Seller Club Podcast
In the dynamic world of reselling, knowledge and community are key. The Seller Club is your gateway to both. Join three passionate sellers, Anna, Glen & Ken, as they navigate the reselling landscape, sharing their experiences, strategies, and insider tips. The Seller Club covers everything from sourcing hidden gems to maximizing profits and building a loyal customer base. This isn't just about business; it's about creating a supportive community where resellers can learn, grow, and thrive together. So, whether you're a seasoned seller looking for the next level, or you’re just starting out, welcome to the club!
Seller Club Podcast
Episode 60: A Clean Slate to Start Fresh in Your Business
It’s a brand new year and we want to help this community start the year with a clean slate, with all of the potential and clarity and none of the clutter from last year! The conversation today with our returning guest Kevin Reeth of Seller Ledger (the best bookkeeping around for sellers like us!) is all about how to clean up last year’s slate, prep this year’s slate, and have a super simple plan to maintain a tidy business for the rest of the year! You do NOT want to miss this discussion - we hope it inspires you to clean your slate and get this year in order from the get-go. It’s not as hard or time-consuming as you might think!
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Thanks so much for tuning in–tell a friend, rate, subscribe, review, and meet us back in the clubhouse again next week!
Hey everybody, welcome to the Cellar Club Podcast. This is episode 60. We are going to get into some really interesting conversation today about cleaning your slate. Starting the year with a clean slate and maintaining that slate. So before we get into it, of course, we have to drop that beat. Hey guys, how are you guys doing today?
SPEAKER_01:Good, good, good.
SPEAKER_02:Who we got in the studio today?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we got in the studio. Yep, oh, yep, we have a little bit of a who do we have? Mystery guest. Mystery guest. I've gotten to know him a lot just because all the benefits that this guy brings to the table because of the product that he has. So let's just have him introduce himself again. For the people that are just tuning in, because we've just gotten a lot of uh new followers recently because we've done a lot of giveaways. Uh people are discovering our podcasts. So, Kevin, why don't you introduce yourself real quick?
SPEAKER_03:Sure, I'm Kevin Reith. I'm the founder and CEO of Seller Ledger. Uh kind of an old dog around accounting and bookkeeping in the e-commerce space.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. There you go. Yeah, and basically, if Kevin's talking, we're listening because we're always learning how to keep our books better and how to run our businesses tighter, and it's so great. We've done a few episodes throughout our history of the Seller Club podcast with Kevin. And so if you haven't, if this is your first intro to him, please go back and listen to those episodes too. There's so much insight, too much to put in one episode, but we're gonna do our best today with this whole idea of a clean slate. And Kevin, we're so glad that you're here with us because the conversation would not be nearly as enlightening without you, frankly.
SPEAKER_03:So thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for coming. All right, well, should we just go ahead and dive right into it?
SPEAKER_01:Let's do it. We've got a lot of things to talk about, and I'm excited about this.
SPEAKER_02:We do. And I know it's funny. We've had conversations before about, you know, at what point in like the holiday season or the new year or after the new year, people are really starting to think, oh man, I gotta start preparing my taxes, right? Or I gotta look at my numbers for the year and see how my year shook out. Um, I know there's people doing that left, right, and center who are, you know, running their small businesses, their e-commerce businesses. And basically this year, it's still really early in the year, still time for a totally fresh start. And we wanna bring clarity to this new year and not clutter. So obviously, we all manage physical inventory, but I feel like the mental clutter and the digital clutter of you know bookkeeping and record keeping can be really overwhelming for people. So today we're gonna go through basically how do you even get to a clean slate? What if you're a procrastinator? What if your stuff is not together from last year? How do we clean the slate? Then we're gonna talk about um how do we set the stage, right? How do we set up the slate for this year? Now that it's nice and clean, how do we get our things in order? As our numbers and our, you know, all of our transactions and whatever kind of come in throughout the year, how do we get it set up for that? And then how do we maintain that as we go? And the good news, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the good news is that there is some kind of like front-end work here to get things set up, but the whole like maintenance part is so incredibly easy.
SPEAKER_01:So easy for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you just gotta kind of slay the dragon, get your stuff set up, and then it's way easier to maintain kind of indefinitely, which I love. That's been my experience so far, but we're gonna get into the details of it. So let's start with cleaning the slate. Kevin has a real soft spot for procrastinators. I have a feeling he talks to them very often. So people who are like, oh my gosh, what do I do? So, Kevin, what do people do? Like, just I'm sure there's a procrastinator listening to this right now. They know it's them. And I used to be one of them.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Ken from the past is listening to this right now. Don't ask me time travel questions. But what is someone supposed to do if it's now this new year? They're probably most likely dreading, you know, doing their tax prep or whatever. Maybe there's some curiosity curiosity kind of questions they have about how their business went last year because now the year is officially over, and they could, you know, be interested in some of those numbers and some of those totals or whatever, but they're kind they kind of don't want to look at it because it's overwhelming. So just speak to those people for a minute. Tell us how can we get even a clean slate on the horizon here?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you you bring up a great point. And in fact, um, right now, the majority of new customers who write in um are not talking about starting fresh for 2025. They're asking, hey, is there any way you can help me for 2024? Um and while we all like to think as business owners, we do a good job of staying on top of our business on a you know daily, weekly, monthly basis. Um, we do, we might at a high level, but when it comes down to the details, most people do really just wait until tax time forces you to, right? Right. Um but the good news is it's it's not gonna be as bad as you fear, right? Um and we've talked about this in some prior episodes. Um actually, if you're a procrastinator, you're set up very well to understand what it's gonna take to clean the slate because you're gonna feel the pain as you go through it. And so one thing that's gotten a lot better in the last, you know, several years, especially since you know online banking became prevalent on everybody's phones, uh, the vast majority of your financial transactions do exist electronically somewhere, right? So it's just a question of pulling from different places. Now, if you buy stuff with cash, it's gonna get a little more challenging. If you commingle your business and personal finances, that makes it a lot worse. Um, just more time consuming, right? But by going through the process of tracking everything down for the prior year, and there's there's ways you can streamline that. Um, and that's you know, our tool helps with a lot of that because we can go pull in a year's worth of data from most of the marketplaces, many of the banks, we can upload your CSV data, things like that. Um, there's still going to be things like, you know, did you track your mileage? Um and if you didn't, how can you go kind of recreate that after the fact? Right? You know, are you are you going back through your calendar? Are you looking at your purchases of go through your credit card statement? And every time you went and you sourced somewhere uh or from your bank, go back and say, Do I have a record of that trip? Oh, nope, I forgot to write that down. Let me go back and do that. That's where you know Google Maps is your friend. And we're we're actually working on a blog post to explain a lot of these kind of tips for kind of recreating these mileage logs and things. So you can do that. Um, and what I would recommend is just as you're going through, if if you're a procrastinator and you don't feel like you're on top of it, one, you're gonna have to between now and April 15th.
SPEAKER_02:One way or the other.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. Or you can file an extension. Um and then still have to do it later. If you really want to procrastinate, I was gonna say that till October, baby.
SPEAKER_02:How much do you love procrastinating? Just depends.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, although I I shouldn't make too much fun because we get people who come in and they're like, I haven't filed taxes in three years. Can you help?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So uh if you wait till October, right. The answer is yes. There is help for you. Yes. Um, so anyway, um, but by going through that process, one of the if if you don't like it, which very few people do, and it helps motivate you, that's a good way to assess are there things kind of that upfront work you talked about to kind of clean the slate and set yourself up for success going for next year. It's a great way to do it, right? You you learn more by doing so.
SPEAKER_02:Um can you can you speak to like it is like thank God for online banking, right? Like there is this digital record like you're talking about with most of the transactions, probably, if not all of them. Can you speak specifically to like, okay, if someone is um trying out Seller Ledger right now for the first time, free for 30 days, by the way, if you've never tried it, it's awesome. But how much, how far back into the past can they pull transactions in? Like, because now it's a new year, and like you're saying, a lot of people are scrambling about last year. So, how does that work pulling in your transactions for 2024 if you've never even started?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so we we give everybody 90 days of data for free during the trial period. Um, and then if you want to keep using it after there, we after that we ask you to upgrade to go back to the beginning of 2024. We ask people to commit to an annual plan. So we'll go get all of last year's data, and then you've already prepaid for the next year. So you're basically getting two years for one. Uh the one caveat I would say is a lot of banks, um, as great as online banking is, banks are still pretty bad at making really old data available. Um, and a lot of them, they only make their statement data available in PDF format and things like that. Um but we we did build a feature where um just about every bank has the ability to go back and export a long period of time in a CSV, a comma separated file format. Pretty standard. You can pull it into Excel and other spreadsheets. Um, if you can do that, we will help you format it and pull it in. So even if we can't automatically get it through our API access application programming interfaces, which is how we connect to eBay and Amazon and Etsy and those guys, even if the banks don't give it to us that in such an automated way, they can give you a file. We have a you know a support article that explains how to reformat that so it works in our software. If it's too hard, we'll help you. Our product team does all of our customer support. It's you know, it's a one-time thing. We just try and help people get successful because we found you know, once you get over that hump of getting a bit organized, you get things synced. Yeah, yeah, it gets way easier in the side.
SPEAKER_02:Most of the work definitely easier. Yeah. So much easier.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then you can go back to being a slacker. Uh yeah. I mean You know what?
SPEAKER_02:You'll have to find something else to procrastinate about, though, because there's hardly anything left to do at that point.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, that is so hinge on you anyway. That is so true. I mean, um There's a few things.
SPEAKER_02:We'll talk about them. There's just a couple things.
SPEAKER_01:And and you know, just a quick story. Um, I told Kevin this earlier, but I actually uh helped my friend um get on to uh cellar ledger um because he was trying to build and develop his own spreadsheet, and I pretty much just said like, hey, I could um you know I could help you, what are the you know, expenses that I do? And I I just assumed that he knew that I used cellar ledger, and you know, that's a pretty bad ad for me. Um, but he was building it, and I pretty much just said, like, hey, um why do you need this? And he's like, Well, I need to use this for write-offs and everything like that. And he's like, Well, why don't you just show you mine? I mean, show show you your copy, and I was like, Well, I don't I don't attract the coplet. Yeah. And and he's like, How do you do it then? I was like, and and then he starts saying, like, well, do you have a bookkeeper? I assume, right? Because like, you know, just send receipts or something like that. Because that's kind of like the old-fashioned way, right? You send your receipts to your bookkeeper and stuff like that. I said, uh, I kinda do, but it's automated. I was like, what do you mean automated? It's like, yeah, it's a ledger. And I showed him how it looks, and um he signed up then and then. And he was like, I I need that. I was like, Yeah, exactly. I said, and I was like, see, like I was like, see that Panda Express. It's like I don't even have to touch that because I eat a Panda Express all the time, that's automatic. And see that, you know, like and then and then um that's kind of like you know, for for somebody and and he he's not like full-time reseller right off the rip. So, you know, like to see that uh underwork, so it's like, oh, this guy's cleaning the slate, because we were already talking about 2024, you know, deductions and stuff like that. How do I pull it? So um if you know if you're listening and you don't even have to be a full-time reseller. Actually, as a matter of fact, if you're a part-time reseller, you actually might need this more because because it's way less time um to to maintain over later. That we know we're gonna dive deeper in how to maintain this, but but to clean up the slate, I think it takes ten minutes. And um, like Kevin said, there might be some, you know, different requirements for each bank, but I I think most of the people that I talk to in that uses major banks, um, were pretty straightforward. Um and we just synced it. Um I I believe it's through plaid. Is that is that a thing that you guys use for most banks?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they're uh they're the platform we use. They integrate with most of the the banks. Um back in the you know, in the old days, there was a company called Yodoli that used much older technology, and they that was very challenging. Um nowadays, most modern applications with plaid.
SPEAKER_01:Because I even because I've used plaid before already, so it actually uh recognized my phone number and everything like that already, and right it just kind of like did a two-step verification. I was like, oh, like I didn't even have to like figure out you know that login already because I've used it. So that was a very uh seamless um transition.
SPEAKER_02:I also want to just call out really quick, like I don't think we actually mentioned specifically all the different platforms that Seller Ledger connects to as far as the e-commerce side, like where you might sell. Um, but that's another area where you know it's a similar thing of kind of pulling in transactions, but instead of from your bank or your credit card, it's your transactions from your platform, your sales and your fees and like all that kind of stuff. And it knows what all of the little transactions are and labels them, which is great. But can you speak to that a little bit too? Just like if there's any slate cleaning to be done across different platforms, or just generally mention the ones that you guys can integrate?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so that's that's probably where our our greatest strength is is the direct integrations of the platform. So um we launched initially with eBay. We've added uh Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, um Poshmark. Uh even though they don't have an API, we've got a way to automate some of that data or most of that data.
SPEAKER_02:It's just straight up magic.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Uh and then most recently. Yeah, most recently we added Walmart as well. No reselling. So yeah, we're, you know, if most people, once you get to turn, you know, and we've had this conversation before too about becoming a you know a real business, right? When you grow up and it's instead of part-time reselling and stuff, it's you're gonna make a career out of this. Most people are selling multi-platform. Um and that, you know, e-commerce businesses have a lot more detail than kind of, you know, if you're just invoicing a client for services, this is a lot of information about your products and your profit and and things like that, all of the fees. And we just pull it all in, we put it in the right tax lines, we show you your gross profit. Um, and if you're tracking inventory and you know, if you're using that cost of goods sold fields on eBay or if you do it on Amazon and Shopify and Walmart, when the item sells, we'll calculate the cost of goods and the profit on that sale. So that's you know, one of the other benefits of kind of cleaning the slate and getting organized is once you do that, these other kind of insights about your business just show up. They they come for free.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, they're just automatically there. It's so magical. I'm saying it's magical, but it really is uh pretty astonishing. Just I although I do, Kevin, I have to say, I like to think of you as my personal bookkeeper. Like you're like pretending it's software and you're really just like typing frantically behind the scenes, putting it all in. No, I'm just kidding. But um, you're not. It's also like you're doing the heavy lifting, which is the great news. You have much better things to do than that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, sometimes when I'm answering tech support questions, I do end up feeling quite a bit like a bookkeeper. So there's a good chance that when you write in, I will be answering you.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. It's you know you're gonna get the right answer. So I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we do care. That's another thing that um it seems to have been lost a little bit in the space, is just the desire to help people um and actually answer their questions as opposed to like just you know, close this ticket, move on to the room.
SPEAKER_01:When things become automated, right? When things become automated, sometimes you just kind of like lose that touch. And yeah. And um, no, you guys definitely provided that. Um, you know, we've had some uh things that was kind of like a nuance even in my transaction, and I didn't even know about it. You're the one that reached out to me. I was like, whoa, like so that was.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that's because you have some really interesting transactions there, Ken. I'm not gonna shit.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We we can't we can't they are very creative.
SPEAKER_01:That one they have to pay extra to listen to that story. Right, that's the bonus episode. Premium episode. Yeah, premium.
SPEAKER_03:Uh what did what did Ken buy that broke our software? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so I actually what I I I actually initially.
SPEAKER_03:What did he sell to whom?
SPEAKER_01:Well, talking about like cleaning the slate, I think Yeah, clean up your act there, Ken. No, um I actually sent money and I categorized it accidentally, you know, with clicking, and this is how cool and easy it was to resolve. Um all of a sudden, my like my net profit was like almost in the negative. I'm like, whoa, like this is bad, right? I was like, what's wrong here? And then um I actually look at um um the expenses, right? Because you have a schedule C. I'm like, where did it because at the end of the day it's just basic math add minus, and I was like, where did I lose money on? Where did I go wrong? Yeah, and then it showed up on meals. My meals dead. My meals showed like over over like$150,000, and I'm like, whoa, woo, woo, woo, woo. I was like, I I didn't take out that many people to to eat, or I didn't buy that many. Um but it was actually a um it was actually a um a bank wire transfer that I did to buy inventory that I actually categorized um as meals because when I was clicking meals it it added into it. Um and it was actually really easy. I just had to find that um and then uh re-categorize it. And I was like, all of a sudden, I'm I'm profitable business.
SPEAKER_02:Congratulations.
SPEAKER_03:That also saved you from an absolute guaranteed audit.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, right. We've already talked in a review of how much how rare it is to get audited, but that'll do it right there. That's a big old red flag.
SPEAKER_01:It's like, so so this guy sold this much and ate this much.
SPEAKER_02:He lives to eat, I guess.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm pretty sure their software would have caught that.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02:That is really funny.
SPEAKER_03:That's a great story.
SPEAKER_01:That is a great story. On to the next one.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, all my customer service issues have been user error also. Just so you know. But um, yeah, so so that's great. I feel like we have a great uh idea here about cleaning the slate to like really wrap up last year, you know, perhaps slay the dragon, whatever it takes, but you know, get our stuff in order, pull in all of our data so that we can clean up last year. But now it's a new year. And we've talked about some of this before, but just to reiterate, so like now we have the 2025 slate. And so just going all the way back for a moment to people who just don't really have a plan for their bookkeeping or their business finances, like a couple of things that might help prep this slate. One, you've already mentioned Kevin, keeping your, you know, not commingling your funds. So if you are if you don't have a business bank account or a business credit card or whatever, your business accounts now is the time, is never too late, right? Um, so go ahead and get those set up. I would say that'd be like the first thing if you don't have those set up. If you do have those set up, there's still some things to do to kind of prepare for this year. Um so let's get into that side of it. Like 2025, we're still early in the year. You can still probably remember all of the mileage you've done this year so far. So that's another good one to start. But what are some things that we can do to prep this year's slate?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I think starting with um starting with the banks, you want to make sure that you are putting as much of your financial kind of history on something that ends up in electronic format, right? So um the more you can move off of cash, and this is not to say, you know, you definitely don't want to get into credit card trouble and things like that. But even if you just use a debit card, um the more, you know, as you're looking through last year, um the more examples you can find where you don't have a good electronic record of it, try and eliminate those. Get things electronic because that does allow for if you're a procrastinator, you can likely find it at the end of the year. But really, what it the power is, um pretty much every bank out there right now, you can you know log into your um account on the mobile phone or connecting it to modern bookkeeping software, ours, QuickBooks, everybody else, uh they're gonna they're gonna have it every day. So all of those transactions as your business operates, it just flows through to the back end. And then you know, you guys have talked about one of the great things about the the modern accounting software is it learns the more you use it, right? So there's this upfront work to kind of organize the types of transactions and and the accounts you're using, but then the you know, the only thing we know how to treat everything coming in from the marketplace is so all of your income and all of the fees are gonna get categorized. It's really just the stuff that we don't know about, the spending that happens through banks and credit cards, but you kind of just have to tell us once and we remember.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And so, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's my favorite part.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, you know, my all my Dunkin' Donuts run, my Starbucks run. Um, I only go to and this is the cool part about like I guess with Seller Ledger that has helped me with the the categorizing this stuff. Once you categorize stuff, it actually helps me now I become like a creature of habit on where I actually get gas, on where I get food. Um, and it actually because it's like because I'm such a uh I don't wanna categorize more. So I'm like only Shell Station, only Chick-fil-A. They definitely already know. This is Kevin. Yeah, I don't wanna I don't wanna go to my Solo Ledger account and tell Kevin, like, hey Kevin, this trip, like I went to Popeye's instead of Chick-fil-A, so this was out-of-town meal.
SPEAKER_02:That's a good accountability strategy too. If you'd be ashamed to tell Kevin or have, you know, like don't do it. Don't buy something there.
SPEAKER_03:So now I know to look at his account on a regular basis. So I can shoot him an email and what are you doing?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. How could you go to BP like that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_02:Like it was the only thing you are.
SPEAKER_03:You know, it it sounds funny, but I actually had an email exchange within the last couple of days of a woman who is leaving one store platform and asked before I sign up for the next one, who should I choose? Because I like how automated everything is with Seller Ledger. I don't want to pick something that's gonna mess it up. Now, we're not gonna we don't think so highly of ourselves that we say, oh, you should go choose all of your other, you know, where to eat, where to you know, what platforms to use based on what we like. Accounting software. Yeah. Um, but it it it's an interesting mindset, right? Uh especially if you have a really good understanding of the value of your time.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Right? And where is your time best used? Is it best used outsourcing and selling and fulfilling, or is it trying to go track all this stuff down at the end of the year or every quarter?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And you know, well, and honestly, it's funny. We we've been talking about our like 2025 goals. And I mean, we we talk to our other reseller friends and community like all the time. Um, I hear this over and over and over again from people, including myself, that a goal uh in my business and in others' businesses is more consistency. And what's funny about that, it feels a little bit like the tail wagging the dog to be like, well, I have to go eat a Chick-fil-A or whatever, because you know, that is where that will get categorized with definitely automatically as a business meal because it's already in there, whatever. Like also, though, I think there is something to be said for reducing decision fatigue. Yeah, right. That is a huge factor in creativity. And entrepreneurs are very creative, right? Like, we need our mental energy, we need our time free, like to keep growing and keep iterating. And I do think that as silly as that sounds, to get the consistency and to cut down on the decision fatigue, like it's not a bad strategy, in my opinion. I think it makes actually perfect sense.
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and when you're talking about the you know, the nature of the time, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:We acknowledge that the the domain that we're in is the least enjoyable part of running a business, right? Anything to do with taxes. It's terrible. Nobody likes it. Yes, even accountants don't like it, right? They're stressed out during tax season. Um it's just it's stressful for everybody. So just eliminating that, reducing that, and put like we've talked about putting in a little bit of thought at the beginning of the year. Okay, what can I do better this year? Let me look at what I've done. Okay, that's inefficient, that's not as fun. Let's get that off my plate.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So I can get back to what I enjoy, like why why everybody's in the business, right? You're doing it for a reason other than to file taxes.
SPEAKER_02:I have two suggestions for this step in the process of prepping the slate just from my own experience. And I want you guys, I want to hear your thoughts on these. The first one is to schedule a time to sit down and put your mileage in, like once a week. Like have a cup of coffee Friday afternoon and enter your mileage for that week so you never have to think about it again. It's so fast to do anyway. But trying to like, I think the step that is the most annoying is if you do like I did when I first started uh with Cellar Ledger halfway through the year, and I was like, oh, I gotta go back through my planner. Lucky for me, I write everything down because my brain doesn't hold on to information. So I could go back in my paper planner and see, like every single trip that I took. And it wasn't hard to find that information, but it would have been easier if every week I spent five minutes on having to look through six months at a time.
SPEAKER_01:Or you just take photo of your mileage.
SPEAKER_02:And then have to look through all those photos.
SPEAKER_01:No, I just take one photo at the start of the year and at the end of the year. Caveat. Yeah. Caveat if you own if you have a sourcing car.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Which I don't. My car is mixed use, so I'm yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So well, you might need to buy a new car now because So when you see me in my new car, now you know why. It's all for mileage deductions.
SPEAKER_02:Decision fatigue sucks, guys.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's wasted time.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna go into the dealership tomorrow and be like, guys, I need help. Would you need help, sir? I need to stop tracking my mileage and I need a car. So whether it be personal or sourcing, um just put it in one car.
SPEAKER_02:It will, I will need to get a new car pretty soon.
SPEAKER_01:So if anyone's offering, um, and and also, Kevin, um, I just saw that you guys posted that this year uh mileage deduction just went up to 70 cents a mile. 70 cents, baby. Come on.
SPEAKER_03:And I that's turning into real money, so that is an area to make sure you are writing stuff off, right? Go back through every inventory purchase, any meal that you went to, any conference. Yeah, make sure you're deducting it.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. So um That is wild. I would just say that this year I will be renting less because I rent a lot this year in 2024 because I didn't want to put quote unquote those miles on my car because of the maintenance and yada yada yada. I was like, but doing the math though, if you do the math, it's actually more advantageous for me as a business owner to actually have a dedicated sourcing car um that in a way it takes the deduction and weighing on this concept, Kevin. So let's say I get a car, I'm making car payments, and then at the end of the year, I write off fifty you know, because I I drive around it depends on the season. Sometimes I've driven up to eighty thousand miles in one year and I I Lease is 50,000 miles. Um but but historically, every time I rent, I usually put like three to five thousand miles on that rental. But I cannot write that off because it was a rental expense, it's not my own.
SPEAKER_03:So I'm still impressed that these companies rent to you at all. Huh?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, they love me. They love me. And then and and and then the guy knows me now. The guy under rental that's close to my house.
SPEAKER_02:You're gonna have to break up with them.
SPEAKER_01:He always gives me the best, the brand new car. Like I've had a 3,000 mile car. He's like, here you go, friends. And then I give it back with like 10,000.
SPEAKER_02:Rude.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe it's because they're claiming all of those miles and uh all the depreciation on there, and they're like, Yeah, he's depreciating our vehicle so fast that in a year they get rid of it.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I'm saying? Because like I'm sure there's a math.
SPEAKER_02:Um, but but like, but math-wise, like you just said your low your low year is 50,000 miles at 70 cents a mile, that's 35 grand.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:That's insane. Is there a limit?
SPEAKER_03:No. So that yeah, there's for the listeners out there, I would recommend talking to like an accountant or a CPA. Yes. Uh well, just this is not tax advice. I've had this before, you know, back in the outright days, uh, you know, we put vehicles into the company and and stuff like that. There's there's a decision to be made around do you take the standard deduction or do you actually write off the real costs?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and so it's it's hard. Everybody's situation is different. Right. So I don't want to come out and say, oh, everybody should just do this.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, though generally, if like Anna, if it's you know, part of the time is personal, part of the time is business. Again, from that, you know, decision fatigue. Standard, right? Standardized would be Yeah, standard is just easier. It's the same thing with the home office deduction. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right? Where up to, you know, I can't remember what it the number is off the top of my head, but up to 500 square feet of your house. Um, if you use it exclusively for business, you can write off and there's I don't know if it's like five dollars a square foot or something. Um but those kind of things, again, maybe you could earn an extra couple of dollars on the margin, but the simplicity of I just don't want to think about it. I want to go grow my business. Yep. Right? That's the trade-off.
SPEAKER_02:For sure. But I do think it's a good point. Like if you're in a situation where you need to track your mileage, like you do own your vehicle, whether it's a business vehicle or not, you know, as long as it's not a rental car, basically, you can track your mileage and that can be an expense for you. So back to my suggestion, which is to schedule a time to input your mileage every week.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, put it in your calendar.
SPEAKER_02:But the the prepping this late part is only putting it in your calendar. The following through is the maintenance. So we're not gonna talk about that yet. We're not there yet. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And also a pro tip on that turn on your Google Maps and then um you can just um if you if you know you're if you're not archaic like me versus Anna, Anna writes, I take screenshots. Um you could just use it that way. Cause um because I've I've done it before. Before I've had uh before I've had a dedicated vehicle, I've uh just took screenshots of every long trip because like basically it would track, right? Because I um your mileage would track. Um and all yeah, so so that would be uh turn on just turn aro turn on your Google Map.
SPEAKER_02:Well there's nothing wrong with being archaic, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01:But also unless you're allowed to be a co-host here, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's right. See, there's room for everybody. I'm living proof, you guys. Um well my other suggestion w is to familiarize yourself with the Schedule C page in Cellar Ledger. Because I'm always singing the praises of the Schedule C page. I think it's my favorite part of the whole thing. Um I know that it is, but like for people who feel like you know, slightly nauseated looking at a tax form, um what do like what do people what are the big main things people need to be looking at when they look at that page? Like what can they start to make a habit of checking in on with the Schedule C page?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think the the biggest thing, um you're gonna you're gonna have a pretty good idea of how much your what your top line is. Okay. And so it's really about what are your expenses and how much money you're making. Um and I know this is uh one of Ken's favorite topics in terms of making sure you write off everything you are entitled to.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Uh in fact, I I believe we were joking about um now that Ken is the master of claiming all of these deductions and getting his Schedule C completely solid, that we should find a way to publish what his schedule all of his line items on the schedule C. Not that we'll we'll blur out the amount, but in terms of No, they you can cut the amount in half.
SPEAKER_01:They can only see the bottom number. You know, like you know, like so it could be an eight or a zero. Right.
SPEAKER_03:And we don't know which you'll never know. It'd be a one or a seven. But but why are there four of those zeros before the desk? Why would that be entered? The smart ones are gonna figure it out, Ken. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and then the other thing, so one you know, in addition to the Schedule C, um, you can also drill down into your profit and loss report, which is basically all the categories that roll up to your tax form.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And a good tactic there is go look at your spending month over month, right? And it's very easy to kind of recognize patterns and say, oh, I, you know what, I don't have a whole lot of expenses for mileage. Oops, I think I forgot to do that. Uh, or, you know, meals out or travel, you know, and you can kind of compare that to your other records to help say, oh yeah, I may have missed something here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and then like I like your approach of when you find things like that, create a new system, a new reminder, a new process to force yourself to, yeah, I want to make sure I'm tracking that. Right. And then as you do that, if it's a little more manual than you want, look at ways to automate it more. In the case of mileage, maybe you decide to download a mileage tracking application.
SPEAKER_02:Right. A lot of people use them, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. Uh mile IQ, I think, is the one that we hear the most people want to integrate with. Um so there's, you know, odds are there's there's lots of good automated solutions out there. Uh the other thing is go on pretty much any discussion board and you know, Google or search. Yeah. Uh but there will be, you know, there will be people who say, well, this is what I did. And you can find some some interesting tips and recommendations that way too.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's really good. I think too, some people just maybe aren't as familiar with like what are the accepted expense categories, right? Like probably somebody listening to this is like, you can write off meals, what? You know, like I think you don't know what you don't know. So that's a good way also to like see and start being in the habit of thinking of your expenses as like tax expenses, right? Like as business expenses that can be stacked against your income when it comes to tax time. So if you're not familiar with what all those different categories are, that's a good way to get familiar too. And that's where it's like so helpful that this is a specifically e-commerce thing, right? It's like gives you some clues there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And we did when designing our tax report, um, every line there's a there's a little like dotted line under the name of the tax line that you can click on it, it pops up the IRS instructions that it'll even give you examples of types of things to put here that says, okay, for office expense, you may include this, this, and this. So just trying to be as transparent as possible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's super helpful. And also just shameless plug about all of the blogs you guys have written. They there's so many blog posts on Seller Ledger that are about like a lot of the ins and outs of things. And so even if you're like looking, if you have a question and you haven't directly contacted like customer support yet, there's so many answers in the blogs, and they're actually they like actually give you the answer, which I find very helpful. Because you know, there's all these like listicles and things on the internet where you're like, okay, I just spent all this time reading and I didn't find the answer. But you guys always actually give the answer, you're not holding out for giving the answer.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we yeah, we it's basically our primary philosophy. We don't write a ton of content, but when we do, we try and go deep and answer the actual question people are asking.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And almost all of the topics come from questions that people write in about. Uh, because we do get people asking tax advice all the time. Yeah. And we tell them, like, we can't give you specific tax advice because we don't know your entire situation. And, you know, we're not CPAs. We build software to be able to do this. But um, a lot of times, you know, the the two big other than coming directly to our homepage, the two biggest topics uh that drive traffic to our blog was the one about consignment selling and how do you handle that from a tax perspective. Uh, and the other is uh sales tax and inbound shipping, and is it a part of cost of goods sold? Right. And so those are things where there are answers out there. The IRS has them. Um they're not necessarily easy to find or understand. So we just try and break it down, and especially for an e-commerce seller, like you said before, there's a lot of just these these little quirks, right? Like if I'm selling personal stuff in addition to my business stuff, and that's in my 1099, what do I do? Right? There like it's hard to get or to find content out there about such a specific situation. So those are the kind of things we try and tackle.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's very helpful. Um, I super appreciate it, and I have benefited personally from some of that type of stuff. So keep on putting it out there.
SPEAKER_03:We'll do our best.
SPEAKER_02:There's always more, right? There's like always more little nuances or specific uh, I don't know, situations or changing, you know, changes in the tax law for the year, changes in the code. So it's a whole lot. But um all right, are you guys ready to talk about the easiest part?
SPEAKER_00:The easiest part as well.
SPEAKER_02:Maintaining the slate, baby. So obviously, mileage, you gotta update your mileage every once in a while. Um, what else do we have to do? What else do we have to do beyond that?
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, it depends on how good a job you did cleaning the slate and setting yourself up.
SPEAKER_02:So I'll I'll give you the self-will thank your past self on this one.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'll I'll just describe what I think is the probably where Ken is by now. Um, but probably like the ultimate scenario for minimizing this kind of work. And we have had, I'm not kidding, people write in and say, uh, by the way, I just you know did all my books in 10 minutes, send it over to my accountant. They filed the tax return, I'm done. 10 minutes. That's what it's magic. So, what does it take to do that? Um, we've talked about it before, having you know, good bank and credit cards set up, making sure you're diligent, yes, financial hygiene, account hygiene. Um, make sure everything goes through them and then connect to whether it's our software or somebody else, that with all of your selling platforms, as long as you are diligent about keeping your transactions through those platforms, this software can do 95 to 99% of the lifting for you. Um, all of your e-commerce transactions that come in get put in the right places because we can see all of the detail behind it. For an order, we know what the item price was, we know if shipping was collected, we know if fees were taken out, right? All of that is just done. So your top line and some of your expenses done. So then it really comes down to the bank and credit card transactions. And that's just a function of, you know, tell us what these were for. And we actually have one of our coolest features for that. One of the first things we built is, you know, you'll connect your bank and or your credit card and it'll pop up and it'll say, Oh, you know, you have a hundred uncategorized transactions. And it's like, oh my God, that sounds like a lot of work, right? Um, but then you click on it and we actually group them by vendor.
SPEAKER_02:And so if it's so easy, I love that.
SPEAKER_03:You know, the odds are, you know, of those hundred transactions, 30 of them might be from one vendor. You categorize once, 30% of your transactions are categorized, they'll be remembered forever. Oh, that list just got a lot shorter, right? And you just do a hand.
SPEAKER_02:You just took a third of it out, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And it it shrinks so rapidly. In fact, we we actually have a demo. We um we have a how-to video, and we did a whole special for eBay sellers on a tutorial to get started. And one of them demonstrates exactly that, right? Like, okay, it looks like oh, there's a lot of information, there's a lot of work to be done. No, we we group the work, we chunk it out for you. So just to answer this one piece of information will apply the logic to everything else. And so then it really is you do that probably for the first couple, you know, the first time might be you know, 15, 20 minutes, and then next month log back in and it's a handful of transactions. But by the end of the year, you know, most days you look in, there's nothing to do. Yeah, it's just you know, most weeks, really nothing to do because it's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01:I actually don't categorize all of them. That way when I come back, there's stuff to do. I've never actually I've never zeroed it out. I don't know why. I I get weirded out when I get it.
SPEAKER_02:That's weird.
SPEAKER_01:I want something to click. I want something to click when I go in.
SPEAKER_03:Do you purposefully like unread emails?
SPEAKER_01:Um, no, I purposely delete unread emails. I'm just joking.
SPEAKER_02:That gives me hyped.
SPEAKER_03:Uh right. No, no, no, for just above the inbox at least. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's hilarious. Um, I actually star. I actually um a favorite of a lot of emails. There you go. Uh huh. Um but but no, I think um you said it right.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:This is so uh I this is really like the my favorite part of doing it because um it actually the main maintenance work is more of like a temperature check on how your business is doing. Um and one of the things that we're doing for 2025 in our businesses, I'm trying to uh watch how how I spend uh the aka the unnecessary spending that doesn't need to happen when Ken just wants a newer camera, when Ken just wants a you know, an upgrade here, an upgrade there. Um there is a method to uh the whole never settle methodology, but sometimes I just go overboard never settling.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm just like uh never settle down?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Always um so yeah, it it it's helping me. The main maintenance mode is kind of like that temperature check. It's like, okay, um, this is the money that's coming in and this is the money that's coming out. So now I'm more hyper focused on the money that I spend to get more inventory. So so that's how I see it. Like, okay, you know, eBay sees me, you know, I see eBay like, okay, this is your last seven days, or this is your daily sales. Now I see that as an when I see my expense or when I need to categorize purchases in in Teller Ledger, I was like, okay, this makes sense. You know, last week uh we made this uh on eBay, and this week this is the money that went out. I'm trying to keep more money in and less money out. So that's the goal.
SPEAKER_00:And equals profit, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's a great approach. And that you're you're kind of speaking to like one of the other benefits of kind of getting organized and and getting it maintained, so you have to put very little effort in for the bookkeeping, which is all of that time, not only could you be spending outsourcing and listing and stuff, but you can be looking at your business and analyzing it and finding ways to improve your results. So instead of spending your time in money for organization and tax purposes, which is just kind of this necessary evil, now you're looking at it to become smarter about your business. You know, one of the things we didn't really talk about it and it gets into a lot more detail in terms of cleaning the slate is, you know, for those people out there who get into, you know, detailed inventory tracking, doing things like make sure you have unique SKUs for all of your products, come up with a good plan for the unique identifiers for your products, how you're going to list them so that it all ties back. Um get a, you know, lots of interactions with customers who either don't assign SKUs or use the same SKU over and over, and then their results come in and their day they look at their data and they're like, oh my God, what's going on? How do I sort this out? It's like, well, we can. It's gonna take some effort, and you're gonna have to go back and rematch and check all this stuff. Might I suggest in the future for you know, going forward, set yourself up much better. Yeah, use unique smart codes, and there's lots of lots of techniques you can use on that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we'll have to talk sometime in the future about that, about the inventory management side um of Seller Ledger because I haven't used it really yet, but I kind of have an idea about something I want to do with it in this year at some point. So we'll talk more about that. Um, but I was kind of thinking along the same lines. Um, like I used to many years ago, shout out to the Scavenger Life podcast. That's how I learned to sell on eBay, and I love that podcast so much. It taught me like everything I knew. Uh and I mean I've I've continued to learn since it hasn't been a podcast anymore, but they like raised me, so I like appreciated so much. Um but they would always talk about how um you know, they'd ask kind of how do you how do you feel like the week was, right? Did it feel like a slow week? Did it feel like sales were good? And like we have these in internal like impressions of how our business is doing. And so often they're just like not accurate, right? It's just it's a feeling. I have to imagine that that only compounds when you add in other platforms too. Like I can hardly get an accurate feeling about my business when I have am on just one platform. But if I were spread across other platforms too, it'd be even harder to kind of just discern that with a gut check. So I really like this idea too that you know, you might start out kind of feeling like you're giving a lot to the bookkeeping process, like you're you're the one who's kind of trying to push in all the information and get everything right and sort it out, but then it starts giving you back so much more, right? It becomes like, well, now you show up in Seller Ledger in your dashboard to take away from it, right? To take away insights and to kind of see a lot more clearly based on all this data, like how your business is doing, and like you said, where you can maybe make things more efficient or where you can buy more or you know, cut back on expenses or whatever. And it's just so much more helpful than some gut feeling. I mean, in general, I would always tell people like trust your gut, but like your gut's not really good at knowing exact numbers about your business, you know? Like that's not what it's for. So please look at your numbers and learn to love them, right? Because they're gonna tell you the truth about what's going on with your business. And having it all in front of you is pretty priceless.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's a great point because it's so easy. And, you know, we have it here with our business, right? It's ups and downs, different days, and you know, emotions get high, they get low, and all this. But the numbers don't lie. The numbers are what is happening. And, you know, you could be overly optimistic and maybe you need that reality check, or maybe you're maybe you are spending too many too much on upgrades, and uh, you know, the software can be there to say, hey, uh, might might be time to rein it in. But you could also, you know, if you have a slow week or you're feeling bad, you know, you can go in and look and say, actually, no, this month is looking pretty good. And it puts it in perspective. And yeah, no, I'm doing all right. So it's yeah, I think that's a great point, right? Just the numbers are what they are, they will give you the the truth um as long as you are prepared to face them.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And if you set them up accurately to run, you know, to run on their own after that, like, which is the beauty of what the software does. But yeah, it's like it is a little work up front sometimes to get it all in order, but then once it's in order, it just it keeps giving back to you indefinitely, which is so great.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's not like going to the gym where you actually have to show up and do the same workout or even harder workouts each time. It's kind of the opposite. The more you come in, the less you have to work out.
SPEAKER_02:Um, can you find me a gym that does that too?
SPEAKER_03:Wouldn't that be great?
SPEAKER_02:It would be so great.
SPEAKER_01:The the contrast of grow trying to grow your money and trying to grow your muscles. It's actually opposite. We found something that doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:Where it doesn't perfectly align with the gym analogy. It's actually that's where they diverge. I love it.
SPEAKER_01:Alrighty. So, Kevin, any final thoughts about cleaning slate?
SPEAKER_03:Uh no, other than just don't be afraid of it, right? It's not that hard. Um put the time in, it does pay out, uh, whether it frees up time or it tells you more about your money. Um, but yeah, don't be afraid of it. And anybody who's interested in trying us out, um, again, we don't ask for a credit card until you're happy with the software, and we actually encourage people to email us in for support. We'll do our best to help.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there you have it. It doesn't get better than that. Exactly, exactly. And also, too, I mean, I think one of the things that um, you know, we kind of unraveled throughout this conversation is um it's beyond just a bookkeeping software to just to do your taxes. It's a lot of it has to do with actually being able to understand your business better, um, understand your expenses. And you know, like I I know we all us resellers would love to like, oh I bought it for ten, I flip it for sixty, right? Like we all automatically see a like oh fifty dollar profit, right? Um and I just need to do it, yeah. I just need to do it ten thousand times, and uh, you know, I I'm uh you know half a mil right there or whatever. Um, but I think um this is kind of like I totally agree with what Kevin said. Don't be afraid to look at it because um if there was anything that you could control, it's actually this one, especially in the expense portion, and and totally acting like a f full-time b or a real business, because the IRS will will treat you like a real business. We'll treat you like a business. So I'm like, okay, how about this? You know, how about all my my mileage deduction? Oh, you want to see it? Yeah, there's my car out there. Come take a look at the mileage clock or the odometer. There you go. So give me my money back. I'm just joking.
SPEAKER_02:So give me my money back. Well, honestly, though, it is not right off uh I'm it's very empowering where it might be scary, you're afraid to look at look behind the curtain at your own numbers. It's very empowering once you know them. Like you're pretty much unstoppable.
SPEAKER_01:And also, like we said, there's digital copies of everything. I mean, I think one of the biggest fear that I had before was like, what if I lost the receipt? Yeah. Right? What if I I didn't have all this? Well, you know all my all my flights, all my travel, a lot of the expenses, if I didn't pay with with cash, it's already there. And actually the cash transactions that I have are actually withdrawals from my bank. So there it is. That was a big withdrawal. That was buying cost of goods. Um or ATM withdrawals and stuff like that. So um I think there's a lot of advantages that we have doing business nowadays with the digital world. And you know, partner with a software like this, I mean, come on, I'm just gonna be more, you know, it to be honest, it actually helped me um with kind of like the the should I rent more cars or should I just purchase it and yeah, like gave you the answer to the question, right? It did, like literally, like one that that was it was just so one sit-down, just chopping it up, and at that point, it doesn't matter what car I get, it doesn't matter. Uh s because all of them will will log miles. The beauty of all this, all of them will log miles. And like Kevin said, numbers won't lie. So um, I think uh it's a very productive uh conversation today, guys. And um, if you guys have any question, make sure you DM us or you follow Seller Ledger on Instagram and shoot them an email there. Make sure you try them out. Let's make 2025 our best year yet.
SPEAKER_00:So huge shout out to Seller Ledger for being here. Um, a sponsor for this podcast, Kevin. Thank you. And uh thank you for having me. Thank you for this great conversation, and we will see you in the next episode. Peace.
SPEAKER_02:Bye.