Tracking Inventory Questions - maybe you can help?

[vader0316]

Hello Community!

My husband and I are getting to the point that we need help with inventory management, so we turned to the 'INVENTORY MAGAGEMENT' tools within Ebay. I'm fairly sure that I am entering inventory the most round-about way possible. I'm looking to try to make it right so I can use the inventory tracking to the best of its ability.

Here's what we're doing (my husband and I) ... we sell new movies direct from distributor:

STEP  1  : THE DRAFT :: He goes and finds a similar listing by scanning the UPC on the back of the movie and 'sells similar' and places it in the Listing Drafts folder and fills out as much specs as he can.

STEP 2 : EMBELLISHING / PUBLISHING :: I open the draft, upload associated images and copy and paste our standard verbiage into the Item Description field. I then publish the listing.

STEP 3 : ADD TO INVENTORY :: This is where I'm SURE there has GOT to be an easier way. I search in active inventory. Check the box by the item I want to add to inventory. I select the drop-down menu - Actions > Add to Inventory and fill out the form accordingly. SIDE NOTE: I feel that there are totally irrevelant, yet apparently mandatory, fields that I have no use for by doing it this way... 

In doing some research, I see that I can fill out a spreadsheet and output as .csv - which sounds like the easiest route, especially since we're going to be doing a full inventory assessment the first week in January. BUT, if I upload a new inventory .csv file - how will that affect the existing inventory data that's already there ... will it just overwrite it? If so, how will my listings be affected? I just want clean data!!!

Or should I just say screw it and start using a 3rd party inventory solution?

Thank you in advance for helping!

[sam9876]

You don't need to concern yourself with inventory.

When you are setting up the listing, just set the price and enter the quantity that you have in stock.

Done.

[vader0316]

The main reason I started tracking inventory was to be able to assign a cost for each item and determine the cost of goods sold.

[sam9876]

You don't need to assign a cost to each item.

[escuintla]

This is what I used to do. If I got more products that will increase the amount of items, I used to revise the listing and change the numbers.  That's old school.

If you didn't know, you can do that without revising the listing.  You just hoover over the quantity and click, change and click, done!

[ten_o_nine]

I am having the same trouble using it, but I only started a couple of months ago, there should be some instructions on how to use it. I will look around and see if we can find something or maybe someone will come along and provide a link. I found this about file exchange

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/file-exchange?id=4096&st=2&pos=1&query=File%20Exchan...

[divwido]

Why do you keep saying that?  Yes, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT AN ITEM COST YOU.  YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT EVERYTHING IS NUMBERED, ORGANIZED AND YOUR ACCOUNTING IS TOP NOTCH.

[sam9876]

You don't need to enter the cost into eBay.

[ten_o_nine]

It looks like ebay removed the help pages for inventory, I found those 2 links in a 2015 post, but they direct you now to other help pages.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/pro-inventory-overview.html

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/pro-update-inventory.html

[ten_o_nine]

Correct, you don't have to when listing, but you would want to when using inventory management.

[sam9876]

It is easier to not use eBay's inventory management.

[vader0316]

So how would I determine the cost of goods sold and figure out true profit per sale? Is there another place to put it?

[divwido]

Actually, I wish ebay would allow us a place to do that. It would save a lot of time.

[sam9876]

General ledger.

[dtexley3]

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@vader0316 wrote:

So how would I determine the cost of goods sold and figure out true profit per sale? Is there another place to put it?

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Unfortunately eBays misnomered "inventory" feature is not a true inventory control.  You can't attach a specific Cost of Goods and it doesn't track sales and is pretty much useless.  I put over 100 templates into it last year and all the photos were lost by eBay this last Spring.  I didn't even get so much as a "so sorry", just a "we dunno what happened hayuck, hayuck."

There are a couple good external products that integrate with eBay.  QuickBooks is one of the more common and you can find coupons on the web for up to 90% off the yearly fee.  If you use TurboTax Premium it comes with a year of free QuickBooks.