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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