If you ask any small business owner or self-employed person what their least favorite task is, what would they say? Unless you have an accounting background, bookkeeping is probably on the top of the list. Well, I have good news! There are some awesome online tools and services available to automate bookkeeping for your business.
QuickBooks Self-Employed Online
My most used bookkeeping service is QuickBooks online. QuickBooks Self-Employed has tools like transaction tracking, invoicing, mileage tracking, reporting, and tax help (for an extra fee).
- Profit & Loss: Connect the bank accounts you use for your business to track every transaction. You can manually sort each transaction or create rules to automate it! Don’t worry if you made a personal transaction, you can categorize as personal or business.
- Invoicing: For reselling, you might not need this tool, but don’t overlook it! If you have a second business or provide a service you can easily create an invoice and get paid through QuickBooks.
- Mileage tracking: This one is major! You might not realize it, but you drive around a lot for sourcing or even post office runs. All you have to do is download the QuickBooks Self-Employed app on your phone and it will automatically start tracking your miles when you get in your car (you do need to have a Bluetooth connection, however). You can deduct $0.575 per mile on your taxes.
- Reporting: This is key for your yearly taxes! If you have everything up to date, come tax time all you’ll have to do is run a few reports. Reporting available: mileage, profit & loss, receipts, tax summary, tax details.
QuickBooks is also beta testing a time clock so you can track your daily tasks or client work!
How I use QuickBooks for Reselling
See where the “rules” are automatically applied.
- Profit & Loss: I connect the bank account that I use for expenses and my PayPal account for eBay income. My Poshmark income is reported when I deposit anything into my bank account (along with Mercari). I create rules so that frequent transactions get automatically sorted into categories. My sourcing transactions are auto sorted as “materials & supplies” in business expenses.
- Invoicing: I have a graphic design business that I use invoicing for! You probably won’t use this as a reseller, but it’s nice to have.
- Mileage tracking: Make sure you are logged into your app or the tracking won’t start! You can also add mileage manually if you missed a trip. Last year I was able to deduct $2,950.
- Reporting: For taxes, I just downloaded the documents I needed and filed online!
Click here to sign up for QuickBooks Self-employed for only $7/month!
Airtable
The second most hated task for a reseller? Inventory! Airtable is a website and app that lets you create “bases” for anything you need. It is basically a better version of a spreadsheet that won’t make you cry 🙂
I have one base for all of my inventory. You do have to set it up yourself, but just think through what your needs are! For me, I have the following in my inventory base for each listing: title (that I use in my listing), category (shoes, tops, bottoms, etc), inventory number, measurements, status (photograph, listed, sold), sold date, COGS, net earnings (income after fee), net profit (this is a formula).
I also have a base for my monthly stats! I record the following each month: Poshmark, eBay & Mercari sales ($$ and quantity), social media stats, active listings, and total listings created each day.
You can sign up for Airtable for FREE!
Let me know if you have any questions or if there’s something I didn’t cover in the comments!
**I am not an accountant and I always will suggest meeting with or hiring one just to check that you are doing everything right.
