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In this case, I think I simply forgot to put Qty=2 in the listing. It’s my fault, but I need a way of checking for these errors short of physically going through all 1750 items.
This time it was likely my fault, but 90% of the time when I find orphaned inventory, the culprit is the following:
-Listing has quantity 2 (or whatever)
-Buyer buys one, then cancels
-Ebay does NOT automatically update the available quantity back up to 2 on cancellation – this is a bug I’ve groused about before
-Other one sells
-Listing goes dark and is forgotten
I try to remember to always tweak the qty back up when a buyer cancels on a multiple qty listing, but sometimes I forget.
I found a piece of inventory in my bins this week that is worth $600 but was not listed on ebay. Which is concerning. Too swamped now, but I really need to find a better way to reconcile my spreadsheet (which I am diligent about updating) with my ebay store. Ideally I’d be able to download the ebay store excel summary and run a comparison in less than an hour with my inventory sheet, that flags items not listed on ebay, or items listed that my sheet doesn’t contain.
Complicating factor is that some items have multiple listings (e.g., listed as singles AND as lots of 5).
I think the solution is to use the custom SKU field to do it – assign a unique identifier to each item and then have that in both the ebay listing and my spreadsheet. I HAD been using the custom SKU field as a redundant place to put items’ storage locations but maybe that needs to change.
Hi all, hope your week is going well. I am really happy, having had my best single week ever on ebay for sales. Almost cracked 10k.
Sales: CAD$9683, 23 sales, COGS: $772, Fees: ~$1306, Postage: $889 –> Gross profit: $6716
Expenses: $610, New inventory: $752 –> Cashflow: $6126
Big sales were some circuit breakers 3 x $600, and some HVAC controllers, bought this week for $45 and sold overnight for $2400. You love to see it! This customer is a repeat customer who has bought this stuff from me a few times. Which hasn’t really happened much before.
No, that wasn’t me with the warehouse. But yep, similar field, without too much pain.
It would be a shame if regulatory compliance burdens curtailed small online selling as they have done so many other more conventional industries.
OTOH, I have often wondered how much stuff is being fenced on ebay. Surely it’s not zero. Or maybe it’s more typical for ebay to be one step up the food chain, so fences are selling to ebay resellers whatever they can’t move locally very easily? IDK. I have to say I have only once or twice bought something that seemed fishy at the time. Probably we are just not selling the kind of stuff people bother to steal, on account of its being long tail.
I had a good week on ebay. Got an auction haul on Thursday, only spent $1000 but it was a decent haul.
Funniest thing was – in some of the inventory I bought, I found packing slips with my old company’s address on them. So just to recap – the company was dissolved for dumb reasons, I got severance, landed a new job right away, and then they dumped their surplus tools & inventory on an auction house, and I bought some and will make a profit on them. =) Feeling very smug.
Also finally splurged on a used generator… the texas storm gave me all the memento mori I needed to do that.
Had a great week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$5870, 21 sales, COGS: $795, Fees: ~$788, Postage: $331 –> Gross profit: $3957
Expenses: $171, New inventory: $777 –> Cashflow: $3804
I’m not really holding out on price on these things, actually they’re probably worth double the offer I took this week (of $220 each for 20). But I had qty 200 (now about 150) so I want them to move a little faster before the market dries up.
These are slow movers so the challenge is really just waiting for the buyer to come along. A lot of whom are themselves resellers I think.
BTW when you said on the podcast that your business hero was “Jimmy”, I immediately thought “he must mean Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO Jimmy Buffett!”, then you said you meant the local mom & pop garage guy, and then I realized half an hour later that actually Jimmy’s just the margaritaville guy and Warren Buffett is the investing Buffett. So anyway, if you guys want any stock tips let me know.
Great to hear from everyone as always. Good week on ebay for me.
Sales: CAD$6537, 16 sales, COGS: $162, Fees: ~$883, Postage: $393 –> Gross profit: $5099
Expenses: $183, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $5078
HVAC controllers again for $4400 were the big sale.
I have an auction on Wednesday that I’ll hopefully get a decent amount of inventory from.
Morning all! Yes I know what you mean about the absentee/spreadsheet mentality for selling and especially for rentals. There are a lot of imponderables that are really hard to communicate about what is actually required to run such a business and what totally unpredictable demands it may make on you.
I had a good week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$2476, 14 sales, COGS: $378, Fees: ~$332, Postage: $185 –> Gross profit: $1581
Expenses: $0, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $1959
Big auction coming up this week, although I don’t think it’s going to be the kind of bonanza the last one was.
Hi guys, good to hear from you again!
Glad you hit on the seller update. Those changes aren’t happening here yet but I’m sure they’ll follow in a year or so. I’m a premium store which sounds like it’s still probably work well after.
I had an excellent week on ebay.
Sales: CAD$7719, 15 sales, COGS: $141, Fees: ~$1036, Postage: $582 –> Gross profit: $5960
Expenses: $540, New inventory: $5 –> Cashflow: $5556
Not scavenging much, trying to save a big chunk of change for an auction in late March.
Yeah, all payouts to my bank account are already net fees, so I don’t need to claim fees going forward (except a few bucks for e.g., promoted listings).
However I need to reconcile those payouts with my overall tracking, and to do that I need to know how much the fees were. Otherwise my gross sales at the end of the year will be way higher than the amounts hitting my bank account – I need to “build a bridge” between those two numbers.
Ebay doesn’t give me anything resembling a tax slip at the end of the year. I track ebay income manually in my spreadsheet.
Hello again to all! Hope we have a fine week. Last week was pretty good.
Sales: CAD$2103, 12 sales, COGS: $81, Fees: ~$282, Postage: $355 –> Gross profit: $1385
Expenses: $198, New inventory: $5 –> Cashflow: $1263
One thing that is irritating me about managed payments is reconciling fees for tax purposes. Previously it was easy to know which fees to deduct because it was the big monthly invoice from “ebay” that hit my account. Now they are sucking fees out on each sale, which is fine, but it means I have to record fee amounts for each individual sale. This would not be so bad, but that information is only presented in the “payments” tab and doesn’t include sale price vs shipping breakouts. So to record a single sale transaction I have to navigate to two different places in ebay to get these 3 numbers.
Is there a single place I can see a breakdown of transactions c/w shipping income AND ebay fees?
Great to hear from you guys again!
I am now officially in managed payments, which was finally rolled out to .ca sellers.
I had a good sales week, and I also spent quite a bit sourcing on ebay. In the hole this week but OK for the month overall.
Sales: CAD$4284, 25 sales, COGS: $87, Fees: ~$579, Postage: $630 –> Gross profit: $2988
Expenses: $350, New inventory: $5680 –> Cashflow: -$2955
Hi all, had a good week and long weekend despite the cold. Almost finished going through the last of my auction inventory so I’ll be on the hunt again soon.
Sales: CAD$4145, 15 sales, COGS: $305, Fees: ~$559, Postage: $473 –> Gross profit: $2808
Expenses: $191, New inventory: $198 –> Cashflow: $2725
The past year I have been heavy into buying on eBay. I decided that although I will continue that, I will be raising the bar on what is a buy vs pass on eBay. It is easy to nickle-and-dime yourself to death there, buying things that are profitable, but not overly so, “so the time wasn’t wasted”. Ultimately my constraint is money, not time, so I will be only buying if it’s a really great deal.
It’s pretty handy to have it all in one place. I have all my shipping cos set up in Shippo, the recipient address automatically imports from ebay, I fill in actual shipping dimensions and then see all the options, & pick (usually the cheapest). Especially nice as sometimes customers ask for a quote on one, two day or overnight service and I can just check there.
90% of the time Canada Post is the choice but especially for international shipments it helps to shop it around easily. I guess with GSP that’s not an issue for you. Still, even domestically or to USA, cheapest option is sometimes UPS.
