A spreadsheet is the easiest way to see whether your eBay selling makes money. You do not need anything fancy. You need one row per item and a few columns. Here is what to record and how to work out your profit.
The columns you need
- Item name and the date it sold.
- Sale price and any postage you charged the buyer.
- What you paid for the item.
- Postage and packaging you paid.
- eBay fees (leave at zero if you are a private seller with no final value fee).
- Profit and margin, worked out by formulas.
The profit formula
Profit is the sale price plus postage charged, minus the item cost, minus postage and packaging paid, minus fees. Margin is profit divided by what the buyer paid. If you add these as formulas once, every new row does the sums for you.
Habits that make it useful
- Add the row the day you buy the item, so you never forget the cost.
- Fill in the sold date, so you can see which items sell quickly.
- Check eBay fee rates now and then, because they change.
- Keep it as a record. GOV.UK lists spreadsheets as acceptable records if you ever need to show your sales to HMRC.
Get a ready-made one
You can build your own, or start from ours. The lite version is free: sign up below and we will send it. It handles private and business fees and has a totals row. The full eBay Seller Profit Tracker adds a dashboard, monthly chart, returns and a price calculator. To check one sale, use the free eBay fee calculator.
Fee rates change, so treat any figures as estimates. This is not tax or financial advice.
Get the free eBay profit tracker (lite)
A one-tab spreadsheet that shows what you really earn on each sale, after fees, postage and costs. Enter your email and we will send it to you, plus the occasional seller tip.