Ebay managed Payments - and FreeAgent -reconciling payments

[paulears]

I've just started this managed payments thing and I'm having problems reconciling payments, now ebay deduct the selling fees and listing fees from the many they pay. Somebody buys something for say £330, and I get three hundred and something, as a payment. The FreeAgent drop down lists the outstanding invoices and so far the way it's working is that the payment coming in is more than the total of say a couple of invoices, so they get cleared, but then there's not enough to clear the next till the next payment arrives and it's a mess. Should I be creating some kind of counter payment for the fees? How do other people do ebay with FreeAgent? I'm just getting more and more confused reconciling the bank account - which was so simple before when every bank credit matched invoices exactly - and now they don't!

 

[wayzgoose]

I just add up all the fees charged at the end of the month and add that at the end of the monthly debits.

 

[paulears]

but that won't reconcile the banking, and you don't have enough money to clear the invoices. I'm confused?

 

[Anthony Kay]

You can increase the amount of the receipt to match the invoice then explain the difference and it will automatically create a payment.
Search using google for “freeagent split a transaction for commission or charges deducted” and the first link will take you to a support article on their website.

 

[paulears]

Got it! Thanks so much for that - it works perfectly!!

 

[paulears]

I spoke to soon - I'm having a very confusing time when they pay one payment for maybe 7 or 8 invoices, and I need to manually 'add' the fees component, which of course I cannot find until the end of the month. I've tried manually clearing the invoices but then the bank feed items go purple because they need matching, and of course they don't match in amount - trying to find out which invoice relates to each entry is evolution - and even worse when you get refunds it really messes things up. I'm sort of thinking maybe I just need to trust ebay, but of course I don't. By the end of this month, doing it the way FreeAgent suggest left me with all kinds of random oddments sitting on invoices and I think the reality is that when I get told it's paid, and to send it, that's the time to do the invoice, then clear it manually and either leave the purple items in the bank feed, or just delete them? I think I will probably just leave them as a record of payments received - but reconciling this mess must be terrible for people who hundreds of ebay sales. The time to sort this out is disproportionate to the sale margin.

 

[snappyfish]

I spoke to soon - I'm having a very confusing time when they pay one payment for maybe 7 or 8 invoices, and I need to manually 'add' the fees component, which of course I cannot find until the end of the month. I've tried manually clearing the invoices but then the bank feed items go purple because they need matching, and of course they don't match in amount - trying to find out which invoice relates to each entry is evolution - and even worse when you get refunds it really messes things up. I'm sort of thinking maybe I just need to trust ebay, but of course I don't. By the end of this month, doing it the way FreeAgent suggest left me with all kinds of random oddments sitting on invoices and I think the reality is that when I get told it's paid, and to send it, that's the time to do the invoice, then clear it manually and either leave the purple items in the bank feed, or just delete them? I think I will probably just leave them as a record of payments received - but reconciling this mess must be terrible for people who hundreds of ebay sales. The time to sort this out is disproportionate to the sale margin.

What did you do in the end?

 

[paulears]

What did you do in the end?

Carried on trusting ebay - I tried to match up each months statement, but its just close - I cannot track each transaction - so in free agent each invoice for each sale gets manually paid from the account set up in banking - all incoming money goes to there, and all outgoing is cleared from there. It's wrong of course but as close as I can get. refunds mess things up the worst - refund of the payment, plus the fee adjustments - I just don't have the time or inclination to try to reconcile it properly. Even weirder - the funding source often swaps to my second choice - which oddly has always been amex. No idea why I set this up - but why some things get paid that way rather than via the bank account I can't work out!

 

[snappyfish]

Carried on trusting ebay - I tried to match up each months statement, but its just close - I cannot track each transaction - so in free agent each invoice for each sale gets manually paid from the account set up in banking - all incoming money goes to there, and all outgoing is cleared from there. It's wrong of course but as close as I can get. refunds mess things up the worst - refund of the payment, plus the fee adjustments - I just don't have the time or inclination to try to reconcile it properly. Even weirder - the funding source often swaps to my second choice - which oddly has always been amex. No idea why I set this up - but why some things get paid that way rather than via the bank account I can't work out!

Maybe try this at some point.

Which eBay Reports To Use For eBay Seller Bookkeeping?

A quick guide of which eBay sales reports to use to account for your eBay sales, refunds, and fees without loads of waffle, then you're in the right place.

linkmybooks.com

 

[FrontierMan]

Login into eBay, on the Sellers Hub, click on the Payments Tab, you can then see a list of tranaction, sales and money paid into your bank, by the side of each sale tranaction is a > sign, click on that and it will open the tranasaction showing the fees taken.
Personally, I use Sage accounts, I just enter all my total weekly sales, (with out taking the fees out) then when I get the email from ebay about my monthly statement ready, I just print that out, enter the ebay fee fees for the mounth, then just check my bank statment to see if ebay has taken any other fees, such as Shop subscription etc.
For your accounts, you really need to know the Total of all sales for the month and the Total for all expenses, don't make it too compicated, you don't need to enter each transaction (sale) just the totals. I run a picture framing business with a shop and mail order, I just split the sales between the total sales in the shop and the total sales on the mail order side, been doing it for the last 15 years , al long as HMRC has the totals for the year, Sales (Turnover) and Outgoings , you can't go wrong