Need Help! inventory question personal and free items

[belaamir-0]

I really need help with selling and logging items because of lack of records or avoiding unnecessary records to make life easier.

i plan on selling as a business and will definitely keep track of my future cost of goods and sales thoroughly  but what about the items I have already?

Lets  say you have hundreds of items ,clothes electronics ect...some are personally yours and ALOT of stuff is things you got for free. For example if it's clothes, and there's a hundreds and u got a handful at a time for free from different places and dates over time to build inventory.  So how do you handle that? I don't want to claim any cost and prefer to call it zero purchase price. But what about dates?? And can I just log it when I sell it instead of going through each one for inventory like I plan on doing for my COG's? 

[mr_lincoln]

@belaamir-0

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@belaamir-0 wrote:

Yes I am in CA so no online sales until I get a sellers permit for state taxes. I will probaly be a little hesitant claiming mileage deductions for the free stuff even though it will be for specifically for business only. Since getting the items are $0 and have blurry lines between personal and business since there's so many it's hard to filter and track the quantities at the moment. Probaly just claim the cost of selling till I get a CPA. Just want to minimize the honest mistakes in the beginning for the long run.  Thanks for the response, all advice is very valuable right now!

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An expense is an expense ... lets say you or I go to an all day live Auction, we have two meals and we bid our hearts out but win NOTHING ... the expenses to go there and eat still apply and are deductions.  If you pick up shipping tape, bubble wrap, boxes, at some store ... those are expenses as is the mileage driven.  The gov allows these things so take advantage of them ...

Another example is the door to door saleperson who spends 5 days a week traveling, eating, etc. but makes no sales that week ... well, they still had the expenses and report them.

[femmefan1946]

how important is the source for free items

It's not.  The date and the cost ($0) is really all you need.

Stop and think about what you are preparing for.

An audit by the taxman?

Your own taxes?

entering it over and over

Make a template.

And keep your descriptions and pictures on file.

I just have a folder on my desktop of TextEdit documents since :

• I'm a tiny bit OCD
• I do from time to time repeat a book title even if the details of the edition differs.

My template includes some basic HTML which I pretend is 'branding'. It still works well on mobiles.

I really do think you are putting the cart before the horse here.

You need a strong grasp on Shipping costs.

You need a way of making clear crisp pictures of your items.

You need a way of identifying which items you have listed, and sold.

You need a way of finding the items when they do sell.

The paperwork for taxes is way way way down the list.

You should be keeping a spreadsheet (and mine is literally on paper) of all your sales.

That's what you need to know, in order to report your profits on your personal income tax.

If you really think this can be a business, call around until you find a bookkeeper or accountant who is used to online/mail order selling for advice.

Free advice is worth every penny you pay for it.