2015 is cruising on by and February is now in the books.  That means it is time to share my financial results from the past month here on the blog.  If you missed any of my past financial results posts, you can find them HERE.

We’ll begin with how my time was spent during February.  There were only 20 week days in February, and I didn’t take any of them off from working on the business.  I didn’t work much on the weekends this month either, in total I would say I averaged around 40 hours per week.

Before we get to the numbers, there is one more topic to discuss.  My goal with sharing my financial results is to show what can be done, and is not meant to be seen as bragging or anything of the sort.  I want to show that working hard and sticking with your plan can pay off.  If the results turn out to be poor at any time I will share that too.

With that said, let’s get into the numbers for February.  I want to provide as much clarity as possible into what I am doing on a month to month basis (if you have suggestions for additions to these posts, please let me know!).  This month I will keep the same format that I used last month for the income statement directly from my InventoryLab account.  The screenshots are unedited with the exception of blocking out any accounts related to sales tax, as I am not a CPA, and am not able to provide tax advice.  The cash flow statement will be in the same format as in prior months.  The numbers below will NOT be the exact numbers that go on my tax returns as there will be additional deductions not included here.  It’s also possible that I missed a receipt or 2 and the spending numbers may be updated slightly, but all numbers from amazon/eBay are 100% accurate.  Also for clarity, this does not include any income from any other sources, it is simply my income from amazon and eBay.

February 2015 Financial Results

The first screenshot will be of the revenues. To get a better look, click on this image (or any others in the post) to enlarge.  As noted above I have blocked out the line items related to sales tax in the screenshots below.

Now, in this second screenshot my expenses for the month:

As stated previously, these screenshots are directly from my InventoryLab account which is the accounting system that I am using.  A couple of notes are that certain items will only show up in one of the time periods even though they occurred over the course of the month, in these instances look at the total number for the month.   Also the “other income” is the net effect of my eBay sales which I manually enter, which was a small profit this month.

As you can see from these screenshots my profit for the month was just a bit over $8,000, which is a significant increase over the approximately $3,000 from January.   Profits were quite a bit lower than usual in January due to selling off some items where prices dropped that I lost money on, and in February there were very few items sold at a loss.  Profits also increased due to continued sourcing, and the items the amount of sourcing that has been done in 2015.  The amount of sourcing done by the individuals sourcing for me has contributed a significant amount to this as well.  The majority of the $5K in commission/wages is commissions.  If you want to get to the core of how these commissions are ultimately earned,  Outsourcing Sourcing discusses the exact arrangements I use with these individuals, the buying guidelines I give them, how to pay them, and much more.

Here are the current services that I am using that make up the above numbers (note that some of these I paid for on an annual basis to obtain a discount):

InventoryLab – I use their service for listing all of my products for sale on amazon, as well as the majority of my accounting. I use their scanning app, Scoutify, as my main scanning app.  Current cost is $49.99/month, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial with no credit card required.

Shoeboxed– This is a service that I use to manage my receipts.  I send my receipts off to them in an envelope, they scan them into an online filling system, and mail them back to me.  If you sign up through this link you can receive a 1 month free trial, and a 20% discount on your first 6 months if you become a paying user.  Current cost for the plan I am using is $29.99/month.

Appeagle– This is the repricer I am using.  It has been saving me significant amounts of time manually repricing.  In addition, it reprices items up as well as down, so I have sold many items already for more than I have listed them for.  They have a 14 day free trial, and if you enter coupon code “RYAN_G” you will receive 50% off your first month’s subscription if you elect to become a paying user.  The current cost for this service is $50/mo.

Feedback Genius – This service automatically sends out emails when items are out for delivery to the customer, as well as 4 days after the item has been delivered.  I tried out the free trial of this service, and it nearly doubled the percentage of orders on which I receive feedback without adding negative/neutral feedback, so I am now a paying customer.

Now let’s take a look at cash flow for the month:

Cash flow for the month was just a bit negative.  This is a very comfortable range for me this time of the year.  I was able to build up a little bit of cash reserves in the business account from this past Q4, and this allows me the ability to continually grow my inventory by having cash flow go slightly negative.  I anticipate having cash flow hover around zero for at least the next few months.

The one time costs were for buying another cheap all in one computer for my warehouse, and Quickbooks.  InventoryLab is great for the income statement side of things, but I am looking for something that can track cash flow and the balance sheet, and tie everything together.  So far I am not a big fan of Quickbooks, but I am going to play with it a little more, otherwise I am going to look into the costs of getting a bookkeeper so that I can be assured everything ties out every month.

Now I will share some screenshots to provide some support for the above numbers I am sharing.  Please note that the amazon sales number will not be exactly the same as what is shown above, as the screenshot below shows all orders that have been placed (but not necessarily shipped), while the above numbers are only for items that actually shipped during the month.  Due to this the variance is to be expected:

Now, for the eBay sales:

Overall, I am very happy with how this month turned out.  Sales were up slightly compared to last month despite only having 28 days in February, and profits were up significantly.  My goal is to continue to increase the inventory purchases each month, and continue to grow.

On Monday I launched Outsourcing Sourcing, which shares my complete system for having people I trust source and ship items to amazon for me.  The strategies outlined in the book added over $33,000 to my bottom line in 2014, and as you can see from this post they continue to add more every month.  If you are interested you can check out the sales page HERE.

That’s all I have for today, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know below!