Split a transaction into multiple categories

Another one of the most frequently requested enhancements has arrived: the ability to split transactions into multiple categories.

Do you have charges on your credit card for multiple items that belong in different categories? Do you have deposits in your bank account from marketplace payouts that represent net amounts, after combining sales, shipping and subtracting fees. Well, you no longer need to choose a single category for each of those. Now, when you click the button to “Categorize” a transaction, you will see a new option to “Split” that transaction:

Now, click on the “Split Transaction” to break that transaction into multiple categories:

Notice that as you enter an amount in each row, the remaining difference is updated, to let you know how much of the original transaction you still need to account for. As you can see, you also have the ability to “Add Splits” to provide more detail.

For those of you selling on platforms like Poshmark, Mercari and others, who don’t provide APIs, this feature should help you get your numbers more accurate (in order to better match any 1099-k’s you may received.) Though feel free to contact those platforms and tell them to “get with the times”:)

As always, please let us know what you think of this change by emailing us at [email protected].

Categorize many transactions at once

One of the biggest remaining tasks that we’ve been working on simplifying is the ability to categorize all of your “uncategorized” transactions as quickly as possible. Well, today we took a big step forward by announcing 3 changes:

First, we’ve added some logic to shorten the descriptions we receive from banks and credit cards to shorter, more recognizable merchant and customer names.

Second, when you click on a dashboard button for “uncategorized” transactions (or if you click the “Uncategorized” filter button in your account view,) you will now be presented with a page that shows all of your uncategorized transactions grouped by merchant name or description, sorted by transaction count. This allows you to knock off the biggest grouping of uncategorized transactions as quickly as possible.

Categorize many transactions at once

Three, we have added the ability to select multiple merchant names/descriptions so you can categorize multiple groups of transactions at once. Do you see multiple vendors where you buy items for resale? Select them all, click “Categorize”, choose “Cost of Goods Sold” and boom!

Please let us know what you think of this change by emailing us at [email protected] or commenting on this post.

Update: April 2024

In the time since we launched this feature, we’ve updated some elements of the user interface. See below for a more current description.

When you click in from the dashboard, you’ll still see “uncategorized” transactions grouped by merchant/transaction name. But you may notice that we have some additional filters in the account views. You can always reproduce this option by clicking the “Type” filter and choosing “uncategorized”.

Categorize eBay transactions the way you want… plus more

Now that we have officially launched, it is time to get back to making the product better and easier to use. To do that, we’ve focused on a number of enhancements that came directly from our customers.

Customize how eBay transactions are categorized

First up, we heard from a number of people that they would like to be able to change how eBay data gets categorized when it comes in. As a refresher, here is how Seller Ledger handles eBay transactions by default.

But, we’ve heard some great reasons to change the default settings. Some examples include:

  • Putting eBay fees under the “Advertising” category rather than “Commissions and fees.”
  • Putting Shipping costs under “Cost of Goods Sold” instead of “Office Expense.” There’s an interesting debate here, which we plan to tackle in a future blog post.

However, one of the coolest ideas was to let customers have eBay order amounts go under a subcategory of Product Sales, so that, if you are a multi-channel seller, you could have a profit and loss that starts with something like this:

Categorize eBay transactions
Custom eBay sales categories

To make this possible, just go to our new “Customize” page under the Settings tab, and edit the transaction types you’d like to change:

Remember, if you want to use any sub-categories for eBay data, you’ll want to create those sub-categories first.

See your profit or loss by month, quarter or year

This one is pretty self explanatory:

Profit and Loss by quarter

On a related note, we also added totals to top right of the Income and Expense tabs, so when you drill down or filter for a specific date range and/or category, you can see the totals. This will also match the numbers your click from the profit and loss report.

Total of filtered expenses

Ability to delete sub-categories

A small enhancement, but for those of you who add a sub-category but then decide you don’t need it, or made a mistake, you can easily delete them. Of course, if you have categorized any transactions using that sub-category, you will need to re-categorize them. We won’t give you the option to delete a sub-category if there are any transactions using it.

That’s it for now. We’ve got a few other improvements coming soon, so stay tuned.

Bookkeeping for Multiple eBay accounts

Seller Ledger now supports bookkeeping for sellers with multiple eBay accounts.

Based once again on feedback from our wonderful Beta customers, we have added the ability to link multiple eBay accounts to Seller Ledger. This is especially important if you are looking to match the 1099-K that eBay sends. If you have multiple eBay accounts under a single Tax ID, eBay combines the totals for all accounts under that Tax ID.

Learn more about 1099-Ks and why bookkeeping helps you avoid unwanted discrepancies.

Bookkeeping for multiple eBay accounts
Bookkeeping for multiple eBay accounts

Connect multiple eBay accounts in Seller Ledger

If you have multiple individual eBay accounts, it’s simple to link them with Seller Ledger.

Just add each account, one at a time, and watch them show up on your dashboard.

You can see each account, the net sales amount, and how many transactions have been imported. Click through to view the transactions within each account.

To make tax time much easier, we roll up your sales and expenses across all of your eBay accounts into a single Schedule C tax report.

Automated bookkeeping for eBay sellers just got a lot easier for sellers with multiple accounts.

As always, keep the feedback coming. We’ll see you at the next feature announcement.