[GNC] Need help with eBay - tagging multiple sales into one payout hitting checking two business days later

[Bruce Griffis]

I’m looking for help in figuring out GnuCash for a small eBay reseller, 
basically selling items from home, but occasionally purchasing an item 
for resale. I’m looking at this from the perspective of viewing sales 
from the My eBay / Selling / Payments / Total Sales page.


Under Assets, I have Checking account, Savings account, Cash account and 
eBay Inventory account (I get that GnuCash does not support inventory – 
I just build this using a CSV export from Libre Office Calc). Under 
liabilities I have a secured credit card.


Under Income I have eBay Transactions (and I want this to reflect the 
eBay All Transactions page). Under expenses I have eBay Final Value 
Fees, eBay Shipping Labels and eBay Refunds. I also have standard small 
business chart of accounts to support basics of purchasing boxes, bubble 
wrap, bubble mailers, tape, poly bags, …


When I look at making just one sale in a day, this approach works pretty 
well:

On eBay All Transactions I have one entry that gives Date, Description 
(the item that was sold),

Amount (this is gross amount), Fees (this is eBay Final Value fees), Net 
(the net amount I receive – if I pay shipping (offer free shipping), net 
gets reduced by my shipping label costs), Total Funds.


I then see a second transaction under All Transactions for the purchase 
of the shipping label. This includes Date, Description, Amount and Net. 
Since Total Amount is the amount in this account before payout, my total 
amount in this account gets modified (it gets reduced by shipping label 
amount).


I then see a third transaction. The third is my payout. This includes 
Date, Description, Amount and Total Amount. Amount is the dollar amount 
that hits my checking account in two business days. Total Amount is the 
Total in this account (eBay Funds? I need to figure out what to 
descriptively call it). If I only had one sale in a day and did not make 
any new sales then Total is zero.


To reflect this, I enter a split transaction.

I enter the Date, Description and Gross amount for the sale.

I enter another transaction in the split. This is Date, Description, 
eBay Final Fees (an expense). This goes into Expense account eBay Final 
Fees.

I enter another transaction in the split. This is Date, Description, 
Shipping label cost and goes to eBay Shipping Labels expense account.

I enter a third transaction. This is my payout. It usually simply 
matches Imbalance-USD. This goes to my Income account Checking.


When I look at my checking account, I can match it by the dollar amount, 
but since payouts post in two business days, the date does not match up. 
But it is simple enough to figure out.


Things get way out of hand when I make multiple sales in one day. I 
would enter a split transaction for every sale, so if I had four 
transaction – I would show four split transactions made up of the sale, 
the final value fees, and the shipping label. However – I would only 
have one payout. So if I take the income from the sale and post it 
directly to checking, I end up adding 1 of 4, 2 of 4, 3 of 4, … to the 
front of the description field. Then when looking at my checking account 
– I would need to add together each individual transaction to equal my 
payout. Now I am not matching on date (posted two business days later) 
and amount (I need to add individual sales together to correlate with 
the days payout.


Additionally, Refunds get pulled out of the running eBay Funds account 
(that I need to create in GnuCash). If the funds in that account aren’t 
enough t cover it, the refund comes out of checking as a direct debit.

Any recommendations on how I would show multiple sales in a day making 
up one entry into my checking account? Do I need another account – send 
my payouts there. Then group multiples in another split (if I can do 
that?) to show the days transactions? Or do I need to think about doing 
an accounts receivable kind of thing and bundle multiple transactions 
into an A/R account for the day for when I have more than one sale in a day?