Record Keeping: Do You Know How Much You Are Making on eBay?

If you sell on eBay, either as a hobby or a business,  then it's very important to know how much profit you are really making.  If you are just looking at your sales and not considering all of the fees, then you are doing yourself a big disservice. I know, I did this myself for several years.


After realizing my mistake, I tried to create a spreadsheet to calculate my actual profit. Well that was a joke, after hours of trying to create macros and calculations, it just wasn't working.


The next step was purchasing a Spreadsheet off of eBay. It worked but it was very cumbersome, I had to input everything, including the item titles.  The only thing that it really did was calculate the eBay fees, which I could have just copied off of my invoice since I had to copy everything else. There had to be a better way!


Then I discovered Easy Auction Tracker. It is unbelievable!  It is fully automated; I didn't have to copy anything, everything is imported directly from eBay! The only thing that I have to input is my cost that I paid for the item and the actually shipping that I paid to send the item.


No more copying and pasting of item numbers, titles, dates, shipping info and more. This does all of that for me and saves me hours and hours worth of work! In addition, it has a tab for expenses and for mileage so it makes doing my taxes a lot easier. I'm able to keep all my records together is one neat spreadsheet!


Not only is Easy Auction Tracker certified by eBay, but they have superior customer service. I am not a tech whiz, I'm lucky I can figure out how to turn the darn computer on and off.  Easy Auction Tracker has a fantastic video tutorial right on their site, and step by step instructions.  It is very easy to use and if you have any questions, they are very quick to respond and are very helpful.

Using Easy Auction Tracker is even more imperative in 2011. If you're a serious seller, the IRS is requiring eBay and Paypal to file a 1099-K for anyone with more than 200 transactions or $20,000 USD in sales per year.

It's important to be able to calculate your actual sales and fees so that you know that you're making a large enough profit to justify the time you spend selling on eBay.  Just "guessing" is simply not going to show you the true picture and you may find out that it's costing you money to sell on eBay!  I highly recommend purchasing Easy Auction Tracker and you will know that what you are selling is actually making you money and it will make tax time much easier.