Online Selling & Inventory

Online selling only works when you know three numbers for every product: how many you have, what each sale really costs you, and what you keep after fees. This hub brings together CEOVANTA’s guides for Etsy sellers, Shopify store owners and handmade makers who track those numbers in Excel or Google Sheets instead of paying for extra software.

What this hub covers

• Etsy & Shopify Seller Profit: working out fees and real profit per order, and keeping books for a marketplace shop.
• Pricing & Cost Calculators: turning material costs, time and overhead into a selling price, and the difference between margin and markup.
• Handmade & Craft Business: materials, production and market-stall tracking for makers (guides in preparation).
• Marketing Plans & Trackers: campaign calendars and marketing budgets for small shops (guides in preparation).

The three spreadsheets most online sellers need

Start with the sheet that answers your most urgent question. A maker with ten products and a few orders a week can usually keep the order log and the profit calculation in one sheet. A reseller with hundreds of SKUs needs a separate inventory tab first.

How the numbers connect

1. Record every product once with its unit cost: materials or purchase price, plus any inbound shipping.
2. Log each order with the amount the customer paid and the channel it came from.
3. Subtract the cost of goods, that channel’s platform and payment fees and your own shipping cost to get net profit per order.
4. Reduce stock on hand by the quantity sold and flag any item that falls below its reorder point.
5. At month end, total sales, fees and profit by channel and compare them with the payouts that reached your bank.

Fees differ between marketplaces and change from time to time, so keep the fee rates in a separate settings tab and point your formulas at those cells. When a rate changes you edit one cell instead of every row. The Etsy profit calculator guide shows this setup with the fee types a US Etsy seller pays.

Margin, markup and pricing

Margin is profit as a share of the selling price; markup is profit as a share of cost. A product that costs $10 and sells for $20 has a 100% markup but a 50% margin. Confusing the two is one of the most common reasons sellers underprice. The profit margin calculator guide gives the formulas for both, and how to price handmade products builds a price step by step from materials, labour, overhead and fees.

Keeping your records manageable

• Use one row per transaction and never type totals by hand; let SUMIFS or a pivot table calculate them.
• Keep a channel column so you can compare Etsy, your own store and in-person sales side by side.
• Enter refunds and fee credits as their own rows instead of editing the original sale.
• Reconcile each month against the payout report from every platform. The Etsy bookkeeping guide explains why deposits should be treated as transfers, not as new income.

Frequently asked questions

Is a spreadsheet enough to manage inventory for an online shop?

For most small shops, yes. A spreadsheet works well while you can update stock by hand or paste in your platform’s order export. Once you sell the same stock on several channels at high volume, inventory software that syncs stock automatically is usually worth the cost, because overselling becomes a real risk.

Should I use Excel or Google Sheets?

Both handle every formula in these guides. Google Sheets is easier to share with a partner and to update from a phone; Excel works offline and copes better with large files and pivot tables. Choose the one you already open every day.

How often should I update my numbers?

Update stock whenever it moves and log orders at least once a week. Reconcile sales, fees and payouts once a month so mistakes are caught before they pile up.

Where should I start if I have never tracked anything?

Start with a profit-per-sale calculation for your best-selling product. Once you know what you really keep from it, the pricing and inventory sheets are much easier to build.