Bruce:

Welcome to GnuCash, congratulations on the eBay business, and I hope it goes well for you.

It sounds like your question is not about GnuCash, it is about accounting. Once you know how the information should get tracked as an accounting matter, it will be straightforward to explain how to record that information using GnuCash as the recording tool.

Do you have an accountant advising you?  If so, ask them for their advice about how to record this information.  Have you read an introductory accounting textbook?  If not, maybe this is a good time for that learning.

You say,

…Under Income I have eBay Transactions (and I want this to reflect the eBay All Transactions page).…

From what you describe, this sounds to me like it should be an Asset, not Income. It is something like Accounts Receivable from eBay. The eBay All Transactions page as you describe it lists a sale, where eBay starts to owe you money, then a deduction for cost of sales, where eBay reduces the amount they owe you, then a payout, where eBay reduces what they owe you to zero by sending you money. So: it sounds to me like the type of this account should be Asset, not Income.

…Things get way out of hand when I make multiple sales in one day. I would enter a split transaction for every sale, so if I had four transaction – I would show four split transactions made up of the sale, the final value fees, and the shipping label. However – I would only have one payout. So if I take the income from the sale and post it directly to checking, I end up adding 1 of 4, 2 of 4, 3 of 4, … to the front of the description field. Then when looking at my checking account – I would need to add together each individual transaction to equal my payout.…
It sounds like you should be entering only one transaction from the eBay Accounts Receivable account to the chequing account, to correspond to the one payout per day. There is no need to make a transaction between these two accounts for each eBay sale. The amount of the one daily transaction equals the amount of the eBay payout, and the amount which arrives in your chequing account.

Note that the balance in your eBay Accounts Receivable account starts at zero each day, increases as eBay makes sales, decreases as eBay charges you fees, then drop to zero when eBay makes the daily payout.

…When I look at my checking account, I can match it by the dollar amount, but since payouts post in two business days, the date does not match up. But it is simple enough to figure out.…
In my finances, it is completely normal for a transaction to take multiple days to play out, so the statements from various parties to the transaction will have different dates.  For instance, I pay a store by credit card on May 1st. When I get my credit card statement, it has two dates for the transaction: transaction date, and posting date.  The transaction date is May 3rd, because the store did not report the sale to the credit card company for a little while.  The posting date is May 4th, because the credit card company also took a little time to process the transaction.

GnuCash only has one date field per transaction, so I choose one of those three transaction dates as the representative date to record in GnuCash.

It is possible to enter multiple GnuCash transactions to record the separate steps and the time delay in transactions, but I almost never find it worth the bother.

Does this answer your question?
      —Jim DeLaHunt


On 2024-05-31 10:25, Bruce Griffis wrote:
I’m looking for help in figuring out GnuCash for a small eBay reseller, basically selling items from home, but occasionally purchasing an item for resale. I’m looking at this from the perspective of viewing sales from the My eBay / Selling / Payments / Total Sales page.


Under Assets, I have Checking account, Savings account, Cash account and eBay Inventory account (I get that GnuCash does not support inventory – I just build this using a CSV export from Libre Office Calc). Under liabilities I have a secured credit card.


Under Income I have eBay Transactions (and I want this to reflect the eBay All Transactions page). Under expenses I have eBay Final Value Fees, eBay Shipping Labels and eBay Refunds. I also have standard small business chart of accounts to support basics of purchasing boxes, bubble wrap, bubble mailers, tape, poly bags, …


When I look at making just one sale in a day, this approach works pretty well:

On eBay All Transactions I have one entry that gives Date, Description (the item that was sold),

Amount (this is gross amount), Fees (this is eBay Final Value fees), Net (the net amount I receive – if I pay shipping (offer free shipping), net gets reduced by my shipping label costs), Total Funds.


I then see a second transaction under All Transactions for the purchase of the shipping label. This includes Date, Description, Amount and Net. Since Total Amount is the amount in this account before payout, my total amount in this account gets modified (it gets reduced by shipping label amount).


I then see a third transaction. The third is my payout. This includes Date, Description, Amount and Total Amount. Amount is the dollar amount that hits my checking account in two business days. Total Amount is the Total in this account (eBay Funds? I need to figure out what to descriptively call it). If I only had one sale in a day and did not make any new sales then Total is zero.


To reflect this, I enter a split transaction.

I enter the Date, Description and Gross amount for the sale.

I enter another transaction in the split. This is Date, Description, eBay Final Fees (an expense). This goes into Expense account eBay Final Fees.

I enter another transaction in the split. This is Date, Description, Shipping label cost and goes to eBay Shipping Labels expense account.

I enter a third transaction. This is my payout. It usually simply matches Imbalance-USD. This goes to my Income account Checking.


When I look at my checking account, I can match it by the dollar amount, but since payouts post in two business days, the date does not match up. But it is simple enough to figure out.


Things get way out of hand when I make multiple sales in one day. I would enter a split transaction for every sale, so if I had four transaction – I would show four split transactions made up of the sale, the final value fees, and the shipping label. However – I would only have one payout. So if I take the income from the sale and post it directly to checking, I end up adding 1 of 4, 2 of 4, 3 of 4, … to the front of the description field. Then when looking at my checking account – I would need to add together each individual transaction to equal my payout. Now I am not matching on date (posted two business days later) and amount (I need to add individual sales together to correlate with the days payout.


Additionally, Refunds get pulled out of the running eBay Funds account (that I need to create in GnuCash). If the funds in that account aren’t enough t cover it, the refund comes out of checking as a direct debit.

Any recommendations on how I would show multiple sales in a day making up one entry into my checking account? Do I need another account – send my payouts there. Then group multiples in another split (if I can do that?) to show the days transactions? Or do I need to think about doing an accounts receivable kind of thing and bundle multiple transactions into an A/R account for the day for when I have more than one sale in a day?
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