April 28th, 2010 Kevin
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We’ve been working really hard to troubleshoot, solve, and improve the way that eBay data is pulled into your Outright account. And we’re excited to launch these improvements and share them with you.
No More Duplicates from Multi-Item Orders
If you sell multiple items together, you may have seen duplicate shipping charges or PayPal fees for those orders. Starting on April 29, 2010, all your eBay sales data that is automatically imported into Outright will be displayed accurately. Multi-item orders will no longer display duplicate entries.
Listing Titles
We’ve heard that it’s hard to look at those long item numbers and figure out what item that was. From now on, you’ll be able to see your listing title in the description. We still show the item numbers too. And by the way, if either of these gets cut off, you can always hover your cursor over the partial text to see the entire text.
Custom eBay Categories
Ever wondered how your eBay sales breakdown into item price, shipping, eBay fees, and PayPal fees? Well now you can find out!
When your eBay data is pulled into Outright, we are now automatically categorizing each one in a custom eBay category. In the Income tab, your sales will be categorized as “eBay Sales” or “Shipping Income.” On the Expenses tab, your fees will be categorized as “eBay Fees” or “PayPal Fees.”
Even though these labels are custom, each one still rolls up to the proper tax category (“Sales” or “Commissions”) on your Schedule C. If you want to change the way that these custom categories are rolled up, you can do that in the “Categories” page.
Just click “Settings” at the top right corner of the site. Then click the “Categories” link on the next page.
If you go to Reports and look at “Income by Category” or “Expenses by Category,” you’ll see a summary of how your eBay sales breakdown by these custom categories.
Previous eBay Data
All of these enhancements apply to eBay data that is automatically imported into Outright starting on April 27, 2010. Your old eBay data will remain untouched and still look the way that they did before – that includes any prior duplicates. If you want to get rid of your old eBay data and start over again, follow these instructions, but note that you will only be able to get up to the last 90 days of data from eBay.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. We hope you’ll enjoy these updates, and we have more exciting improvements in the hopper, so stay tuned. If you have additional questions or concerns, please contact us at support@outright.com.
March 9th, 2010 Paul
Last year, Outright joined eBay’s Selling Manager Applications, making Outright’s free bookkeeping and other small business services available to eBay Selling Managers and Selling Manager Pros. The eBay Selling Manager Applications have proven to be so successful with eBay sellers that today, eBay has announced that their applications marketplace, newly rebranded the eBay Apps Center, is available to all eBay sellers.
There are now nearly 40 applications in the Apps Center, from bookkeeping and tax solutions (Outright), to listing and shipping tools to help eBay sellers save time in the most critical parts of eBay businesses. Every application in the directory is free, or has a free trial so you can try them out before you subscribe.
February 22nd, 2010 Kevin
In mid-January, we fixed a problem where certain eBay transactions were showing up multiple times in orders, creating duplicate entries. However, that fix did not handle any transactions that were imported before that point.
We want to inform our users of this potential discrepancy with how eBay transactions are displayed in your Outright account and ensure that you have complete information about your account as you prepare your 2009 income taxes.
Does this affect me?
This discrepancy only applies if:
- You have been automatically importing eBay transactions into your Outright account anytime from Jan 2010 or earlier.
- You have imported eBay orders that contain multiple items that were sold together (e.g. combined shipping orders).
What is the problem?
For any eBay order that contained more than one item, PayPal fees and shipping charges are being incorrectly duplicated for each item in the order. Instead, these transactions should only appear once for the entire order. The core problem was fixed in mid-January so this issue only affects transactions that occurred before then.
Any discrepancy is too significant for us but we’ve done a lot of homework and found that the average difference on shipping fees is only about $215 and the average difference on PayPal fee deductions is about $98.
How does this impact my 2009 taxes?
If you are seeing multiple shipping charges for a combined shipping order, your income will likely be overstated. If you are seeing multiple PayPal fees for a multi-item order, your business deductions will likely be overstated.
What can I do about this?
We are actively working on ways to identify and fix these duplicates. You will receive another email with instructions on how to ensure your 2009 records are corrected.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Resolving this issue is absolutely our top priority.
If you have additional questions or concerns, please contact us at support@outright.com.
November 18th, 2009 Bill
Howdy,
My name is Bill Watt and I’m running Product Management here at Outright. You’ll be seeing more posts from me as we introduce features and work with you to develop the product you need to run your business.
For my first post I bring to you a new display feature around eBay listing fees and the expense ledger. Previously every transaction from eBay showed up as a unique transaction on the ledger. Since most of our eBay users are sellers with multiple (and potentially hundreds) of listings this resulted in listing fees filling the ledger with every reslist. To try and make this more manageable we’ve made the following changes for listing fees only:
Weekly digest of listing fees:
Each week the first listing fee we import for your account creates an entry in the ledger and all subsequent listing fees for that week are added to the original entry. So every new listing fee in that week will update the total amount and the date. By the end of the week you’ll see one line for all the listings placed that week instead of all the individual entries you used to see.
Reporting maintains the details:
But we know you might want to see the individual transactions to check numbers and make sure everything is correct. All you need to do is go to the reports tab and click into the expenses on the P&L or go to the Expenses by Category report and select eBay to further refine the results. Here you will see all the individual transactions that we got from eBay.
Some questions you might have:
1. How can I find this “roll up entry” on the ledger?
This summary transaction looks like other transactions pulled back from eBay but it will have the description that says it is a listing or insertion fee but it won’t have a delete button. For now we’ve removed the delete option to prevent multiple transactions from being removed on accident.
2. I don’t like the way you categorize insertion fees, can I change the category used?
Yes, the one thing we left as an editable field was the category.
3. If you’re doing this weekly, how will my reports handle months that end in the middle of the week?
Because the individual transactions are still stored (no data is being lost) the reports use all the individual dates. This is simply to clean up the noise on the ledger?
How can you help?
Glad you asked! Have a look at your transactions starting with the import on 11/18 and look for insertion / listing fees without a delete option. Maybe let it sit for a couple days and see how the fees are rolled up and think about if this kind of summary transaction is useful, makes the ledger cleaner, and if the reports work for you with still having the full details there. After you’ve seen it work for a bit we’d appreciate it if you would click over to this survey and let us know what you think. If you like it please also include what other transactions would this kind of entry help you manage?
A couple things to know about the survey- none of the fields are required and you don’t have to tell us who you are but we’d appreciate as much info as you can provide. The survey is here if you want the link for later: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/206793/ebay-fee-enhancements
If you have any problems or follow-up questions about the fee handling or anything on Outright please shoot us an email (support@outright.com) or tweet at us using @Outright in the message and we’ll get back to you.
Thanks!
Bill
November 4th, 2009 Linda
I’ve always loved to shop but that never stops me from groaning and grumbling about commercialism each year when I see the first holiday décor hit the department store shelves on November 1st. But guess what? I just sent off hundreds of emails to all of my eBay customers and several Tweets off into the ethers, all of which offered great Early Bird specials from now until Thanksgiving. Have I become one of the bad guys?
I hope not. But as an eBay seller, and an eBay seller in a down economy, I admit that I see the world a little differently. These are leaner times and with customers who are more discerning and discriminating and have less disposable income, this can feel like a very competitive time of year. This is my third Holiday Season as an eBay seller and as I become a more seasoned (please, excuse the pun) seller, there are a few things I have learned:
- Buy Holiday-specific inventory in mid to late summer or as soon as possible. Buying early means I am able to get the quantities I need and I am less apt to get the dreaded “Sold Out” from my distributors. It also means I have time to place reorders if needed;
- List Holiday-specific inventory well before Halloween. Or, as soon as possible. I want to get the best bang for my buck with this merchandise and I want my customers to know I am ready for the season. Many buyers start their Holiday shopping before Halloween;
- Create a Promotion Box featuring seasonal items and feature it prominently on your eBay store homepage;
- Create a festive homepage for your eBay storefront, by changing the theme or color scheme
Seller, Manage Store > Store Design > Display Settings > Edit Current theme
- Create a specific Holiday category in your eBay store and direct customers there through a well-worded invitation e-mail;
- Rethink auction titles – at least temporarily. Can you update some of your titles to include Holiday keywords such as Stocking Stuffer, Chanukah, Christmas, Gift etc.?;
- Create a promotional flyer featuring your holiday items, gifts or stocking stuffers, etc. and include a copy in all of your shipments;
I could go on and on – there are countless ways to prepare your eBay store and your auctions for the Holiday Season. But don’t just take my word for it. In the spirit of the season, I am sending along what I think are some of the best ideas out there about how to make the most of the Holiday Season on eBay:
- Skip McGrath’s eBay Holiday Marketing Tips
- 10 Ways to Increase Your eBay Holiday Sales
- The 2009 Top 10 Holiday Selling Tips for Ecommerce Merchants
- 5 Costly Mistakes that Put the Scrooge in Your Online Holiday Sales
Are you ready for this Holiday Season? What’s your secret to successful Holiday sales?
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