Handling fees, shipping costs, and cost basis
These three numbers decide whether your flips are actually profitable. Getting them right — and knowing which ones we pull automatically versus which need your input — matters more than any other piece of setup.
Marketplace fees
For eBay orders synced via API, we pull the full fee stack automatically: final value fees, international fees, promoted listing fees, regulatory operating cost fees, and ad-hoc charges. These land on the sale record itself, so per-item profit reflects actual fees — not an estimated percentage.
If you use promoted listings heavily, this is a meaningful accuracy bump over tools that apply a flat 13% assumption. On promoted items, the actual fee is often 2–5% higher than a flat-rate estimate.
What’s not pulled automatically: fixed subscription fees (eBay Store fees) and insertion fees that aren’t tied to a specific order. Add those as a monthly business expense in your Ledger under “Marketplace fees.”
Shipping
eBay Managed Payments labels — if you bought the label through eBay, the cost syncs automatically with the order. No entry needed.
Third-party labels (Pirate Ship, Shippo, USPS.com, ShipStation, etc.) — these are invisible to the eBay API. You have two options:
- Per-item entry — log the exact label cost on the item record. Most accurate.
- Monthly total — add a monthly lump shipping expense to your Ledger. Less accurate per-item but acceptable for reporting.
Handling supplies (bubble wrap, boxes, tissue paper, tape) are separate from the shipping label. Log them as materials on the item record, or set a per-item materials default by category (Settings → Categories → Default materials cost).
Cost basis
Cost basis is what you paid for the item — and it’s the most commonly missing piece of data. Without it, your profit math is completely wrong.
For eBay-synced items: We don’t know what you paid. You enter the purchase price on the item record when you add the item to ResaleTruth (or retroactively after it syncs). This is a one-time entry per item.
For CSV imports: Include the purchase price in your import file. It maps to the purchase_price column in the template.
For lot purchases: Use the Lots feature. Create a lot record, enter the total price paid, allocate across items by estimated value or equal split. Each item gets its proportional cost basis, which flows through to COGS when it sells.
Shipping as cost basis vs. shipping as expense
Two different types of shipping live in ResaleTruth:
- Inbound shipping — if you paid to ship the item to yourself (e.g., bought something on eBay, had it shipped to your address for resale), that cost is part of your cost basis and goes in the purchase cost field.
- Outbound shipping — what you paid to ship to the buyer. This is an expense deducted from gross revenue on the sale record.
eBay Managed Payments labels are outbound and sync automatically. Inbound shipping is always manual entry.
Common mistakes
Forgetting labor. Your time is a cost. Set your hourly rate in Settings → Profile → Hourly rate. Log time per item when you clean, list, photograph, pack. It’s the number that most often turns “profitable” items into break-even or worse.
Using the eBay dashboard number as profit. eBay shows gross minus fees. That’s it. Your purchase price, shipping supplies, labor — none of that is in eBay’s number. Don’t confuse gross minus fees with net profit.
Not entering purchase price on synced items. Items that sync from eBay show up with revenue and fees but no cost basis until you add it. Your dashboard will show those items as 100% margin until you fix them. It’s wrong.
Questions? Email support@resaletruth.com — we reply within one business day.