Features Archives - Seller Ledger

Consignment accounting

Seller Ledger on May 8, 2026

A while back, we wrote a pretty in-depth blog post about consignment sales and 1099ks. Since then, we’ve had a number of questions from customers about how to properly track consignment sales in Seller Ledger. And we’ve added a LOT of functionality to make that easier, so let’s dive right in.

It’s not inventory

The first thing to realize when dealing with consignment sales, is that, even if you are temporarily taking possession of the items to sell, they do not count as inventory because they never belong to you. While this may seem odd, it’s actually pretty freeing from a trackign perspective.

Instead, all you need to do is keep track of the consignment items that sell, and the net profit from each of those sales, and how much you owe to the consignor.

Fortunately, Seller Ledger automates most of that.

Net profit of each sale

Most consignees (the people doing the selling on behalf of someone else,) negotiate payment terms based on the money earned AFTER subtracting costs like shipping and fees. Normally, this requires a lot of time spent in spreadsheets. But for many online sales channels, Seller Ledger does this for you automatically. We import the sale price, any shipping label costs, order-related fees – everything. See how we do it for eBay, Amazon, Walmart and other platforms.

In this case, let’s say you were doing a 50/50 split with the consignor. That would mean sending her/him $15.74.

Categorizing consignor payments

As mentioned earlier, the items you sell on behalf of your consignor do not count as inventory. Then the question becomes, how do you treat those payments? As mentioned in that prior blog post, the most common category we see used is “Commissions & fees.” By making sure each of those payments gets categorized that way, you have legitimate expenses to reduce your taxable income from consignment sales that may show up on your 1099k.

Frequency of payments

The odds are, you don’t want to have to be sending lots of small to midsize payments to a consignor, especially if you start scaling the your consignment business. It would be better to keep track of what you owe each consignor and then send them payment on a regular basis when the amount owed hits a certain level. So how do you do that?

Well, it’s pretty easy. The phrase “how much you owe” should provide a clue. We just need to create a new “accounts payable” liability account that will keep track of how much you owe, and then when you pay it.

Tracking consignment commissions owed

To start, to go the Settings -> Accounts in your Seller Ledger account (or click “Manage accounts” on your Dashboard):

Scroll down the page a bit and click the button to “Add Liability Account.” Then, select “Accounts Payable” as the Account Type, pick a name and, optionally, a start date and opening balance.

If you sell items for more than one consignor, you might think about creating an account for each one of them. But as you’ll see, you can track all of your consignor payments in a single account too.

Now that you have created an account for tracking consignment amounts owed, click into it from your Seller Ledger dashboard to see options for recording bills and payments. Each time you have an item sell, and you calculate the commission based on the net profits we outlined earlier, simply click the button to “Record a bill” and enter the details for that commission amount. Don’t forget to categorize the amount owed as “Commission and fees.”

As you sell more items for this consignor, continue to record those commissions within this account. You will see your account balance grow over time:

Tracking commission payments

Now, when it comes time to send a payment to your consignor, you have a couple of choices on how to do it. If you have a linked bank account where your payment is imported, you can categorize the payment amount as “Transfer: Consignment: Joes Garage”. Or, if you don’t have a linked bank account, just click into this account, click the “Make a Payment” button, and record the payment details. Because we have multiple commissions to be paid out, we can click the “Apply to balance” option.

Click “Record Payment” and voila – you have paid all of the outstanding money owed to your consignor. And better yet, you get to determine how often you make those payements.

Track bills in Seller Ledger

Seller Ledger on May 6, 2026

As we recently announced with improved support for invoice tracking, we are also announcing similar improvements to tracking bills (a.k.a. money you owe to other people.)

For those sellers that may pay vendor on Net 30 terms, or for consignment sellers, this new functionality should come in pretty handy.

Tracking bills

The first thing you need to do is to create a new account to track your bills. In accounting parlance, these are “accounts payable.” Again, go to Settings -> Accounts (or click on the “Manage accounts” link in the lower left part of your Seller Ledger dashboard.) Scroll down the page to the Liabilities section and click the “Add Liability Account” button:

Next, choose the account type “Accounts Payable”, name your account, set an optional start date and opening balance, and you’re ready to start tracking bills.

Once you have created an account for tracking bills due, click into it from your Seller Ledger dashboard to see options for recording bills and payments.

Click the button to Record a Bill, fill out the details and click save.

Record payment of a bill

Very similar to how it works with Invoices, you have a couple of different ways to record payment of a bill. From within your linked bank account (or credit card,) you can categorize the payment amount as “Transfer: Bills Due”. When you do, you’ll see an extra button pop up to “Apply to Outstanding Bill”.

If you click that button, you’ll be show any outstanding bills to which you can apply that payment.

If you don’t have your payment account linked to Seller Ledger, you can always click back into the Bills Due account, click the “Make a payment” button and record it that way.

Track Invoices in Seller Ledger

Seller Ledger on May 6, 2026

As we continue to improve the product based on customer feedback, today we’re announcing the release of improvements to tracking invoices. In accounting parlance, this involves accounts receivable (money owed to you) accounts.

Why would I need to track invoices?

For many small sellers, cash-based accounting works quite well. You simply recognize income and expenses when you receive or spend the money. But as your business grows, you may to choose to use more of an accrual model, when you recognize income when you make the sale, since payment can come a biit later. For that, you’ll need some new accounts.

Tracking invoices

To track invoices in Seller Ledger, you’ll want to create a new account. Go to Settings -> Accounts, or just click “Manage accounts” at the bottom of the account list on your dashboard.

Click the “Add Asset Account” button to see the following:

Choose “Accounts Receivable” as the type, give the account a name and, optionally, a start date, and you’ve created an account that will let you keep track of the money people owe you.

Now, once you’re create your invoice account just click into it to start recording invoice transactions.

At the top of the screen, you’ll see buttons to “Add an Invoice” or “Receive a payment”

Click “Add an Invoice” and you’ll see a screen like the following:

You can even split the invoice amount into multiple categories if you would like.

Tracking invoice payments

When a customer pays an invoice, you can record that payment in a few different ways.

If you have connected the bank account where checks and payments get deposited, you should see the payment for an invoice show up there. Simply click to categorize that payment as a transfer to the new Invoices account.

Notice that, as soon as you choose the Transfer: Invoices option, a button appears to allow you to “Apply to Outstanding Invoice.” Click that and you can mark the specific invoice has having been paid.

And if you don’t have a connected bank account, just click into the Invoice account and choose the “Receive a payment” button.

Invoice amount tracking only

At the present time, Seller Ledger only allows you to track the amounts of your invoices. We do not provide electronic sending of invoices. Not do we yet support the ability for customers to pay your invoices electronically.

Introducing multi-user support

Seller Ledger on April 1, 2026

As bigger companies have started using Seller Ledger, we’ve started to get more requests for provide access to multiple team members. Well, we now have that!

Like we did when rolling out access for accounting professionals, Seller Ledger account owners can grant access to other team members. The same permission restrictions apply – team members will be unable to do the following:

Add or remove connected accounts, banks or credit cards
Change your billing information
Change your business name

To add a team member, simply go to Settings -> Business and click the button to “Add Team Member”

This will pull up a form asking for an email address. Just enter that and click “Invite”

That’s it. Your team member will receive an invitation to create an account on Seller Ledger to access your business books.

And, just like with accounting professionals, you can revoke access at any time. And there are no additional costs for using this feature.

Improved handling of transfers between accounts

Seller Ledger on March 26, 2026

Handling transfers between accounts is one of the most basic elements of proper accounting. In the world of eCommerce sellers, this includes payouts that get withdrawn from a marketplace account, like Amazon or eBay, and get deposited into your bank account. It also includes transactions like payments from your bank account to a credit card account. Because these transactions represent money that moves between accounts, they don’t impact your profit and loss. Making sure that they are treated properly is critical to accurate record-keeping, so you don’t end up double counting anything.

Seller Ledger does a great job of automatically recognizing transfers between different accounts and matching them. However, sometimes, due to timing issues with banks, or even potential mistakes make by customers, these automatic matches of transactions can get mixed up. To help with these cases, we’ve rolled out some improved functionality.

Match to a specific transaction

Let’s take an example of a credit card payment from your business checking account. You may have categorized it as a transfer to the correct credit card account, but it’s not showing as matched.

To help with that, just click the edit/pencil icon next to the current “Transfer” category. It will bring up a new “categorize” pop-up with a new option to “Pick matching transactions”

Click that button and Seller Ledger will now show you any transactions that match that same amount across different accounts you have in the software. In this case, it finds the payment made on that Wells Fargo credit card.

Just select the transaction, click “Match Selected”, and you’re all set.

Choose the date to start importing transactions

Seller Ledger on March 21, 2026

Since we launched, Seller Ledger has automatically imported up to 90 days of transaction history from connected marketplaces, eCommerce platforms, banks and credit cards. This was designed to give everyone a chance to really get to see how the software works for them, on real data, during the 30-day free trial.

However, a number of customers over the years have asked for the ability to choose a specific start date. This has been most prevalent at the beginning of tax years, as customers like to start “fresh” (often after switching from more expensive, more complex solutions:)

Setting your own start date

While Seller Ledger still imports 90 days automatically, it is now super simple to go in and change, on connected-account by connect-account basis, when you would like data to import from.

First, just click on the connected accounts whose import start date you’d like to change:

Next, click on the edit/pencil icon at the top of the account view:

You’ll see a new option to choose a start date. Just pick the start date you’d like:

Click “Save” and you’re all set.

If you had any transactions prior to the new date you’ve entered, they will be deleted from the system. If you don’t want those older transactions deleted, DO NOT set a more current date than you want transactions for.

Billing limitations still apply

If you are just starting a free trial, you won’t be able to enter a date from the start of the prior tax year (or longer.)

See your Walmart profit per order

Seller Ledger on February 25, 2026

As we have done with both eBay and Amazon, we also recently released the ability for Walmart customers to view the NET profit on each order.

Walmart profit per order

Click the “>>expand” link next to any order in your Walmart account. Under the category split totals that make up that order, you will see a new “related expenses” section that includes other fees and expenses that are tied to that order. This includes the Walmart commission charged for that order. In addition, if you purchase shipping labels through Walmart, we include that too.

Lastly, as mentioned when rolling out our Gross Profit report, if you track your inventory costs at the item level and use unique SKUs for each of your Walmart items, we will match those costs to the correct item. That, plus the other related expenses, helps you see the true NET profit for each order on Walmart.

If you are a Walmart seller who’d like this kind of visibility and automation in your accounting, give Seller Ledger a try. We offer a 30-day free trial, no credit card required.

Change the categories of Etsy transactions

Seller Ledger on February 15, 2026

While we’ve had this functionality around for a while, a recent customer email reminded us that we can always do a better job explaining how things work.

In this case, an Etsy seller wrote in and asked how she can change the category on Etsy ads from the default of “Commissions & fees” to “Advertising. And she’s not the first customer to ask this.

Fortunately, Seller Ledger makes it quit easy to make that change. Simply go to the Settings tab and click the “Customize” sub-tab. If will bring you to a screen that looks like this:

You’ll notice that there are a lot of different Etsy fees, including:

Generic fees
Listing fees
Prolist fees
Renew fees
Renew expired fees
Renew sold auto fees
Renew sold fees
Renew auto expired fees
Payment processing fees
Offsite ads fees
Transaction fees
Shipping transaction fees
Shipping label insurance fees

If, as our customer was asking, you wanted to categorize Offsite ad fees as “Advertising”, just click on the edit/pencil icon on the far right to be given this screen:

Then just change the category to “Advertising”, click the “Save” button and you’re all set. Seller Ledger will treat all of these transactions as “Advertising.” This applies not only to all future transactions, but all prior transactions.

What about regular Etsy Ads?

Unfortunately, Etsy does not make the fees for their “on site” ads available through their API. Learn how to handle them here.

Pro tip

You may wish to group some of these Etsy fees into more granular categories. For that, we recommend creating sub-categories, and then mapping these details fees to those sub-categories.

Automate your Whatnot accounting with updated Seller Ledger integration

Seller Ledger on January 31, 2026

When we first launched our Whatnot integration, the only sales data available to Whatnot sellers was their Ledger history. Customers could download those reports and then upload the CSV-formatted files to Seller Ledger. Since then, Whatnot has added weekly order reports, which provides much more transaction detail, including:

Item prices
Coupon costs
Shipping costs
Commission fees
Payment processing fees

To take advantage of that, Seller Ledger has rolled out new functionality to automate Whatnot accounting. Customers no longer need to download files from Whatnot and upload them to Seller Ledger. All of that is taken care of.

How to automate your Whatnot accounting

In order to fully automate your Whatnot account within Seller Ledger, you only need two things:

1. You should use the Chrome browser when accessing Seller Ledger so that you can also make use of the second tool (below.)

2. Once you are using Chrome, you will want to install Seller Ledger’s custom-built Browser Extension. This extension allows Seller Ledger to automatically pull down and import the proper transaction details.

You can learn more on how to get set up properly in this support article.

Once you are properly set up, Seller Ledger will regularly access your Whatnot account, retrieve the order, coupon, shipping and fee information.

New Walmart Channel summary page

Seller Ledger on January 29, 2026

Continuing the work with did for both Amazon and eBay, we’ve just rolled out a new channel summary page for Walmart. While Seller Ledger has been importing Walmart sales, refunds and fees for more than a year now, we’ve made it even easier to make sense of all of that detailed data.

From your Seller Ledger dashboard, just click into your Walmart account to view a screen like the following:

You can choose from a number of date ranges to see your data. You can click into any payout to view a summary of (and mini profit and loss statement for) that payout. You can even drill down to see every single transaction that makes up each payout.

You can also see a summary of your sales and expenses for the period, with a breakdown among selling costs.

Want help automating your Walmart accounting? Learn more about how Seller Ledger can help.