Financial Management~!

This Post is all about how to manage the finances of your eBay Business~!

For it needs to managed some way or another, unless you want some issues. So first off, key here is to separate your personal from your business finances. Although it may be self explanatory, many people in the beginning don't do this, which leads to issues with clients and your own spending, really fast.

The Easiest way to go about this if you are registered as a business owner, is to open a business checking account, many banks offer them free for a year~! Then link your paypal accounts to that business account. It is also key to have separate paypal accounts..... although some of you may be thinking why..... the answer is simple.... you also buy stuff, you aren't just selling and when you have something that is directly linked to your clients money, and you are buying stuff with that account, one needs to be extremely conscious of every transaction they conduct as to keep everything in check. So in short, the two separate paypal accounts just makes it that much easier~! Feel free even to open up multiple paypal accounts~!

Third.... Excel, Excel, Excel~!

Personally, I keep a master spreadsheet of everything I sell for other people, what it sold for, my commission, the paypal and ebay fees, the shipping charges and the net gains or losses based on shipping charged and actual shipping paid. (I always do my best to keep the net on shipping in the green, because that will tend to cover small things that may come up like packing materials and such....

While we are on shipping, handling charges are key~! Getting greedy is easy but its also a fast way to put your name and feedback down, and make a quick $2 rather than increasing sales and commissions in the long run. So around $2-5 handling fees are ok, depending on what the item is and how big it is, and also sometimes you just way overestimate shipping and end up with something like $10, and hey it happens, its just doing that stuff on purpose that will torpedo your business.... also eBay has this new thing where they tell you that your shipping charges are way over what everyone's elses are.... so thats another reason.

The best way I find to do it with things are are questionable in terms of what its going to cost to ship them, is just say in the auction that the charges will be determined at the close of the auction based on the buyers location and preferred shipping methods..... and in doing that your covered and you can actually get a quote before you charge them, tack on a fair handling fee and everyone is happy. I know as a buyer myself if I see like a $2 handling fee, I am like ok w/e, but if I see like a $5-15 fee, I am kinda like wtf.

So back to excel~! Haha. In keeping that master list, I always can easily just pull out a specific clients data, I tend to keep each client in a partition, and then I have the ability to make their receipt, calculate my commission, how much I they are contributing to my eBay Bill.... etc.

The key is not to over spread sheet, but make the ones you do use, smart and useful.... also excel will do a lot of the calculations for you if you simply do the first two highlight them and drag the mouse down as far as you want to be calculated based on that rate~!

Thats just a quick excerpt from my book... feel free to comment and leave any suggestions~!


Have a Wonderful Day~!

Peace,

Teddy