Make sure to deduct your Etsy Ad fees
We recently received an interesting question from one of our newer Etsy sellers. Where in Seller Ledger does one find Etsy ad fees? While we import 13 different Etsy fees, including one for “Offsite ads”, we do not show any for “Etsy Ads”.
What are Etsy Ads?
Like Offsite Ads, which promote your Etsy listings on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram and more, Etsy Ads allow you to also promote your listings, but on Etsy itself. You pay each time a user clicks on an ad and Etsy charges you.
So what’s the problem?
While these onsite Etsy Ads sound quite similar to “Offsite Ads”, the costs and payments of these ad fees are NOT included in any endpoints from Etsy’s API (application programming interface.) As a reminder, the API is what allows third party software platforms like Seller Ledger to access information from your Etsy store. We have confirmed with Etsy’s developer program that these fees are not included, though they did take our request to add them in the future.
Because these Etsy Ad fees/costs are not made available in the API, financial programs like Seller Ledger can’t automate as much of the accounting/bookkeeping as we’d like. But, we do want to remind sellers that these Etsy Ad fees are still valid business costs, and therefore legitimate deductions.
How should I track/deduct Etsy Ad fees?
Fortunately, Etsy does make this information available to you through their website. All you need to do in Seller Ledger is to go under the Expenses tab, click the “Add Expense” button and record the expenses. At minimum, you should do this at the end of the year to record all of your ad fees, but feel free to also make entries as often as you like (e.g. monthly, quarterly, etc.)
Etsy made clear in their response to us that they, like us, prioritize features based on customer feedback, so if this is something you’d like to see added to their API, please let them know at [email protected] .