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How to Keep Track of Your Reselling
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Just like with manufactured spending, keeping your reselling organized is very important. That way you know where your money is going, what your items are selling for, and how much profit you’re making. It makes reselling a lot easier, because you can reference that information at any time.
As an example, let’s say you found a really cheap item worth reselling. You bought it, sold it, and made a profit, but you didn’t keep track of the information (how much you bought it for and sold it for). Then, you find the same item at a very cheap price a few months down the road. Great right? Yeah, except for the fact that you don’t remember what you bought it for and sold it for the last time around, so you have to research it again before committing.
That’s not super time-consuming, but it would be much easier to simply reference a spreadsheet than it would be to research that item again.
In addition to convenience, it’s also important for tax purposes. Amazon will send you a 1099-K if you sell more than 200 items and make more than $20,000 in gross sales in a year. If you have a business reselling, you’ll likely hit this number very quickly, which means you’ll need to report your earnings and expenses come tax season. You know what would make reporting that much easier, if you had a spreadsheet.
Am I beating a dead horse? Probably. Let’s get to the tracking part of this post.
Keeping Track of Receipts and Emails
There’s nothing special about the way I track receipts and emails, but for completeness I’ll tell you anyway. I keep all my receipts in a folder, similar to the way I keep track of my gift cards and money orders. I haven’t needed them yet, but just in case I do, I have them.
My emails are kept in a similar fashion as my receipts, the only difference is they’re electronically filed. I throw all my purchase confirmation emails in a gmail folder aptly titled “Purchases”.
Budgeting Your Reselling
If you read my recent post on keeping track of your manufactured spending, you may notice that I track my reselling in a similar fashion. For resale, I have a budget category called “resale” where I budget a certain amount every month. Once I exhaust that amount, I stop buying resalable items that month until I replenish it with my earnings. I use YNAB for all my budgeting.
Keeping Track of Individual Transactions
This is where things get a bit interesting. I use a spreadsheet,similar to my manufactured spending one, that tracks all my purchases, sales, and points earned. It requires a bit more work than my MS one, because there is less you can automate, but it’s still very quick to fill out after making a purchase.
Here’s a general idea of what it looks like (It’s too large to fit the whole thing in a picture):
Most of it’s self explanatory, but just in case, we’ll go over it column by column.
- Date: This is the date that the purchase was made. The shortcut to enter the date on Excel and Sheets is Ctrl + ; (Command + ; on a Mac).
- Cost: This is the total cost of the purchase including taxes and fees.
- Store: This is the store where the item(s) was purchased. There is a drop down menu of common stores in this column.
- Purchased: This is the item(s) you purchased.
- Selling: This is where you plan to sell the product. The drop down menu lists common online marketplaces.
- Plan to Sell $: This is what you plan to sell the product for based on your research.
- Sold: This is the amount that you receive, inclusive of fees, after an item sells. In other words, this is how much Amazon gives you for the sale. Leave this blank until it sells.
- Sold Date: This is the date the item(s) sell.
- Portal Points Earned: This is the amount of points, miles, or cash back you earn from a portal for the purchase.
- Portals: This is the portal you used and earned the points from. I have a drop down menu setup for common portals. You can adjust this.
- Portal Type: This is the type of points, miles, or cash back you earned from the portal. There is a formula set up on these cells that autofills based on the portal selected.
- CC Points Earned: This is the amount of points, miles, or cash back you earned from using a credit card.
- Card: This is the card you used for the purchase.
- Program: These cells autofill based on what card you choose in the previous cell.
- Notes: This is where you can put any notes needed for the purchase.
Edit the drop down menus
- Go to Data > Validation.
- Select your cell range which should look like, “Template!X2:X100″ with X being the column you want to edit. In this example, it’s H, since we’re editing the credit cards.
- In the criteria box, you can enter the cards that you want tracked. Separate the cards by commas, but don’t put a space between the comma and word (e.g. card 1,card 2,card 3).
- Select Save and you’re done.
Edit the formulas
- Double click the box whose formula you want to edit in X2 with X being the column you want edited.
- Edit the formula.
- Drag the bottom right corner of X2 to X100 to automatically update the rest of the cells in that column.
Program Formula
The formula for the “Program” box looks like, =If(M2=“CARD“,“PROGRAM“, “”).
- CARD is the name of the card under the card column. These cards need to match up identically to the cards you put into the drop box menu.
- PROGRAM is the name of the program you want entered when you select a certain card. For example, if you want the program to be Ultimate Rewards when you select Ink Bold from your card menu, then you would replace PROGRAM with Ultimate Rewards.
- “” – This is where you can continue the formula to add more cards. It will look like this:
=If(M2=“CARD1“,“PROGRAM1“,=If(M2=“CARD2“,“PROGRAM2“, “”)) and continued. Just replace “” with =If(M2=“CARD”,“PROGRAM”, “”) every time you want to add another card.
Portal Type Formula
The formula for the “Portal Type” box is just like the Program formula, except in this case it would be =If(J2=”PORTAL NAME“,”TYPE OF REWARD (POINTS,MILES,CASH BACK)“,””).
Earned This Month Formulas
Every number box under “Earned This Month” has a formula attached to it. This is because the boxes automatically pull the points you earn per transaction into the monthly total. You will likely want to edit this box to work with the programs you have programmed into the program formula. Can I say program any more times in that sentence?
Here’s what the formula looks like, =(SUMIF(N:N,”Ultimate Rewards”,L:L))+(SUMIF(K:K,”Ultimate Rewards”,I:I)).
This formula adds every box in column L and I that says Ultimate Rewards in its corresponding columns N and K to the total. So, if you add more programs with the previous formula, you will want to change the Ultimate Rewards part of this formula.
You can download the spreadsheet here.
Conclusion
Just like with anything, organization all comes down to preference. If you like parts of this spreadsheet, but not others, feel free to change it around and give me some suggestions.
If you already track your reselling, what type of system do you use?
