If you're looking for 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.
Let's dive straight in.
DISCLAIMER
We are not Tax Advisors and so our advice and suggestions on the application of tax rules cannot be construed as tax advice. We highly recommend that users seek advice from qualified accountants for their tax compliance.
Firstly, taking a step back, let's have a think about what figures from your eBay reports you actually need for accurate bookkeeping of your eBay sales.
You will need the following:
The sales and refunds figures need to be split by destination country because they may need to be treated differently for VAT. For example, a sale going to a UK customer would typically incur 20% VAT, but a sales going to a customer outside the UK is classed as an export and, as such, is typically zero rated for UK VAT.
Depending on where your business is established, you may also need to consider sales where eBay is responsible for collecting and remitting the VAT directly to HMRC too. We can discuss this more later.
eBay recently made some upgrades to their Managed Payments Payout report, so the sales, refunds, and eBay fees we need are all in there now.
Your Payout report provides a summary of your payouts for a specific date range. Here’s how to download your Payout report:
The Managed Payments Payout report contains the following columns which we will use:
Now that you have the Payout report figures, you can enter them into your accounting software or spreadsheet.
Since eBay collect VAT on some sales but not others, you will need to sum up your sales into the following categories:
To do so, follow this logic.
Sales shipped to the UK (Seller VAT Responsible) are those where:
Sales shipped to the UK (eBay VAT Responsible) are those where:
Sales shipped outside the UK are those where:
eBay Sales
To find your sales figure, filter the report to show only "Order" types in the Type column, then total up the following columns:
eBay Refunds
To find your refunds figure, filter the report to show only "Refund" types in the Type column, then total up the following columns:
eBay Fees
To find your fees figure, firstly filter total up the following columns:
VAT on most eBay fees is 20%, but you should double check your monthly eBay fees invoice to ensure you do not have any that are zero rated.
As you may be seeing by now, doing your eBay bookkeeping manually is going to take time and patience, and even so, it will be pretty susceptible to human error.
Most eBay sellers decide that this task is something they don't want to spend much time on each month. So, what are your options if you too decide this?
Using an ecommerce accountant or bookkeeper
If you use an accountant or bookkeeper, then this will definitely save you some time. The downside is that they will charge you per hour for doing so. The likelihood is that it will take them just as much time as it would have taken you and this could easily end up costing you a few hundred pounds per month.
Using bookkeeping software
Using ecommerce bookkeeping software would be most eBay sellers' preferred choice. This is quick, accurate and cost-effective. One such tool is Link My Books.
Link My Books hooks up directly to your eBay account and accounting software such as Xero or QuickBooks and posts summaries of each of your eBay payouts following the same format as we discussed above.
We are trusted by thousands of sellers and is rated 4.9/5 on average across hundreds of reviews.
You can try Link My Books for free here.
When it comes to eBay bookkeeping, knowing which eBay reports to use and where to find them is just the beginning. Picking them apart and correctly putting all your sales, refunds and fees figures together is the hard part.
If you have the time and patience to learn the process, then do so.
Most sellers decide to focus on growing their business, so they either outsource their eBay bookkeeping or automate it.
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