On being an organised seller

[essel_emporium]

I find selling on ebay a bit difficult with the set up on ebay.  Sure you can list stuff and see it selling, but if you have more than a few items it can be difficult to know what’s going on with each item.

I have someone who bought an item and paid for it (incl postage), and now wants to buy other things.  I said that would be fine and I’d combine postage for them.  Then there was someone else who wants to do the same but had the paypal amount reversed and I will also combine postage with them too.  And there are all the emal notes.  I find the ‘notes’ feature handy for summarising my communications with people but you put the notes on an item not against a buyer.  And when I refund paypal and reissue a new invoice there is no record of it being reissued (on ebay that I’ve found) except in my personal email; which is okay so long as I remember!

Then there are people like me.  I spent years buying from regular sellers who were happy for me to either pay immediately using paypal, send cheques, use bank cash transfers, (with or without postage costs) or pay in cash upon pickup.  And they never complained once.  I don’t know how they managed all this, along with their other buyers who may also have been like me.  I don’t know how I’d cope with someone like me!

I can see all this getting very messy if I have a lot of things going on at the same time.  How do other people manage their selling activities without getting into a mess?

[yeoldecoinco]

Hello.

One way I have found to keep track of eBay, is to write each sale up into a ledger book.

I have a lot of sales, writing them into a book and listing the eBay username, address, amount, date sent, method of postage and what they bought makes it easier to keep track.

I also put into the ledger any tracking receipt numbers next to the name of the buyer.

By doing this, everything is kept in one place and it makes it easier to keep track of them.

Later today, I have six parcels or packets to send.

Each person is written in the ledger book, so even if my computer was down, I could at least still get those parcels sent for the day.

Kind regards.

Richard.

[clarry100]

Chameleon...

Pretty much ditto how we operate. Especially working on a single item at a time to avoid stuff-ups.

If we have customers who have multiple orders (multiple sales records) or qty > 1 then we work thru those on the Awaiting Shipment list first. Once they are done we know the rest are single orders. This avoids missing a multiple qty order. We also work from the oldest order (in time) first (bottom up) just in case a customer places a 2nd order while we are making/packing. This avoids (mostly) having to open an envelope to include another later ordered item. Once an item is packed and in the mail-out box we then leave FB for the buyer and mark the item as Posted. Seems to work well for us.

Then at the end of each month I download the Paid & Posted report for the month and keep that in Excel. Also download the full PayPal transaction history record for the month. So I have all my sales/payment records local if ever I need to refer back to something.

DG...

Yes we also use the comms log to keep track of what comms have been sent and when. Handy tool!

We rarely make errors, but if on the odd occasion we do, then we fess up immediately and apologise to the buyer when they let us know and happily correct or replace the mistaken order. Always get a POS when we do this so it works.

[lane-ends]

I'm still old school. Each sale i print winner email, . This becomes hard copy for file on which i scribble any relevent notes. eg buyer will pay by XYZ, combined items sheets get stapled to gether total jotted onto it, noted whether regular,express etc. date payment cleared.  Cross checked shipping address,(send to paypal only) size of satchel used etc. Any problems with the transaction, refunds issue, sale cancelled etc all get noted on this sheet.

if I get any queries on it I grab the sheet it is all at hand, including item number and buyer email so I can then easily retreive it from ebay if required. I archive everything from sold page once posted, and leave fb than.

[chameleon54]

Just a few thoughts on item storage & stock control. Theres nothing more frustrating than searching for an item that has sold and not being able to find it. My stock control all centres around care in listing and storage. Once an item is listed it goes straight into organised storage systems, designed for commercial businesses. If there are multiple quantities of an item I take a lot of care with counting to ensure I register the correct number for sale, because once they are stored I will not check them again untill sold. One thing that I find helpfull with multiple qty items is that when the second to last one has sold, I check that the last one is still in stock. If I sell an item but it does not recieve payment I always open non payment disputes. Around half of buyers pay, the other items are relisted as soon as case is closed. This is another form of stock control. If I relist an item that has lapsed into "unsold items" for some reason, I physically check that I still have it and it is in the correct storage space before relisting it. Spare items awaiting listing are also stored in efficient commercial type storage systems so that I can find them quickly if a customer asks for them. . These methods allow me to keep track of over 2500 listed items across three selling accounts. The answer in all of this is to work out a simple system using some of the ideas from the thread which suit YOU best. A log book or spread sheet may be the answer for you or maybe just the ebay icon system. Everyones business and work methods are different. The most important thing is the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid.

[clarry100]

Chameleon...

You sound far more organised than us insofaras storage/stock control goes. But you have lots more items to manage than us too. We only have around 200 BIN listings total across our 2 stores. Lots with variations. Sizes, colours etc.

But we utilise the "Custom Label" field to assign a letter-number unique sequence. We also put that label on our storage bins so it is easily found when needed. The label also has an embedded code which tells us which store it sold from. In this way we can readily separate sales for tax tracking purposes.

We will do a count on new stock as it arrives, more to check that the supplier is doing the right thing than anything else.

But as stocks of a particular item start to get down a bit we will do a detailed count check and just make sure our listing stocks align.

Some of our items are sold stand-alone and the same item may also be used to make up other items, so it's important to keep across quantities as they get a bit low as this can affect more than one listing across the two stores.

I can electronically upload into MYOB based upon this "Custom Label" as when we started out we were going to use this as our accounting and stock control package. But after talking with my tax accountant he advised while MYOB will do the job admirably it is too complex for our small time operation. So we have tuned down to an Excel s/sheet to capture all our income/expenditure for tax purposes. Much quicker and simpler. And since I am a bit of a dab-hand at Excel (and MSAccess DBs) from an old engineering background it has a few small analytical features built in as well.

It may not be the best stock control/accounting system around as neither of us come from that kind of background, but so far its working for us.

But... just thought I'd write a bit about this in case someone else might pick up an idea or two for their own use. Or even suggest something new we might try out. Always open to that too.

[chameleon54]

Clarry, you sound like you have got a good system going. The items I sell are all used one offs, or bulk Qty. new old stock, so I dont have to worry about re-ordering. Once they are gone they are gone. This does mean I constantly have to relist new stock though, which is a bit of a pain. My record keeping is pretty basic. I just use a small note book, with a seperate page for each ID every month. I record sales using ebays 30 day & 120 day sales figures. ( and make an allowance for the extra 5 days at the end of the year ) Record ebay & paypal fees. Record stock purchases and thats about it. I only charge actual post & packing cost on average, so keep reciepts in case of audit, but dont record each days posting or bulk post bag purchases. ( What goes out in expenses equels what comes in re. buyers postage fee.)  This may have to change if ebay include post cost in total for 30 & 120 day sales figures under new FVF on postage arrangements. ( sigh.........More paperwork to do ). I may just work out exactly what % postage costs make on my total sales on average and just deduct this % from sales total.  Basically book-keeping is as simple as I can make it and takes around 20-30 minutes per month. The methods I use are crude but fairly effective and give a reasonably accurate record for tax purposes. . ( I,m not big on keeping imaculate records i,m afraid, thats my achilles heel )

[digital*ghost]

You guys are way more organised than me... This is my system:

Order comes in

Another order comes in:

Then I mentally 'organise' what I can do with the proceeds - that can take a while

At some point, usually while I'm browsing the forums, I realise I actually have some work to do

Freak out for a bit

Finally get everything packed and ready to go

Another order comes in

By some miracle, I usually manage to find and pack everything plus even get it posted

Lather, rinse, repeat.

[chameleon54]

       LOVE IT, Especially the bit about the forums. That just reminded me I've got packing to do !!!!

[clarry100]

DG...

You're a riot.

But since you live in Adelaide (I used to live at Lyndoch in the Barossa) I didn't see time out in there for a glass of red. LOL

[chameleon54]

So are you still in sunny SA Clarry ?, I,m in beautifull SA myself.