How-to Guide: Xero eBay Integration
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.
Automating some parts of your business can majorly simplify the way it operates.
You can save time and money by streamlining processes, increasing the efficiency of your business, and leaving less room for error. Sounds like a recipe for success - what’s not to like?
Accounting must be done accurately in order for a business to thrive, so it makes sense to automate this part of your operations. When it comes to bookkeeping for eBay sellers, Xero is a versatile tool that can automatically generate, record and display the data you need to make important financial decisions.
Fortunately, you can integrate these platforms to do all of that for you in the background.
There are some pitfalls that face sellers who stop here. There’s an even better way to do ecommerce, and A2X has been designed specifically to fill the gaps that sellers need.
In this tutorial, we explore the benefits of Xero for eBay sellers, and how adding A2X to the mix could be the difference between business boom and bust.
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Integrating Xero and eBay
Xero has been at the forefront of cloud accounting software since its conception. With an extensive list of add-on integrations available (including A2X), Xero helps business owners do more with less.
Connected to 5,000 banks across the world, Xero can handle 160 currencies, with exchange rates updated hourly. Ideal for the 25 million eBay sellers that could be selling on overseas eBay marketplaces.
What Xero gives you
- An overview of your cash flow.
- The ability to create and manage invoices.
- The ability to manage bills and expenses.
- The ability to generate reports.
Plus, because Xero is on the cloud, you can access everything remotely - enabling you to manage your finances on the go.
Integrating your eBay Managed Payments to Xero is the first step to seamless accounting - but not the last.
A2X for Xero and eBay Users
A2X imports your eBay transactions and automatically summarizes them, according to your instructions, for Xero. What this means for your eBay bookkeeping is:
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More critical detail: without A2X, eBay would send Xero individual orders. These orders would amount to a bank deposit, but contain no information about where that number actually came from. Were eBay fees taken? Sales tax collected? Reimbursements applied?
A2X captures this detail and organizes it into tidy summaries for Xero. That way, when you need to calculate profit margins, check whether you’re paying too much in fees or that you have collected enough sales tax (unique to each state) to pay your bill, A2X has done that work for you.
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Accrual accounts: A2X organizes your transactions via the accrual accounting method. Among other things, this means that your books account for deposits that carry over into different months, which reflects the true nature of your financials. Without A2X, you would need to figure this out manually.
eBay might generate statements that span two months. A2X automatically separates transactions into month-specific summaries so that you are able to monitor and compare your monthly cash flow. This will make analyzing and planning for your business a lot simpler, more efficient and more future-proof.
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Automatic and accurate numbers: your bookkeeping works continuously in the background, updating as soon as new information is available.
Once you set up a blueprint for your tax mapping and accounts, A2X will apply it every time, giving you consistent and dependable reports. This is great for you, great for your accountant, and ideal if you ever want to sell your business or ask for investment.
What does this all mean for you? It saves time, money and stress. By automating your accounting, you’ll give yourself the time to flex your business muscles, and invest your time elsewhere.
Bookkeeping for eBay: How to Integrate eBay, Xero and A2X
Ready to get set up with simple bookkeeping for eBay? Let’s go!
- Follow the on-screen instructions and enter the details required. Once you have logged in successfully, you should see your A2X dashboard. Here, select “Continue to eBay” to link your eBay Seller Hub:
- You will need to log into eBay, and grant permission for A2X to access your account:
- After granting permission, you will be redirected back to A2X and your payouts from eBay will begin importing straight away. This could complete in as little as ten minutes, or as much as a few hours for larger stores:
- Next up, connect to your accounting software. Under Step 2, select “Connect to Xero” and follow the connection process. You will be asked to grant permission again and then brought back to the A2X dashboard. If you already have an A2X account hooked up to your accounting system, you should choose to share the connection with the existing account.
For more help on this, check out our support centre.
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This step is optional but highly recommended: setting up your accounts and taxes ready for eBay payouts. This is your blueprint for how all eBay transactions will be categorized by A2X and sent to Xero, so it is worth spending time on this part and even consulting with an accountant to get it right. A2X also has generic suggestions to make things easier.
If you have multiple tax requirements for selling across states or countries, you can create your own groups for sales via Settings > Invoices. For more info on this step as a whole, check out this section of our eBay set up tutorial.
- Test the system and send a summary. You should see the option to send within the invoices themselves. For more detail on this step, check out this tutorial.
- Another optional step: enabling the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) reporting feature. Navigate to Settings > Cost of Goods Sold:
- Then enable COGS as below. For more detail about this step and the COGS report function, check out this tutorial.
Once everything is up and running, it will be time to choose your A2X subscription! Check out our options here to figure out which would best suit your business.
Your Free Trial of A2X - the Best eBay Bookkeeping Software
The best bookkeeping software for eBay doesn’t end with Xero.
Try A2X today absolutely free and see how much more you can do with your ecommerce business.
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