Keeping Track of BrickLink Income Vs. Expenses

Keeping Track of BrickLink Income Vs. Expenses
In this video, we show you how we keep track of our expenses and income to determine whether or not we are making a profit. It is extremely important to keep track of all the numbers, especially when you are trying to run this as a business. For those of you wondering how much we have spent so far on our store, you get a sneak peak into it in this video.
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Check out our BrickLink store here:
store.bricklin...
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Products we use in our store:
Akro-Mils 24 Drawer Cabinet:
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Akro-Mils 64 Drawer Cabinet:
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Drawer Dividers - 32 Pack:
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Barcode Scanner:
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Avery Labels for Drawers:
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LEGO Sorting/Divider Trays:
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[@ichopalot]

you are one of the best bricklink youtubers, keep going :) also thank you for the reply to my questin :) best regards

[@rj3969]

QuickBooks would be a lot easier my friend. Thank you for the video, love your channel! 😃

[@hfrappier]

It would also be nice to track your time (buying, parting out, picking, shipping, managing) and apply a fictitious hourly rate.

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

Hi Hugo! We do track out time when we are working in the store. We each "clock in" and "out" when we're working. Thanks for watching Hugo!

[@Babar13-2]

yes video is 3 years olf but ill have a try, do you guys typoe the orders manually or you have an in built API feature that automatically puts the orde details, becuase for 1 order a days this works fine but if you have 20, you start to spend more time typing than packing up

[@juanitobeernink6141]

Hey @justabrickimtyebucket! I recently opened my store about a week ago. It’s been progressively growing… I was wondering if you guys had a template for this spreadsheet? Because the numbers seem to automate themselves… thanks I’ve watched all the bricklink related videos before opening my store and you guys helped tons!

[@b1ink586]

Do you have this saved as a template that you can share ?

[@jarodcamacho2900]

How long/ timeframe do you think it will take you to get to the positive as a business?

[@MovieBizChannel]

How did you get the months to do the drop down thing?

[@Drewdb]

Im starting a store and your channel is the biggest help i can get, you earned my sub but im curious if you can give this layout as a template? just curious

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

Hi Drew, At the moment we do not have a template for anyone, but if you send us an email at: [e-mail] I might make one soon and can be sure to let you know. We've had a decent amount of interest in it recently. Enough to make one. I will not remember to find this comment, but I can flag an email, so if you send us one, I'll be sure to get back to you there. Thanks for watching!!! Hope it and some of the other videos on the channel help!

[@Nitrotix1]

​​​Did you guys end up making a template for this or a newer version by any chance?

[@judithawkerman3307]

Just found this vid - thanks. Question - you don't appear to have a column for refunds - both BL and PP. As we know, in a complete or partial paypal refund, you lose $$ as fees are no longer refunded - which would debit the total. Same for partial refunds in BL which would lower total $$ for order, i.e. if a part broke in transit. Both would show a loss on the total sale amount. Do you have the Credit cell subtract from total dollars as well?

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

We Use a different far more involved budget now that tracks shipping costs for replacement parts and refunds separately then adds them together for a "refund" category total.

[@jacobpacker3941]

Can you share this Numbers template? Also Love the channel my wife and I have been going back to watch all your videos love watching the store grow and learning the inner workings of what it takes to run a BrickLink store. Thank you so much!

[@Lswizzle06]

Just wondering if you use a different method now if so could you make an update on this topic

[@vballbobsbricks7074]

Would love to be able to know how to do this for my bricklonk store. And possibly import the info as well if possible.

[@cbadcali]

Wonderful inside look thank you; very organized and easy to track. Quick question do you track BL fees similar to PayPal fees?

[@GlorpShitto]

Really loving the content. Looking forward to watching the channel/store grow.

[@lennarthanisch5711]

Great Video, is it possible to share a Template from ur excel sheet?

[@akaturbo7]

Where is your column for BrickLink fees? Did you forget that?

[@johnwybenga5163]

Hi Evan and the rest of the gang. I recently opened a BrickLink Store in Canada and have questions about profit and loss. This video helped with many of my questions. Thanks In the video you said that the process of entering sales data was starting to get “tedious” and you were asking if something else existed. Have you found that solution? Is there something more “automated”? Plus, like others have asked, is your blank spreadsheet shareable? (I am a Mac user also)

[@CapitalBrix]

Great Video Mate! Just curious how you managed to get the paypal fees? Since most payments are onsite and dont show on my page (operating in Australia). How do I view paypal fees for each order and as a bonus same thing but with stripe fees?

[@Jpatrick139]

This is really helpful. Thanks for sharing your process. I'm curious if you keep track of which items are selling well in your store, and how you keep track of prices/sales per piece. In other words, how do you know when a set was a good investment for parting out, as it all gets mixed together in your inventory (other than the minfigs, I suppose)? Do you have a way of looking back and knowing you made $XX on set XXXX, or lost $XX on set XXXX, sold 60% of the pieces from set XXXX...stuff like that? Or do you rely completely on the Bricklink price guide and other such tools?

[@Jpatrick139]

I think this kind of data would be extremely helpful, but I can't imagine an efficient, feasible way for sellers to keep track of this. Any insights you have appreciated!

[@hytalereviews1145]

How do you manage to have the drop down within each month? What is it called in the Apple Spreadsheet Software? I can't figure out how to do it within normal Excel

[@hytalereviews1145]

Is each months data entered in on another sheet and that is a main sheet with it all extracted?

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

Hello! This is going to be a long comment, but I am going to try my best to explain how to do this in excel. In Apple Numbers it is called grouping. You can use the same technique in excel, but it is a little different and slightly confusing. Essentially, after you fill out all your rows for April (for example) you need to make sure to have one row below that that subtotals everything. Once you have this row below setup with the subtotals, you will then select all the rows above that you want to go into that months sales, excluding the subtotal row. Once the rows are selected you will click "Group" under the data tap towards the right. You should now have a small box next to the (April) row that you can click to minimize and maximize this new group you have created. You can add new rows inside the group as long as you insert a row when selected inside of the group. You can set this up for each month and add more selections to get more data from your income and/or expenses. I hope this helped. If you need more help, please feel free to send me an email and we can get in touch through there. Thank you so much for watching!

[@Thebicyclestory]

@@JustABrickInTheBucket How do you link the category summary cells to the anual table?

[@brixico1404]

@@JustABrickInTheBucket that was very considerate of you to take the time to respond to this viewer with all this information! Well done!

[@florianv.1727]

Very nice vid! Thanks

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

I hope it was helpful! Thank you for watching Florian!

[@florianv.1727]

@@JustABrickInTheBucket Do you have a template for this program that I can use it as well, because thats really good.

[@scottlhinkle]

how are you finding these sets so cheap? Yoda's Hut is $29.99 but it says it cost you $13.99 (excluding shipping/tax) from Kohl's? How/where do you find this stuff?!?! Do you buy things in person or online?

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

Hi Scott! I answered your question in the latest episode of BrickSide Chat, but to answer it here... Most of the crazy sales early on in the purchasing process were back in the beginning of December and end of December/beginning of January. Yoda's Hut specifically was on a Black Friday sale at Kohl's. The best deals you will find are almost always in person. In early January we acquired a crazy amount of LEGO for crazy low prices at multiple Walmart stores on clearance. Right now we are in a slow period with few sales. Because of that, we are slower on our expansion process. Thank you so much for watching Scott!

[@kylem9503]

So you are working long hours and loosing $?

[@JustABrickInTheBucket]

Yes, in the beginning we definitely were. We're doing much better now!