I’m proud to announce the second version of my spreadsheets for Etsy sellers. Trust me, they’re handmade. This version is actually 4 workbooks (or files) with 4-5 sheets (or tabs) each. They calculate, they graph, they list. They’re even pretty.

I’m calling them “Mini Accounting Books” (MAB) for Etsy Sellers, because the goal with these is to do very basic accounting for a super-small, home-based businesses. I think many of us here on Etsy just need to log purchases and sales, track monetary inflows/outflows, make sure we’re not losing money, and calculate pricing. To do more would cost too much time, but to do less would be irresponsible.

Screenshot/Preview:

How to get them:

1. Buy the item in my shop. Specify the address to which I should email the sheets in the “note to seller” field. (If you forget, I’ll send to your PayPal email.)
2. Pay for the item.
3. Wait for me to email you the file. I promise delivery within 12 hours of payment if at all possible. Delivery will be absolutely asap.

System Requirements:
Detailed compatibility info is here. In short, I recommend using Microsoft Excel 2003 (Mac) or 2004 (Windows) for 100% functionality. OpenOffice/NeoOffice (free and downloadable alternatives to MS Office) handle everything but dates on graphs and cell comments.
The following programs have been tested by others (not me) and reported to work with the sheets: Appleworks, MS Office 98.

The Rules:
I’d like to think this is unnecessary, but here goes: Please feel free to pass the link to this page or my shop around, but you may not distribute or sell these files.

The Files:

• Analysis: Analysis is the way to check at a glance how your business is doing. I’ve provided three sheets:
  1. “Analysis” includes three charts. They gather the info from the other sheets in this workbook automatically. The three charts show your sales vs. time, purchases vs. time, and sales vs. purchases. Use this to make sure that you’re not losing money.
  2. “Inflows” is where you can record every sale you make (or other cash inflows if you wish). Then, you can sort them by venue (e.g. Etsy or eBay), price, buyer, shipment status, feedback status, and if they’ve actually been paid or not.
  3. “Inflows Daily” helps us create useful graphs. Enter your daily sales totals and the graph will automatically update.
  4. “Outflows” is where you can record your purchases and things like fees. Then, you can sort them in all sorts of ways.
  5. “Outflows Daily” is the same as “Inflows Daily,” except for outflows.
• Inventory: Use this handy workbook to keep track of what you have in stock for what price. Figure out your prices according to a customizable formula. This is the one sheet that is not necessarily designed for monthly use.
  1. The “Summary” is a list of everything you’ve had in stock. Sort it by sold status, price, cost, profit, labor, title, ID, or more!
  2. The next two sheets (“Prod. Typ. A/B”) are where you can handle your pricing. You can break your inventory down into classes of products like necklaces and bracelets, or you can classify by wholesale or retail. In the latter case, you can even modify the added value factor for one sheet to quickly get everything priced either wholesale or retail.
  3. (continued on “Prod. Typ. A/B”) To create a new sheet (say for a third class of products), right click on the tab you want to copy, select “Move or Copy,” and follow the little dialogue box’s directions.
  4. The fourth sheet is a detailed example of how my pricing formula works. I suggest studying and practicing with this sheet before working with the former two. Check the cell comments for explanations. The formula I use is one that many consider industry standard. You can easily customize it thanks to the centralized “rates box.”
• Purchasing: The Purchasing workbook has four sheets:
  1. The first part (“Log”) allows you to record everything you buy.
  2. “Vendor List” is where you record your favorite vendors and their important information. It’ll help you choose from whom to buy.
  3. “Never Again List” is the place to record which vendors you want to avoid and why. Don’t experience bad customer service twice again!
  4. “Cost calculator” is a seriously robust and fast way to figure out how much individual beads cost. Type in whatever info you have in one of the six calculators on this page, and get the results you need to price your creations.
• Shipping: The Shipping workbook has two sheets:
  1. The first sheets allows you to record every packaging supply you buy and calculate how much each box and bag cost you.
  2. The second sheet uses a lookup function to help you calculate the total cost of each style of packaging you use. It’s really nifty.

How to Use Them (do read this section!):

• The data I have in the spreadsheets is to be an example, and you should replace it with your own.
• Save the original files. Make copies of them and rename the copies instead of writing over the originals. You can also ask me to email you the sheets again.
• I’ve put cell comments throughout all the sheets to help explain things as you go along. I recommend reading all the comments before you begin. Cells which have a small red triangle in their upper right corner have a comment. To view a comment, simply hover over the cell. To delete one, right-click on the cell and select “delete comment.” To delete all the comments in a sheet, select all the cells, right-click on them, and select “delete comment.” See examples and read more about how to use comments here.
• Column titles are always blue. Darker titles invite you to input data. Light colored titles mean that the content in this column is calculated by a formula; you do not need to type anything here. This color scheme makes it quick and easy to know what info you still need to gather and what you don’t.
• The Analysis and Purchasing sheets are designed to be used on a monthly (or bi-monthly) basis. There isn’t enough space in each one to do all of your recordkeeping forever–that would be too long and clumsy anyway. I recommend making a copy of the original file for each new month and tacking something like “2006-01″ (for January 2006) on the end of the file name. That way the files will be easy to keep track of on your computer.
• You can record more than Etsy sales with these spreadsheets. There are two ways: either make a new sheet for each venue in which you sell, or just put it all in one. I’ve made it easy to specify where you sold each item (on Etsy, ebay, or to a boutique, for example).

Learning Excel:
Knowing the basics will dramatically improve the usefulness of these spreadsheets. Above word processing skills, there are three main things you will benefit from knowing:

1. How to format cells. This is how you make something look like a date, number (with decimal places or not), or currency value. Here’s a helpful webpage, and here’s a longer tutorial (in Adobe pdf format).
2. How to sort data. This will be a great tool for you when using the inflow/outflow logs. You could sort sold items by price, customer, feedback status, shipping status. To learn how to sort lists, visit this tutorial.
3. How to drag formulas down a column (using the fill handle). This is how you can extend the formulas I’ve written. Read about all of that here.

In general, I can recommend this About.com page and Excel’s own help database. The latter is where I learned most of what I know (combined with trial and error). Press F1 in any MS Office program to access help.

I am happy to answer concise questions, but I cannot promise to always be available (I work 40+ hours per week, have my own Etsy store, and take care of things at home).

Once is for Always:
Lastly, buying this spreadsheet once entitles you to all future versions. When a new version comes out, just email me and mention the transaction number of your first purchase. I’ll send you the latest version.

Thank you sincerely for your interest. I hope these sheets are a great help to you!