eCommerce Archives - Seller Ledger

Import Mercari sales report into Seller Ledger

Seller Ledger on November 8, 2023

We are pleased to announce that Mercari sellers can now import their sales report into Seller Ledger.

Like Poshmark, Mercari does not provide a public API, so we can’t automatically grab your transaction history like we can with Amazon, eBay and Etsy. But, just as we do with Poshmark, we allow you to upload the Mercari sales report.

Step 1: Download your Mercari sales history

In your Mercari account, navigate to the Seller dashboard (under your profile image.) From there, click on “Sales report.” You will be asked for both a beginning and end date for your transaction report. Once you have selected the date range, click the “Generate report” button.

You should see a .csv file generated, with a name that begins with “Custom-sales-report” and ends with the date range you selected. Download that file to your computer.

Step 2: Add a Mercari account in Seller Ledger

When you click the “Add account” button under Connected Accounts on your Seller Ledger dashboard, you will now see an option to “Connect to Mercari.”

After clicking the Mercari button, enter a name for your new account and click “Create Account”

Step 3: Upload your Mercari sales report file

Once you’ve created your new Mercari account, you’ll see it among your list of connected accounts on the Dashboard. Note the icons that differentiate between accounts that automatically connect and those that require CSV files be uploaded.

Clicking into the balance shown for your new Mercari account and click the “Import History” tab. Here you will see the option to upload a CSV file. Choose the file you downloaded from Mercari and click “Save.” Your file will be uploaded and your transaction history will be imported into Seller Ledger.

Trial users

If you are still in your trial period, Seller Ledger will only import the last 90 days of transaction history, regardless of how large your Mercari file is.

Step 4: Categorize your Mercari payouts properly

If you have connected a bank account to Seller Ledger, there’s a good chance your Mercari payout totals are showing up there. To ensure that nothing is getting double-counted, make sure to categorize those payouts as transfers. Simply scroll to the bottom of the categories list and find your new account.

Step 5: Remember to regularly update your Mercari sales in Seller Ledger

Because we can’t pull in your new sales and expense information on the daily, you’ll want to make sure to come back every once in a while to upload your latest sales history. How often you choose to do so is your choice. We show the date of the most recent imported transaction on the Seller Ledger dashboard to help remind you.

Lastly, if you make a mistake with any of your uploaded information, it’s not a problem. The “Import History” tab shows you all of the files you’ve uploaded over time, with the ability to simply delete one or more and try again.

We know there are other channels out there that provide CSV files of transaction history. If you would like to see other channels supported, please email us at [email protected] with your interest and, if you’d like to be particularly helpful, a sample of a transaction history file from that channel.

Cheers,

The Seller Ledger Team

5 Things Online Sellers can do this fall to prepare for Filing 2023 Taxes

Seller Ledger on October 18, 2023

So often we find ourselves in the springtime questioning why didn’t we do more to prepare,
and tax season ends up being a time-pressured, stressful undertaking. It doesn’t have to be
that way though, as there are many things you can do now to make the process much easier
after the end of the calendar year.

1. Ensure you have a consistent means of tracking your finances, including both your sales and expenses, every month.

There are many different ways to do this, and you should select the method that is right for
you. Some sellers track these manually in a spreadsheet and others use automated
bookkeeping software such as Seller Ledger to make the process faster and easier with
automated imports from sales channels and bank/credit card accounts. The key is to ensure
you are tracking every sale and every expense, and it’s a good idea to summarize this data
monthly to see how your business is doing.

2. Learn about the changes coming for 1099K regulations in 2023.

In 2022, the IRS had planned to require sales channels like eBay, Amazon, and Etsy to issue
a 1099K to anyone selling over $600 (vs $20,000 previously), only to announce at the last
minute that the change would be delayed to 2023. Many organizations continue to lobby for a
higher dollar threshold, but as of the time of this article, the IRS states that it will require 1099K
forms for anyone selling $600 or higher in 2023. Note that different companies may calculate
their 1099K’s differently and you’ll want to be aware of how they do it.

3. Develop your strategy to know how much inventory you have on hand.

There are many ways to manage inventory. Some sellers count their inventory monthly,
quarterly or annually to assess its value, and this is ideal, but it is too huge a task for others. It’s
important to document the purchase price of your items when you buy them so you know how
much you’ve spent on Inventory. You can do this in a spreadsheet, or Seller Ledger makes it
easy to categorize inventory purchased through your connected bank/credit card accounts.
When an item sells and you ship it off, the value of your inventory goes down by the value of
that item, and that amount becomes Cost of Goods Sold for your taxes. Seller Ledger can
manage this process automatically for you so you’ll always know how much inventory you have
on hand and you’ll know your Cost of Goods Sold amount for tax time.

4. Make sure you are tracking things like mileage expenses and home office expenses so you’ll remember to include these in your 2023 tax filing.

Every time you drive to a store to purchase inventory, or drive to the post office to ship
products, you are using your vehicle for your business. You can either deduct vehicle expenses
individually (such as buying a business vehicle, or car insurance), or you can use the mileage
deduction every time you take a trip on behalf of the business. If you’re using Seller Ledger,
you can just enter the number of miles you traveled for work and Seller Ledger automatically
uses the IRS standard mileage rates to track the expense for you. Your home office and things
like your storage spaces are deductible too. Make a list of all the areas in your home that are
dedicated to your business and you’ll have it handy when needed for taxes.

5. Consider investing in accounting/bookkeeping software that can automate much of this process for your business.

Seller Ledger currently supports eBay, Etsy, Poshmark (through CSV uploads) and Amazon (in
beta) with additional channels coming soon. There is a 30-day free trial and pricing is
$10/month for up to 250 transactions/month. There are no additional fees for selling through
multiple sales channels or for using advanced features such as inventory management. You can
connect your sales channels as well as Paypal and your bank and credit card accounts for
automated data imports. Drop down menus make it easy to categorize expenses. Monthly,
quarterly and annual financial reports help you to understand how your business is performing,
and make it easy to prepare for estimated quarterly tax payments. For annual taxes, a pre-
populated schedule C form is prepared for you.

If you’re going to begin using an automated software platform, the sooner you start on it the
better. Some banks have limitations on how far back they’ll allow you to go in directly
importing transactions (many restrict it to 90 days), so to capture the most data possible, don’t
wait before signing up. You can start your free 30-day trial at SellerLedger.com.

Pay eCommerce estimated taxes – accurately and on time

Seller Ledger on August 19, 2023

In time for 2023 third quarter estimated taxes, Seller Ledger has released a new feature to make calculating your tax obligation easy.

New “Quarterly” taxes tab

Under the Taxes section, you will see a new tab labeled “Quarterly”. Clicking on it will bring you to a screen like this:

Seller Ledger now estimates your quarterly tax payments based on your year-to-date business results and shows you the correct payment deadlines for the selected year. We take care of the rates for Social Security and Medicare, and let you choose the federal income tax rate that applies to your situation (see the new “Business” tab under Settings:)

If you under- or over-pay for one quarter, Seller Ledger will remember that for future quarters. To record payments, just use the new “Estimated tax” category that has been added to your account, so Seller Ledger knows to apply the payment correctly.

Click here to get a copy of the latest IRS form 1040-ES.

As always, feedback is very much appreciated, so let us know how we can improve things at [email protected].

Connect your Etsy store to Seller Ledger

Seller Ledger on April 18, 2023

We are now officially multi-channel!

Seller Ledger now supports a direct integration with Etsy to bring in your product sales, expenses and fee information.

How to link Etsy

From your Dashboard, below your current connected account(s), simply click the “Add Connected Account” button and you will see an updated screen with a new option:

Connect to Etsy — Connect your Etsy store to Seller Ledger

Click on the button with the Etsy logo and follow the steps to give Seller Ledger permission to import your information. If you have more than one Etsy store, just repeat the process for each store.

By default, Seller Ledger will import 90 days worth of transaction history when you connect Etsy. We will then categorize them as follows:

Etsy value	Seller Ledger Category
Order value	Product Sales
Shipping	Shipping Collected
Discount amount	Discounts
Refund amount	Refunds
Shipping Label	Office expense
Etsy fees	Commissions & Fees

If you’d prefer, Seller Ledger also allows you to customize how you’d like to see your Etsy information to be categorized. Just go to the Settings tab and click the Customize button:

We posted earlier about ways you might want to consider using this feature.

Help spread the word to other Etsy sellers

We have seen a number of posts on the Etsy Community about GoDaddy Bookkeeping going away. If you have a chance, we’d love your help in letting folks there know that a new solution is available.

Let us know what you think

We’re always looking for constructive feedback, so please let us know what we can do to make Etsy bookkeeping easier and better. Email us at [email protected]

It’s Official: We’ve launched

Seller Ledger on March 31, 2023

Launch day! Seller Ledger has officially exited its “Beta” period and now offers automated bookkeeping software that’s specifically designed for online sellers.

First, a “thank you” to our Beta customers

There is no way we could have pulled this off without the help of more than 300 online sellers who took the time to bang on our software to find the bugs, the data discrepancies, and the things that just weren’t easy enough to use. Your commitment to helping, your patience with the flaws, and your continuous communication made this possible.

What does it mean to “launch?”

No, we’re not throwing some big event (though we can’t rule that out for future milestones:) Launching simply means we are at the point where we’re asking folks to pay to continue using Seller Ledger. It also means we’re committing to supporting the product going forward. We still have big plans for improving the product. In addition to adding new marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon and others, we will also continue to prioritize smaller improvements to make the product easier to use.

Do I have to pay now?

While we’d certainly appreciate it, we are giving all of our Beta customers the same 30-day trial period they would receive if they just signed up today. But they have the benefit of keeping all of the data already in their account (including transactions for the full 2022 year where available.)

Beta customers can see their paid plan options here: https://app.sellerledger.com/settings/billing

What does this mean for brand new users?

If you’re new to Seller Ledger, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, import up to 90 days worth of sales and expense history from eBay, PayPal, banks and credit cards, and see for yourself how well the product eases your bookkeeping burden. We don’t ask for a credit card or any form of payment up-front. At the end of your trial, decide for yourself whether we’re providing enough value to pay for continued use. If the answer is no, that’s ok. We’ll just do our best to earn your business in the future.

Try for free

Thanks again to all of our Beta and future customers. Stay tuned for more improvements!

The Seller Ledger Team

Banks, credit cards and PayPal, oh my!

Seller Ledger on March 3, 2023

In one of our biggest steps toward building a great product (and filling the void left by GoDaddy Bookkeeping,) we are pleased to announce that Seller Ledger now lets you link most banks, credit cards, and even PayPal.

How to link banks, credit cards and PayPal

From your Dashboard, below your current connected account(s), simply click the “Add Connected Account” button and you will see an updated screen with a new option:

Click the button on the right side of the screen and follow the steps. Choose from the top banks listed, or search by name (which you will want to do for PayPal.) Once linked, we will pull in 90 days worth of transaction history for each linked account.

On a related note, we have also added some new categorization features. You will initially see a lot of transactions marked as “uncategorized.” We now make it super simple to choose a category and apply it to every other transaction like it – both in the past and future.

More than 90 days of history

Based on a handful of banks so far, it appears that we will be able to import the full prior year’s data in many cases. Not only that, but our cracker-jack development team has figured out a way to do the same for eBay data. We now have the ability to go back and get your prior year’s sales and expense history from connected accounts.

Updated pricing and a way of saying “thanks”

For those who may have noticed on our home page, we have updated our pricing section to reflect a couple of changes:

First, we plan to offer annual billing plans where customers pay for 10 months and get 2 free (we like round numbers and offering incentives.)

Second, every free trial will start with 90 days of transaction history. To receive more than 90 days, we will ask customers to commit to an annual plan. The reasons are twofold: one, that much data does increase our costs materially, and two, we’re excited to be able to deliver the full 2022 tax year, but it wouldn’t be fair if we allowed customers to receive this while only paying for a single month.

For those of you who have been with us on this journey to date, we decided that one way to say “thanks” was by going ahead and importing all of your 2022 data for you. Feel free to log in and view your 2022 sales and expenses. Thanks again for your support and wonderful feedback.

Help other sellers with 2022 taxes

Having read multiple discussions online (e.g. the eBay and Etsy community boards, and even Reddit,) there appear to be a lot of sellers who were left in the lurch when GoDaddy Bookkeeping shut down in mid-2022. While we can’t make this offer indefinitely, we wanted to let folks know that we’ll keep the free 2022 data imports going through the end of this month, until March 31. If you know anyone or have seen any calls for help in different communities, feel free to send them our way before the end of the month, and we’ll get their data back to Jan 1, 2022. Please let them know that we’re still in Beta, and we continue to work on improvements, but hopefully, we can help some of them out.

Again, please keep the feedback coming. And stay tuned for the next update.

Bookkeeping for Multiple eBay accounts

Seller Ledger on February 14, 2023

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.

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.

1099-K threshold change delayed

Seller Ledger on February 9, 2023

Small online sellers who generate more than $600 a year in receipts get to breathe a sigh of relief…for one more year.

On December 22, 2022, the IRS delayed the implementation of the $600 threshold for payment platforms to provide 1099-Ks for online sellers. Instead of receiving 1099-Ks in early 2023 for the 2022 tax year, everything is being pushed back a full year.

For the 2022 tax year, the same thresholds of $20,000 in payments received from more than 200 transactions apply.

Get ready for next year

This delay in the 1099-K threshold change in no way absolves small online sellers of their tax obligations for the most recent year. But, it does give them another year to make sure the numbers they file on their Schedule C will match the 1099-Ks that get filed. Perhaps a new bookkeeping website for online sellers could help.

1099-Ks for Small Sellers

Seller Ledger on February 8, 2023

Last year, the IRS made a major change that will send a LOT more 1099-Ks to small online sellers.

Prior to this change, only sellers who had at least $20,000 in gross receipts across more than 200 transactions in a year would received a 1099-K. Some states have already lowered the threshold.

As part of the American Rescue Plan of 2021, this threshold was changed to a mere $600 per year. That means nearly all online sellers should expect to receive a 1099-K going forward. The change was originally intended to take effect for the 2022 tax year, but small sellers just got a slight reprieve as the IRS pushed back implementation by a year.

What’s the big deal?

Form 1099-K for online sellers — Should small online sellers dread the 1099-K?

The primary concern for many sellers is that a 1099-K means they will owe taxes on the amount reported in Box 1a (see the image above.) Sellers are also concerned about reporting the correct amount on Line 1 of their Schedule C (see image below) and matching that amount to their 1099-K.

Schedule C Line 1: Forss receipts or sales — It’s better when numbers match

Avoiding mismatched numbers

Here are some things that could cause differences and what you can do to avoid them:

Shipping

Box 1a of the 1099-K WILL include shipping amounts that you collect from the buyer. You should make sure that these amounts are also included in Line 1 of your Schedule C. Additionally, you’ll want to be sure you’re tracking and reporting all of your actual shipping costs as expenses.

Transaction Fees

Box 1a of the 1099-K WILL NOT include any fees that may have been taken out of your order (e.g. final value fees, transaction fees, etc.) This means the amount you actually receive in your bank account will be less than what gets reported to the IRS. Therefore, it’s very important to keep track of all of your selling fees and report them as expenses.

Refunds and Discounts

Like with fees, Box 1a WILL NOT include refunds and discounts. It is up to you to keep track of these separately, and place the total amount in Line 2 of your Schedule C tax form.

Multiple channels and multiple payment providers

It’s important to remember that each payment platform will be sending 1099-Ks to any sellers with more than $600 in annual transactions. If you sell on multiple channels, and they use different payment processors, you are likely to receive multiple 1099-Ks. In an ideal world, the sum of the 1099-K amounts should equal Line 1 on your Schedule C. However, this assumes that each payment platform treats all of these numbers the same. If anyone finds examples where this isn’t true, please shoot us an email and we’d be happy to dig into it and see what’s going on, then share with the broader community.

What about Sales Tax?

There seem to be many questions about whether sales tax should be included in Box 1a. Based on 1099-Ks shared with us by customers, and language from eBay’s help website, sales tax that is both collected and remitted for you will not be included.

Good bookkeeping makes this much easier to handle

While you can’t control what gets reported to the IRS, you can control what you file on your tax return. You can ensure the numbers in your tax return match what the IRS sees through good bookkeeping practices. If you are looking for help on that front, consider Seller Ledger, a bookkeeping program that’s specifically designed for online sellers. Seller Ledger’s automated solution breaks out those shipping, refund and fee details and make sure they roll up to the correct tax lines to match the 1099-K.

Disclaimer

The content in this page should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Please consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific tax situation.