out. Also, I pickup up 29 Magnetic Compressors by Russ Bassett CO (trying to figure out exactly what they are) for Media Storage for $3.. I think I can charge $9.99 each for these and net close to $300 for a long tail item in quantity. I went all in, but for $3, you can’t go wrong.
Challenge of the week: Actually, this may last a month or longer. I need to clear out space in my basement and garage to store inventory. I will have to take some time off of work to do this. But, after I am done, I should be able to store 5000-6000 items without and issue in my basement\garage.
Mark
Ok, now that I looked at that one closer, I see that it is adjustable. But, it doesn’t say how small it can go. So I looked up adjustable and found this one:
I think this is what I want and at a much lower price. The Height is Adjustable: Min 3.5 ft. – Max 8.5 ft. The Width Adjustable: Min 4.5 ft. (2 cross bars)- Max 10 ft. (4 cross bars).
I think I just solved this! I just need to get a white backdrop in that size range. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
Mark
I am looking for something like this, but not nearly as big. Something in the range of 3′ X 5′ or 4′ X 6′
So just lay it on the floor? Or do you mean it could lean against the wall?
Ideally, I would like it to be like those 8′ X 10′ that are held by the poles. That way I could do clothes on mannequin or put larger items on the floor and still have white under them and behind them. If I just laid the background on the floor, I wouldn’t have the white background behind it.
