Every business should keep detailed records, and your online auction business is no exception. Whether you use an auction management service that offers report generation, a financial-management program like Quicken, or your own homemade spreadsheet or database, you need to track what you’re doing.
In particular, you want to track unit cost and final selling price for every auction you list. You should also track all your ancillary costs shipping, PayPal fees, eBay listing and final value fees, and so on. By tracking all your costs and revenues, you can generate an accurate profit and loss statement, and thus determine how much money (if any) you’re generating from your online auction activities.
It also helps to track information about the buyers of your auction itemsname, shipping address, email address, and so on. The name and shipping address are necessary in case an item gets lost in transit; the email address is necessary not only for auction-related communication but also for promotional purposes which we’ll discuss next.