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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.
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”.
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.
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.
The formula for the “Program” box looks like, =If(M2=“CARD“,“PROGRAM“, “”).
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)“,””).
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.
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?