Unpaid items counting as sells

[vintageamerica101]

I had a large dollar item bought and

never paid for 

I went through the unpaid time case 

and it’s closed 

but it is counting in my total sales 

I’m trying to explain this to my accountant I never received the money for that sale 

please help! 

I called ebay and was on the phone for 2 hours 

they simply say 

it was a sale so it shows as a sale 

[mopata]

Your accountant should be looking at your PayPal receipts, not your ebay sales as they are the ones who actually issue your 1099. If he doesn't understand that, you need a new accountant.

[southern*sweet*tea]

Minus it out in your ledger book under misc. debits with the notation "unpaid item".

[thehonorabletrader]

eBay uses a "Selling Volume" metric. The sales volume is not always the same as sells.

Example: Walmart sells $12B in goods and then does $5B in returns. They have $7B in revenue, but still have $12B in sales volume. The sale happens when the buyer and seller agree to a sale. Not when the sale is paid. That is when eBay assess your fees. When a refund is issued your sales are still the same, but now your "expenses" have gone up by the refund amount. This is typical in accounting.

Essentially, Returns, Cancellations and UPI's are expenses, they don't Undo the sale, the sale still happened. The report is not "net income" or "income" report, it's sales report. This is a standard in business, at least all the ones I have worked with.

[ryanrobyn]

This way statistics of sales look better for their stock holders - who cares about the sellers. The same applies to adding in the shipping expenses. Just a big Ebay game.

[luckythewinner]

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@vintageamerica101 wrote:

I had a large dollar item bought and

never paid for 

I went through the unpaid time case 

and it’s closed 

but it is counting in my total sales 

I’m trying to explain this to my accountant I never received the money for that sale 

please help! 

---

Reconciling unpaid items against the sales record is an integral part of an eBay business, just as reconciling unpaid invoices against the sales record is an integral part of a bricks-and-mortar business.

If your accountant is not willing to take the time to understand the unpaid item process on eBay, it is time to find a new accountant.

[slippinjimmy]

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@ryanrobyn wrote:

This way statistics of sales look better for their stock holders - who cares about the sellers. The same applies to adding in the shipping expenses. Just a big Ebay game.

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It's not a "game", as the previous poster mentioned this is how accounting is done regardless if you are a small business or a multi-billion dollar corp. Unpaid sales are a "bad debt expense", shipping received from buyers is part of sales revenue which is offset by an appropriate shipping expense.

Another thing is that investors are not really looking at the raw numbers, they look at the trend (up or down) and the rate of that trend, eBay has always reported gross sales regardless if they are paid or not and to maintain consistency they will always do it that way. Changing accounting methods mid-stream are complex matters and are often done to mask other problems, one thing eBay has always been with their accounting practices is to remain consistent year over year.

If you want to see some devious accounting you should have a gander at Amazon, they are the kings of obscuring their true situation.

[richard1rst]

Simple solution.

Go to your "sold items" page and find the sale. To the left where it normally says "print shipping label" you will notice a down arrow right under that. That is a drop down menu. Click that and near the end of that list it says "archive". Click that and it moves it to a separate file and removes it from your sold items page AND the sold items total.

[thevintagesilvershop]

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@richard1rst wrote:

Simple solution.

Go to your "sold items" page and find the sale. To the left where it normally says "print shipping label" you will notice a down arrow right under that. That is a drop down menu. Click that and near the end of that list it says "archive". Click that and it moves it to a separate file and removes it from your sold items page AND the sold items total.

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I don't believe that's true.  I recently had a buyer buy an expensive necklace full price, then ask for a discount.  I was willing to give the discount, but since her full price purchase resulted in $50 more fees for me, I cancelled that sale, got my FVF back, re-listed and put a new price on the necklace which she bought.  I archived/deleted the old sale after the cancellation.  BOTH of those sales are still in Ebay's numbers on the hub.  Both. 

This is why I would NEVER use Ebay's numbers and why I keep my own set of books and my books are what get turned into the tax man. 

OP, your accountant is not doing enough work for you.

[richard1rst]

As it happens I just had an order today that was refunded (not cancelled - it was too old to cancel and the buyer did not use the eBay return program). I then moved it to Archives. Based on your note I kept an eye on it and it did reduce my total sales dollars.

Maybe it has something to do with how it is done, or maybe something in your preferences. But it worked today and has worked in the past.