Advice needed on Ebay sales on invoicing/book keeping

[LeeT]

Hi folks,

I just have a couple of quires regarding Ebay sales and my accounts.

Do I need to create a separate invoice for each Ebay sale I do? Do they need to be entered as individual sales into my accounting software or can I raise a single invoice each time I transfer money from Ebay to business bank account?

Many thanks for reading,

Lee

 

[faradaykeynes]

You can record daily / weekly or monthly sales as one entry in accounting software and keep a backup of those amounts as a batch listing for records

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Some accounts packages might link to ebay and record automatically, saving a lot of time.

As long as you keep records/lists, there is no reason why you couldn't list cumulative sales daily or weekly.

Automation is the best solution.

 

[LPB 123]

Do they need to be entered as individual sales into my accounting software or can I raise a single invoice each time I transfer money from Ebay to business bank account?

As above, you can enter daily, weekly, monthly if you prefer. Remember if you're going to raise a single invoice for each eBay payout that they have already deducted their fees (fixed, variable and international fee) from this payout.

Also, as above there is a lot of apps / software that will import orders into your accounting software either on an order by order basis or in bulk. Their capabilities depend on a few factors.

What accounting software do you use?

 

[Billett]

I was following a guide on YouTube for recording it in a separate account, then sales receipts and so on. Become time consuming and ended up moving to Linkmybooks recently. I use it for my Amazon account mainly, but would highly recommend it

 

[paulears]

Since ebay moved got managed payments - how on earth would you even enter individual or clusters of invoices and link these to bank accounts? It fails as they no longer itemise the actual payments from each transaction. In free agent, I have an ebay bank account set up. when money appears in the main bank account, it gets transferred to the ebay account. When I create the individual invoices that I do for each sale, for the full price I then clear that amount with a manual payment. It's a mess, but this one my accountant can cope with - ebay commission is the difference between the two, but this seems to be totally different to what ebay are taking. The downside seems to be that I'm paying too much VAT because the invoice is for the amount the customers pay ebay, not what ebay pay me - but I cannot find any documented evidence I could use to change things, and this would really confuse things even further. I am made to trust ebay (which I don't) and nothing they produce seems to tally at all.

 

[LPB 123]

Since ebay moved got managed payments - how on earth would you even enter individual or clusters of invoices and link these to bank accounts? It fails as they no longer itemise the actual payments from each transaction. In free agent, I have an ebay bank account set up. when money appears in the main bank account, it gets transferred to the ebay account. When I create the individual invoices that I do for each sale, for the full price I then clear that amount with a manual payment. It's a mess, but this one my accountant can cope with - ebay commission is the difference between the two, but this seems to be totally different to what ebay are taking. The downside seems to be that I'm paying too much VAT because the invoice is for the amount the customers pay ebay, not what ebay pay me - but I cannot find any documented evidence I could use to change things, and this would really confuse things even further. I am made to trust ebay (which I don't) and nothing they produce seems to tally at all.

Paul, this is the way we do it.

We use an app that inputs all our sales individually with correct tax codes etc as sales receipts. These get deposited in to our eBay bank account by the app.

Every day when eBay transfer the payouts this is just dealt with as a transfer between bank accounts.

Then we deal with the fees at the end of the month. Our eBay "bank account" will reconcile to the penny at the end of the month.

Also FYI with eBays statements. It's better to use a CSV export than to use the figure they give you on your eBay statement as this will give you the exact money they've actually taken. 5 minutes job doing a sum all on the column for FVF fixed, FVF variable and international fee and adding together.

Let me know if you want any help with the CSV export and which columns etc.

 

[paulears]

Ah - didn't think to look at the CSV option. Thanks for this, I'll have a go. It is the primary cause of my bank balance never matching the free agent balance.

 

[Scalloway]

The downside seems to be that I'm paying too much VAT because the invoice is for the amount the customers pay ebay, not what ebay pay me -

What customers pay ebay is what you should pay VAT on. That is your turnover. Deductions made by ebay are a business expense. If you have valid VAT invoices from them you can reclaim the VAT portion.

 

[paulears]

The VAT is another area where totals are difficult to distribute - plus the UPS delivery option I use appears to circumvent the VAT component? I use the pac link option, which gives me UPS for £4.99 - but the pac link invoice has VAT shown as £0. If I use my UPS account, the same parcel costs £6 + VAT = £7.20, so using the ebay discounted scheme is better - but it's odd how that part of the transaction has no VAT charged.

For VAT, I've always used two factors - if there is a valid VAT number and amount, then it's in the accounts and recovered, and if there's no VAT number, it's not. It is not easy as some VAT charges are actually foreign (euro) VAT from companies you think are British - being invoiced from the Irish republic or Holland, for example - but I think I've got these sorted now. Oddly - I deal with a German company and all the invoices have a British address and a GB VAT number, despite going to their usual website in Germany with a .de URL - at some point the orders seem to be transferred to a British version and they charge and invoice.

Am I correct in thinking that with Ebay, the 'real' status is everyone pays you in full, and then ebay fees are deducted (fixed or variable) - and this is why I pay the VAT on the total price. Their global shipping system then messes things up again when they pay those ex-VAT doesn't it!

 

[LPB 123]

The VAT is another area where totals are difficult to distribute

This is where apps / software would help, as they will identify the country and set the correct tax rate accordingly in your accounts, also ignoring the eBay collected VAT, GST, IOSS, USA sales tax etc so that they don't enter your accounts.

For VAT, I've always used two factors - if there is a valid VAT number and amount, then it's in the accounts and recovered, and if there's no VAT number, it's not. It is not easy as some VAT charges are actually foreign (euro) VAT from companies you think are British - being invoiced from the Irish republic or Holland, for example - but I think I've got these sorted now.

eBay only invoice from eBay UK so all their fees are 20% rated. Their invoice will show you the breakdown.

What they take through the month is different, this is where the CSV export is crucial as this will give you the figures that actually took for the month.

Am I correct in thinking that with Ebay, the 'real' status is everyone pays you in full, and then ebay fees are deducted (fixed or variable) - and this is why I pay the VAT on the total price. Their global shipping system then messes things up again when they pay those ex-VAT doesn't it!

Yes that's correct - Can't advise on GSP as don't use it.

 

[MBE2017]

Been years since I sold on eBay but used to sell approx 30k sales per year, I just downloaded a CSV file.

 

[paulears]

Thanks for the advice - appreciated.

 

[LeeT]

You can record daily / weekly or monthly sales as one entry in accounting software and keep a backup of those amounts as a batch listing for records

Thanks, this is right for me, I will pretend all those long replies with complex solutions didn't happen ?

Been years since I sold on eBay but used to sell approx 30k sales per year, I just downloaded a CSV file.

Great, this is something I can do.

 

[Nicola78]

You can save your sales in software or tool and keep a backup of payment. And you can choose to have available funds sent to your business bank account based on your preferred payout schedule.