Ledger and Cashflow
Track income, expenses, refunds, and adjustments with double-entry rigor.
The Ledger is where every cash movement lives. eBay sales flow in automatically as INCOME entries; you add expenses, refunds, and adjustments by hand or via CSV. Together these power the Income Statement, Tax Report, and Cashflow widgets.
Entry types
Every ledger entry has exactly one type:
- INCOME — money in. Created automatically by sync for every eBay order, or by hand for non-eBay sales (Mercari, Whatnot, in-person, etc.).
- EXPENSE — money out. Anything you spend in the course of doing business: postage, supplies, software subscriptions, mileage if you log it as a dollar amount instead of miles.
- REFUND — money out, but specifically tied to a previous INCOME. The Income Statement treats refunds as negative revenue (not as an expense) so your gross sales line stays accurate.
- ADJUSTMENT — a catch-all for corrections. Use sparingly; prefer to edit the source entry where possible.
Amount signs
The amount on a ledger entry is always stored as a signed number — positive for INCOME, negative for EXPENSE and REFUND. The CSV importer accepts either:
- A signed amount column (e.g.
-12.34for an expense), or - A positive amount with the type column carrying the sign (e.g.
12.34+EXPENSE).
Both styles are normalized into the same internal shape.
Double-entry concept (simplified)
We do not use full double-entry bookkeeping — that would be overkill for a single-proprietor reseller. Instead each entry has:
- A type (which determines the sign and the P&L bucket).
- An optional category (e.g. "Shipping supplies", "Software", "Subscriptions") which drives the Income Statement breakdown.
- An optional counterparty (e.g. "USPS", "eBay") for cashflow analysis.
The "double-entry" rigor we keep is the invariant that every dollar in the cashflow widget can be traced back to exactly one ledger entry — no implicit balances, no synthetic transactions.
CSV import for ledger
Imports → Ledger CSV accepts a flexible CSV with these columns:
| Column | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
date | yes | ISO 2026-05-01 or US 5/1/2026 |
type | yes | INCOME, EXPENSE, REFUND, or ADJUSTMENT |
amount | yes | Signed or unsigned (we infer from type) |
description | recommended | Free-text label |
category | optional | Used by the Income Statement |
counterparty | optional | Used by Cashflow |
Rows that fail validation land in a rejects CSV you can download — same flow as inventory imports.
Categories
Common categories that map cleanly to Schedule C:
- Cost of goods sold — purchase price of inventory (we auto-create these from item cost basis at sale time, you generally do not log these manually).
- Postage and shipping — USPS, UPS, FedEx, Pirate Ship.
- Supplies — bubble mailers, tape, polybags.
- Software — your tooling subscriptions, including this one.
- Office expenses — printer ink, labels, scale calibration.
- Vehicle / mileage — see Mileage Tracking.
- Travel — out-of-town sourcing trips.
- Meals — only if directly tied to business activity, 50% deductible.
You can also create your own categories — they will appear in the Income Statement breakdown.
Editing and deleting
Any ledger entry can be edited or deleted from its row. Auto-created entries (from eBay sync) are marked with a small sync icon — editing one detaches it from the source order so future syncs do not overwrite your edits.