Hello everyone,
I have my working hours reduced by 20% due to Covid, and very likely will be more if lockdown continues. So, I need a replacement income.
I am trying to set up a small business, buying stuff from China and sell it again with profit on Ebay.
My question is, except Excel, is there any simple application I can use to keep track inventory I bought (in unit and cost price), and record the sales as well?
Thank you, everyone.
Xero has an inventory module
Thanks, Xero is good software. So easy to use, I dont think I can afford it at the moment. I think I would use spreadsheet first, see if the business work or not.
How about buy stuff from Australia and sell it on ebay?
Win win
Good idea, but I hardly found anything I can resell, especially with capital only of couple thousand dollars
Xero /myob end thread.
I use QuickBooks.
eBay can keep track of your inventory, price and cost price.
For bookkeeping, since financial is bad right now, you can use free software like WAVE accounting or GNUCASH
Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks have ongoing cost.
I’d definitely go Xero, it’s easy to use. In saying that, I’d be more concerned about your business model. Are these products currently available on EBay? Have you ever imported from China before?
Perhaps drop shipping would be a financially safer option?
Dorpshipping anything from China these days would be a guaranteed method of earning heaps of negs on ebay unless you are willing to disclose delivery times would be 8-12 weeks.
Yes true, I am sure there is products still worth purchasing and selling on EBay, hopefully OP has found a nice niche
Thank you so much for your concern. Dropshipping is good idea, but time is the problem. I am not going for anything big, I just need extra income due to my job is getting less and less hour.I do not know any other method to make money with only couple grands initial capital, I have been doing work desk in the last 10 year.
No one wants crap from China now.
If you want free go Wave or quickbooks with a small monthly.
It really depends on the type of inventory and how complex it will be to keep track of it. For example keeping track of 100 books is very different to keeping track of parts for a car.
I also would be concerned about your tax situation. You’ll need to ensure you have accurate records to prove your sales and expenses.
You should operate a separate paypal and bank account specifically for this project so there is no dispute or confusion as to what is a private transaction and what is a business transaction. Xero and MYOB both require a bank account as the transactions then are easier to process because they will automatically download into the software transactions from your bank and paypal accounts. The software has monthly fees but it will keep all your records in order for tax time.
I would highly recommend talking to your accountant/tax agent before going too far into this because once you start you may have to go back and spend lots of time tracing through your transactions to calculate the income and expense of operating an eBay business.
I like Google Sheets as the software is free, cloud storage and easy to use and share. Easiest to export your transactions as csv file and open in Sheets. You can then delete unnecessary info and rearrange and label columns etc. Depends on your numbers of transactions, but you did say small.
Thanks everyone,
Time is tough for me at the moment. I dont have a strong business acumen, so, this idea come out of nowhere, and I thought was pretty simple. I will use spreadsheet for now, record in and out, (and as I said, I will start with couple hundred grands, so very small business indeed), if it is getting bigger and growing, I will get Xero maybe and talk to an accountant
Keep safe everyone and wish me luck
Google sheets?