Selling through Amazon FBA

[Bold-Arrow]

6 minutes ago, freakchem said:

I looked at the website and didn't find the features standing out. Can anyone tell me why you need to pay $40 each month to do things that sellercentral can do for free?

IL will help you track various expenses, profits/loses. break them down by suppliers, type, ASIN, and enter sale across various platforms, etc... It will also alert you to inventory discrepancies and creating shipments is relatively easier. There is plenty that IL can do that Sellerc entral cant and in many cases when they both can, IL is much more user friendly.  It really depends on what you need and how complex your business is. 

[cobrakai]

4 minutes ago, freakchem said:

I looked at the website and didn't find the features standing out. Can anyone tell me why you need to pay $40 each month to do things that sellercentral can do for free?

Mainly for the cost tracking.  When you make a shipment, you enter the source, date and cost for each item.  Then you can track your profit per sale, profit/loss, inventory valuation on hand, etc.  Otherwise, you'd have to use a spreadsheet to keep track of everything.  They also have an expense section to enter all your recurring expenses, mileage, etc and they import all Amazon costs and fees into it.

[freakchem]

10 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

IL will help you track various expenses, profits/loses. break them down by suppliers, type, ASIN, and enter sale across various platforms, etc... It will also alert you to inventory discrepancies and creating shipments is relatively easier. There is plenty that IL can do that Sellerc entral cant and in many cases when they both can, IL is much more user friendly.  It really depends on what you need and how complex your business is. 

 

10 minutes ago, cobrakai said:

Mainly for the cost tracking.  When you make a shipment, you enter the source, date and cost for each item.  Then you can track your profit per sale, profit/loss, inventory valuation on hand, etc.  Otherwise, you'd have to use a spreadsheet to keep track of everything.  They also have an expense section to enter all your recurring expenses, mileage, etc and they import all Amazon costs and fees into it.

Thanks for your replies! I guess it really depends on how big the business is and how much time are you willing to spend on managing it. Seems like it will make easier tax preparation. 

But for $40 each month, I need to think about it....

[skinsfan0521]

16 minutes ago, freakchem said:

 

Thanks for your replies! I guess it really depends on how big the business is and how much time are you willing to spend on managing it. Seems like it will make easier tax preparation. 

But for $40 each month, I need to think about it....

Yeah, if you're selling like less than $20k/year or something like that, it may not be worth it. However, the fact that it tracks all inventory costs and provides you with profitability numbers and inventory valuation is invaluable in my opinion. If I wasn't using IL, it would all need to be done manually in spreadsheets and tracking thousands and thousands of sales along with all of the associated expenses for each of those sales would be a complete nightmare. With IL, all you need to do is enter the item, qty, cost, and supplier (if you care to track by supplier) when you make a purchase and then create your FBA shipments through IL and everything is taken care of from there. It automatically tracks inventory qty, value, sales $, subtracts costs, etc.

Also, I still use Quickbooks in addition to IL for providing data to my accountant, but I pull some data (like inventory valuation) from Inventory Lab to QB.

Actually, if anyone knows of anything similar that integrates with Walmart Marketplace, please let me know because tracking all of this for WM sales is a major reason for me avoiding doing more on that platform. Plus,  it's like 10 years behind AZ in terms of usability and the volume is a small fraction as well. haha

[Phil B]

So if you ever wonder why Amazon sometimes tells you they have issued a refund on your behalf without you seeing a return:

The $9.96 coupon didn't work on my 10277 order on Tuesday. Chatted with agent and he said to contact them once the order was delivered and they would refund the coupon. So I contacted them today and they processed the refund. Couple of hours later I get a notification that I was issued a refund .... against a third-party seller order I placed weeks ago. I contacted them again and they told me they cannot do a partial refund so they took an order that was "close" and refunded that (actually giving me an additional dollar in refund back).

I expressed my concern over what that did to the seller's revenue - they said they would make him whole behind the scenes. But I doubt that that will happen transparently - this seller will likely see a refund now, and then a couple of weeks from now (or when he opens a case) get reimbursed.

 

[FM]

Thanks for your replies! I guess it really depends on how big the business is and how much time are you willing to spend on managing it. Seems like it will make easier tax preparation. 
But for $40 each month, I need to think about it....

I use Accelerlist - it was built for speed when listing 1000s of different SKUs, but works very well for Lego. It's $34/mo and my favorite feature is that I can play with quantities in seconds so I can steer (within reason) my FBA shipments where I want them to go.

Sent from my moto g power (2021) using Tapatalk

[flyingpig1]

Restock limit jumped by 900. 

Of course last week they recalculated midweek and canceled a shipment that was already inbound because it would have put me over the limit by 5 units.  Hopefully it gets received anyway.

[Bold-Arrow]

Lather up boys and girls , fees are going up 🎉

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G201411300

[gmpirate]

On 9/30/2021 at 9:15 AM, skinsfan0521 said:

Yeah, if you're selling like less than $20k/year or something like that, it may not be worth it. However, the fact that it tracks all inventory costs and provides you with profitability numbers and inventory valuation is invaluable in my opinion. If I wasn't using IL, it would all need to be done manually in spreadsheets and tracking thousands and thousands of sales along with all of the associated expenses for each of those sales would be a complete nightmare. With IL, all you need to do is enter the item, qty, cost, and supplier (if you care to track by supplier) when you make a purchase and then create your FBA shipments through IL and everything is taken care of from there. It automatically tracks inventory qty, value, sales $, subtracts costs, etc.

Also, I still use Quickbooks in addition to IL for providing data to my accountant, but I pull some data (like inventory valuation) from Inventory Lab to QB.

Actually, if anyone knows of anything similar that integrates with Walmart Marketplace, please let me know because tracking all of this for WM sales is a major reason for me avoiding doing more on that platform. Plus,  it's like 10 years behind AZ in terms of usability and the volume is a small fraction as well. haha

I use Quickbooks exclusively.  Unless I am missing something, the benefit of IL would just be making it easier to create shipments.  Current inventory valuation would be great to see, but not necessary.  We don't need software to tell us if something is profitable to list.  Does IL have a report that it generates showing inventory with buy-in's, current valuation, expenses and profit percentage in one sheet?  That would obviously be quicker than looking up items individually to determine if something is ripe.

I've considered IL for a while to see for myself but the thought of having to input receipts into two different software programs doesn't excite me.  To simplify things and save time, I just enter all purchases in Quickbooks and then enter an "inventory adjustment" at the end of the year to determine cost of sales.

I do get the practical benefit of knowing your ongoing specific profitability that IL can provide but there's only so much time I have to devote to this business.  Just looking for feedback in case I'm missing something I really should be doing.  thanks

[Bold-Arrow]

4 minutes ago, gmpirate said:

I use Quickbooks exclusively.  Unless I am missing something, the benefit of IL would just be making it easier to create shipments.  Current inventory valuation would be great to see, but not necessary.  We don't need software to tell us if something is profitable to list.  Does IL have a report that it generates showing inventory with buy-in's, current valuation, expenses and profit percentage in one sheet?  That would obviously be quicker than looking up items individually to determine if something is ripe.

I've considered IL for a while to see for myself but the thought of having to input receipts into two different software programs doesn't excite me.  To simplify things and save time, I just enter all purchases in Quickbooks and then enter an "inventory adjustment" at the end of the year to determine cost of sales.

I do get the practical benefit of knowing your ongoing specific profitability that IL can provide but there's only so much time I have to devote to this business.  Just looking for feedback in case I'm missing something I really should be doing.  thanks

I do not use quickbooks but one of the features I love about IL is the ability to dig by ASIN, sku , supplier with ROI , refund % , profitability, Amazon fees When I add a new line to my store and it is time to reorder it takes me a min to determine whether to keep that sku or d/c. I can always show the supplier the rundown on their numbers when I’m trying to negotiate a better deal and those reports are easily exported to an excel sheet. 

One draw back about IL is that is more geared towards fba over fbm . Adding buy-ins to fbm items is cumbersome as you have to do an upload. Also it doesn’t  track inventory that is not listed . So if you buy something and don’t create a listing for it you can’t track it ( unless I don’t know how ). 
 

[gmpirate]

38 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

One draw back about IL is that is more geared towards fba over fbm . Adding buy-ins to fbm items is cumbersome as you have to do an upload. Also it doesn’t  track inventory that is not listed . So if you buy something and don’t create a listing for it you can’t track it ( unless I don’t know how ). 

That's a big drawback since most inventory is not listed.  I'd love to be able to look at a report to know with certainty what my total inventory valuation is.  But unless you can tie each item to a specific sku I can see how its not possible.

 

42 minutes ago, Bold-Arrow said:

one of the features I love about IL is the ability to dig by ASIN, sku , supplier with ROI , refund % , profitability, Amazon fees When I add a new line to my store and it is time to reorder it takes me a min to determine whether to keep that sku or d/c. I can always show the supplier the rundown on their numbers when I’m trying to negotiate a better deal and those reports are easily exported to an excel sheet. 

That's a great feature but for me it would fall into the category of "if I had more time to devote to this business" scenario.  Maybe if more labor was available to hire . . .

[skinsfan0521]

How are you tracking inventory in QB? Not by item and just by total purchases based on receipt? 

In IL, you can keep track of all unlisted inventory. So, my workflow looks like this:

 

I buy an item

If it is the first time I've ever bought that item, I create it in unlisted inventory in IL.

Once the item is created, I enter the purchase price, date, supplier, qty for that item. 

I now have an item by item and supplier by supplier record of all of my inventory. 

Once the credit card receipt is imported into QB I allocate it to a "purchases" account.

When it's time to list an item, I add it from unlisted inventory to a new batch in IL and create the shipment. IL tracks the inventory and cost and moves it from "unlisted" to "fba" or "mfn" (fbm) inventory. When it sells, it tells me my exact profit, roi, expenses, etc for that transaction. 

When my Amazon payment is imported into qb every 2 weeks, I run the inventory valuation report from IL and update that in QB (just one total $ value not individual item data). 

Now I can see a true p&l and balance sheet in QB and also see item by item inventory, profit, etc data in IL.

 

You don't need to keep track of individual item purchases and costs if you don't want to and just make an adjustment at year end or whatever, but that's not really running a business with updated and accurate Financials. If you don't want or need that, then you're good without it. But if you really want to run this as a business, it's necessary to do it somehow. You don't have to use IL but I find it much easier and more useful than keeping track of item by item inventory in QB. Especially since QB has no idea what inventory you have unlisted, listed, sold, etc.

 

[skinsfan0521]

1 hour ago, gmpirate said:

I use Quickbooks exclusively.  Unless I am missing something, the benefit of IL would just be making it easier to create shipments.  Current inventory valuation would be great to see, but not necessary.  We don't need software to tell us if something is profitable to list.  Does IL have a report that it generates showing inventory with buy-in's, current valuation, expenses and profit percentage in one sheet?  That would obviously be quicker than looking up items individually to determine if something is ripe.

I've considered IL for a while to see for myself but the thought of having to input receipts into two different software programs doesn't excite me.  To simplify things and save time, I just enter all purchases in Quickbooks and then enter an "inventory adjustment" at the end of the year to determine cost of sales.

I do get the practical benefit of knowing your ongoing specific profitability that IL can provide but there's only so much time I have to devote to this business.  Just looking for feedback in case I'm missing something I really should be doing.  thanks

Just to add to my last reply - you say that you do an end of year adjustment for inventory. But, how are you tracking the COGS for the specific inventory that you sold in that year? With how you described it, I'm not sure how you would. And if you're not, you're just guessing at the COGS, right? That wouldn't be a great answer in the event of an audit. 

[landphieran]

I wrote an application to scrape my email account for receipts. That information is extracted and pushed to a database. I export my amazon sales to an excel and upload that to another database. I then run another application which aggregates all of the sold information and compares it with the average cost basis of all the items I've purchased.

I've thought about doing a per line item comparison and "flagging" each item as it sells however it doesn't seem to be worth the hassle. Similarly thought about storing all of the receipts in the database while i'm extracting data.

I spend a weekend each year updating my application to correctly parse the emails as stores like to change the format frequently. I considered IL and quickbooks however the thought of manually entering 1000s of orders/tens of thousands of items into IL made me want to vomit.

 

[skinsfan0521]

6 hours ago, landphieran said:

I wrote an application to scrape my email account for receipts. That information is extracted and pushed to a database. I export my amazon sales to an excel and upload that to another database. I then run another application which aggregates all of the sold information and compares it with the average cost basis of all the items I've purchased.

I've thought about doing a per line item comparison and "flagging" each item as it sells however it doesn't seem to be worth the hassle. Similarly thought about storing all of the receipts in the database while i'm extracting data.

I spend a weekend each year updating my application to correctly parse the emails as stores like to change the format frequently. I considered IL and quickbooks however the thought of manually entering 1000s of orders/tens of thousands of items into IL made me want to vomit.

 

I hear ya. But in a "real" company you'd have some sort of expensive ERP system that you would place Purchase Orders for each item, you would then receive the PO into inventory, then enter a sales order to take the inventory out of the system, then eventually apply payment to that invoice or generated.

What I'm doing with IL & QB is basically a poor man's version of that whole process. Does it take time? Yes. But it gives me a real picture of my business with accurate financial statements and inventory values. 

And I will add that out doesn't take a ton of time. The worst is when I hit 20+ Walmart stores for clearance and I have to go through the receipts line by line to figure out what I even bought because it's such a variety and I was just arm sweeping without paying attention. But anything I buy online is super easy because I can see that I bought item A and a qty of X and there aren't 30 different sku per receipt to figure out. 

Edited November 17, 2021 by skinsfan0521

[joch29]

1 hour ago, skinsfan0521 said:

 

What I'm doing with IL & QB is basically a poor man's version of that whole process. Does it take time? Yes. But it gives me a real picture of my business with accurate financial statements and inventory values. 

 

I guess I'm doing the poorer man's version by still entering into excel. It's been easier since covid since all the purchases have been online.

[skinsfan0521]

1 minute ago, joch29 said:

I guess I'm doing the poorer man's version by still entering into excel. It's been easier since covid since all the purchases have been online.

True. But my point is that it seems that a lot of people on here take the time to enter all of their purchase data into Excel (or QB or whatever) and then go back and enter their sales data too and think that it is somehow easier. If you were to enter it into a program like IL, then you're done and don't need to also track the sales side of it because it's all done for you.

So, it would save you time and effort and also provide you with all sorts of additional functionality and ways to use the data. I don't know off the top of my head how much it costs, but whatever it is, isn't much and I couldn't imagine not having it. The idea that something like this doesn't exist for Walmart is one of my primary reasons for not putting more effort into that marketplace. 

Just to be clear, I have absolutely zero affiliation with IL or anything like that. It's just that once I moved from Excel to IL, it made my life so much easier and provided all sorts of additional data and functionality that I never had before. I do run my business like a business and I do love data, so maybe I'm in the minority here. But, to me, I could never imagine running a business of this size using Excel.

[joch29]

I hear you.  Thanks for sharing. I've been putting off improving on his part of the business. 

[cobrakai]

37 minutes ago, skinsfan0521 said:

True. But my point is that it seems that a lot of people on here take the time to enter all of their purchase data into Excel (or QB or whatever) and then go back and enter their sales data too and think that it is somehow easier. If you were to enter it into a program like IL, then you're done and don't need to also track the sales side of it because it's all done for you.

So, it would save you time and effort and also provide you with all sorts of additional functionality and ways to use the data. I don't know off the top of my head how much it costs, but whatever it is, isn't much and I couldn't imagine not having it. The idea that something like this doesn't exist for Walmart is one of my primary reasons for not putting more effort into that marketplace. 

Just to be clear, I have absolutely zero affiliation with IL or anything like that. It's just that once I moved from Excel to IL, it made my life so much easier and provided all sorts of additional data and functionality that I never had before. I do run my business like a business and I do love data, so maybe I'm in the minority here. But, to me, I could never imagine running a business of this size using Excel.

I wish someone could create something like this for Ebay as well.  I have not idea how much profit I make on Ebay.  At lease with IL, you can have a pretty accurate idea of how much $ you are making on Amazon.

[gmpirate]

11 hours ago, skinsfan0521 said:

Just to add to my last reply - you say that you do an end of year adjustment for inventory. But, how are you tracking the COGS for the specific inventory that you sold in that year? With how you described it, I'm not sure how you would. And if you're not, you're just guessing at the COGS, right? That wouldn't be a great answer in the event of an audit. 

It's actually pretty simple.  There's a form in Quickbooks that lists all inventory.  In the appropriate column I just enter the year end inventory quantities -- no guessing.

[gmpirate]

12 hours ago, skinsfan0521 said:

How are you tracking inventory in QB? Not by item and just by total purchases based on receipt? 

In IL, you can keep track of all unlisted inventory. So, my workflow looks like this:

 

I buy an item

If it is the first time I've ever bought that item, I create it in unlisted inventory in IL.

Once the item is created, I enter the purchase price, date, supplier, qty for that item. 

I now have an item by item and supplier by supplier record of all of my inventory. 

Once the credit card receipt is imported into QB I allocate it to a "purchases" account.

When it's time to list an item, I add it from unlisted inventory to a new batch in IL and create the shipment. IL tracks the inventory and cost and moves it from "unlisted" to "fba" or "mfn" (fbm) inventory. When it sells, it tells me my exact profit, roi, expenses, etc for that transaction. 

When my Amazon payment is imported into qb every 2 weeks, I run the inventory valuation report from IL and update that in QB (just one total $ value not individual item data). 

Now I can see a true p&l and balance sheet in QB and also see item by item inventory, profit, etc data in IL.

 

You don't need to keep track of individual item purchases and costs if you don't want to and just make an adjustment at year end or whatever, but that's not really running a business with updated and accurate Financials. If you don't want or need that, then you're good without it. But if you really want to run this as a business, it's necessary to do it somehow. You don't have to use IL but I find it much easier and more useful than keeping track of item by item inventory in QB. Especially since QB has no idea what inventory you have unlisted, listed, sold, etc.

 

Each receipt is entered in detail thus giving me an accurate count.

All sales are entered as received from the various market places.

A year end inventory adjustment gives me my COS -- accurately.

If I ran this full time and/or it was my main source of income I see the value of having up-to-date sales, costs and inventory info but right now I just settle for accurately reporting a P&L at EoY.  What you do by entering details in IL and just moving the bulk numbers into Quickbooks is something I may look into.  I assume IL has a tracking account for sales tax incurred.

My way doesn't give me monthly valuations or profitability but I can determine individual profitability pretty quickly when I determine whether or not to send inventory in.  Generally I use the 30% rule to determine.  Take 30% off the selling price and if the remainder doubles my buy-in I list.  I just make exceptions as I go.  i.e. categories like HP or SC I may hold a bit longer because they tend to continue to appreciate while other categories I may dump early taking that initial pop knowing there are diminishing returns after that.  Sometimes just clearing inventory space of random items in the warehouse is a motivating factor.

[skinsfan0521]

30 minutes ago, gmpirate said:

It's actually pretty simple.  There's a form in Quickbooks that lists all inventory.  In the appropriate column I just enter the year end inventory quantities -- no guessing.

You said you're entering qty, but are where are you coming up with the cost of that inventory that is left over after sales? Are you entering individual item by item purchases in QB with qty and cost when you buy them? And then entering every order in QB to remove the inventory and cost from QB?

If not, then I don't understand how you know how much the COGS was for what you sold and how much you have left that is unsold.

[skinsfan0521]

1 minute ago, gmpirate said:

Each receipt is entered in detail thus giving me an accurate count.

All sales are entered as received from the various market places.

A year end inventory adjustment gives me my COS -- accurately.

If I ran this full time and/or it was my main source of income I see the value of having up-to-date sales, costs and inventory info but right now I just settle for accurately reporting a P&L at EoY.  What you do by entering details in IL and just moving the bulk numbers into Quickbooks is something I may look into.  I assume IL has a tracking account for sales tax incurred.

My way doesn't give me monthly valuations or profitability but I can determine individual profitability pretty quickly when I determine whether or not to send inventory in.  Generally I use the 30% rule to determine.  Take 30% off the selling price and if the remainder doubles my buy-in I list.  I just make exceptions as I go.  i.e. categories like HP or SC I may hold a bit longer because they tend to continue to appreciate while other categories I may dump early taking that initial pop knowing there are diminishing returns after that.  Sometimes just clearing inventory space of random items in the warehouse is a motivating factor.

Gotcha. Ok, so you're doing all of the entering the details, but you're doing it in QB instead of IL. So, in my personal opinion, it makes more sense to do that data entry work in IL and then gain a bunch of additional benefits and functionality in the process. By only entering it in QB, it seems that you're doing the same amount of work with none of the additional benefits.

But, if it works for you, then keep doing it! I'm just sharing what works for me and my opinions.

[gmpirate]

2 hours ago, skinsfan0521 said:

It's just that once I moved from Excel to IL, it made my life so much easier and provided all sorts of additional data and functionality that I never had before. I do run my business like a business and I do love data, so maybe I'm in the minority here. But, to me, I could never imagine running a business of this size using Excel.

That's a big difference too.  Since I used an accounting program from the start I there has never been a big burden of converting spreadsheet data.  Exact tracking has always been there.  IL was definitely a big jump for you.  I think for me, it would be more a matter of fine tuning.

 

[gmpirate]

9 minutes ago, skinsfan0521 said:

Gotcha. Ok, so you're doing all of the entering the details, but you're doing it in QB instead of IL. So, in my personal opinion, it makes more sense to do that data entry work in IL and then gain a bunch of additional benefits and functionality in the process. By only entering it in QB, it seems that you're doing the same amount of work with none of the additional benefits.

But, if it works for you, then keep doing it! I'm just sharing what works for me and my opinions.

I agree with you.  My only hesitation now is learning IL and then having to transfer that info into Quickbooks for the added functionality and benefits that I may not have the time to take advantage of.  At least I have a better idea of what the process would be now.  😀