question for all...appreciate your response!

[twinsfan48]

Most of us buy/sell/or trade. We all have different programs for doing it; Access, Excel, a wordpad, etc.

However, who keeps track of their actual sales and expenses? Do you record fees like shipping and paypal fees? If so, how do u do it? Do u tie it back to the transaction it occurred with. Or, do most of you compare amount bought compared to amount sold.

What is the best way to keep track of my sales and the actual money I receive. For example, I may have $50 worth of sales from the Internet but if shipping fees are 7.34 fo all the items to ship and then $2.66 in payment fees to cash it out from paypal, I've not actually made the whole $50.

So does any keep a detailed record of their buying and selling? What about using a program like QuickBooks or Microsoft Small Business to better track their sales? Does anybody or any business use this?

Please let me know...either way! I want ur opinions!

thanks,
brady

[bouncer]

Here's an example of what I do. A card sells for $10 and you have $2.50 sh. I would have received 12.50.

From the 12.50 I would to pay PP/ebay fees so I might only be walking away with $11. From the $11 you would to pay for s/h - for this example say $1. I would then consider my profit as $10. Another variable that I left off the equation is supplies I know I pay $0.17 per bubble mailer.

I use a excel spreadsheet. I have the total money that I allow my self to spend each month and then I have a column for credits and debits. What ever is left over at the end of the month I carry over to next money. If I buy cards on trading sites or ebay I make note of the price paid, in case I sell it I can see any money made or loss.

[twinsfan48]

Thanks for the reply...I try to do that too but what gets messed up is when I buy card A and I sell card A along with some other cards for a total amount...it's tough to know what exactly I profited on that card.

Working in Acess...I do the exact thing in a query. I put the sale price in one column, my shipping charge in another column, and the fees in the third column. It adds the first 2 columns and subtracts the third giving me the NET SALE PRICE. However, when it comes to shipping, I found it to be too tedious to try and tie back each shipping cost to the right transaction. Besides, it all got messed up if other cards were included in the deal...then how do you find the exact cost?

I have also a Cash Flow table that tracks the actual money I spend and receive...not the sale amounts. For example, if I have $100 worth of Sales on here, but after depositing from Paypal Account to my Checking Account I only actually end up getting $95 then I will only show that in my cash flow...the $95 I actually receive.

Please tell me what you think of my record keeping...does this make sense? What do u guys do?

[twinsfan48]

bump

[Hawaiian Bam Bam]

i use a microsoft excel spreadsheet with the following categories that i track:
1. Paid for card
2. listing fees
3.final value fee
4.paypal fee
5.shipping and handling
6.sales tax.
7.what card sold for
8.profit

this helps greatly at tax time when we have to report it for tax purposes..hope this help you.

[lamandmelz]

I think another thing you should do is when buying and trading is always try to get some throw ins small jersey and autos. I use these and put a five dollar box or sell on checkoutmycards.com. Also I usually make the buyer pay for shipping unless it is a bigger sale then shipping is free.

[twinsfan48]

bam bam) what about if you ship the card with others? how do you calculate its shipping price? Along with Paypal and everything else, doesn't it get confusing to keep it seperated?

[Xanadu]

Brady -
I think the easiest thing to do is separate the sales price from the fees. If you have a $20 sale and it costs $2 to ship and Paypal takes $0.80, then enter the postage, Paypal's fees and then the $20 sale. You could have some VBA behind a form that could prorate the sales price for each card, based on a percentage of buying price. i.e., say you bought one card for $1, another for $7 and a third for $2, and those are the three you sold for $20. Well, the total purchase price for you was $10, so for the first card $1/$10 is 10%. 10% of your sale price ($20) is $2, so it would automatically fill in your sale price for that card at $2. This will throw off the program a bit if it's a card you pull out of a pack, but you could always enter SOME value (book value?) to work off of. It's not an exact science, but in the end you're really most concerned about net profit anyway.

Expenses are important though, and should be kept as accurately as possible. Any time I've ever tracked expenses in a database I've always tracked them as a separate animal and never as part of an item's value or sale price.

[twinsfan48]

So instead of tracking the fees of each transaction and tying that to the sale price or buying price of that transaction, just add them up seperately. Is that what you're saying?

I just find it too confusing to track down the exact profit or loss on a card...plus too time consuming. But, that's why I came here...I wanted to hear your guys' input on how u do it.

[twinsfan48]

bump...