Free template

A free reselling spreadsheet that counts your hours, not only your profit

Published October 7, 2026 10 min read

A reselling spreadsheet is a record of what you paid, what you sold for, what selling cost you and how long it took, ending in profit per item and an hourly rate. This one is free: three tabs (Items, Hours and Month) that you set up by pasting the headers and formulas from this page into Google Sheets or Excel.

Profit per item is the number that flatters you. The example cardigan further down nets $15.60. Then count the sourcing trip, the photos and the post office. With a day job, the question is what an evening pays, and only a sheet that knows the hours can answer it. The eBay details below are from eBay's help pages, read 5 October 2026.

What columns does a reselling spreadsheet need?

Fifteen, on an Items tab with one row per item. Twelve are plain typing. Status, Net profit and Days to sell are formulas; Status reads the dates, so you never update it. Time gets its own tab. Skim the table now and come back when a column puzzles you.

How does the spreadsheet work out profit per item?

Sale price plus shipping charged, minus what you paid, the fees, the postage and the supplies. The cell stays blank until there's a Sold on date, so unsold stock never shows a fake profit.

Net profit = Sold for + Shipping charged − Cost − Fees − Postage paid − Supplies

Source: arithmetic. $28.00 + $6.00 − $6.00 − $4.60 − $7.20 − $0.60 = $15.60. The fee and postage figures are examples, not rates. Listed 8 September and sold 19 September, the row shows 11 days to sell.

These three are the only Items cells you paste: row 2, then drag down.

Where do eBay fees and postage come from?

From your eBay transaction report, copied in as amounts, never as a fee rate. eBay's selling fees page describes the final value fee as a percentage of the total amount of the sale plus a per-order fee, and says amounts follow the terms in effect when a listing goes live. Rates move, and a rate typed into a formula goes wrong silently.

eBay's help page on reconciling your sales transactions says the transaction report lists order numbers, fees and shipping label charges, and downloads as a CSV.

1. In Seller Hub, open the Payments tab and choose Reports from the left menu.
2. Create a transaction report covering last month.
3. For each sold item, find its order and copy the fees into Fees and the label charge into Postage paid. A label bought elsewhere comes from that receipt.

Why does the spreadsheet log hours on their own tab?

A lot of reselling time belongs to no single item. A sourcing trip covers twelve items, or none, and messages and the post office belong to the week. Log minutes on item rows and that time drops out, along with hours on items that never sell, so your rate looks better than it is.

Four columns, one row per session, typed when you stop:

Keep tasks to a fixed list: Sourcing (drive included), Prep, Photos, Listing, Shipping, Messages, and Sheet for time on this spreadsheet. Every hour counts, as in whether the hours are worth it.

What does the Month summary tab show?

Items listed and sold, net profit after fixed costs, hours, the hourly rate, and what your waiting stock cost. You type only B1 and B6; the other eleven cells are formulas to paste.

SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IFERROR, EDATE and DAYS appear in both Google's Sheets function list and Excel's function list, so the formulas should paste into either.

One catch: profit lands in the month an item sells, hours in the month you worked. A big sourcing month with few sales shows a poor rate and the month that stock sells a flattering one, so judge it over two or three months.

The hourly rate is the same math as the hourly rate calculator, fed by your own log. Items listed and sold feed the four-input income formula, so you work from your own sell-through, not a guess.

How do you track stock you haven't listed yet?

Give every purchase a row the day you buy it: a name, a Bought on date and a cost. Status reads Bought until you fill in Listed on, and the Month tab adds those rows up as Unlisted stock at cost.

That's money buyers can't see. If it climbs month after month, cut sourcing trips rather than add listing nights you don't have, the same rule as the weekly plan.

How do you set up the free reselling spreadsheet?

Nothing to download, no sign-up. Allow about 20 minutes (a rough guess): the headers below paste in one go, and most of the time goes on the 14 formulas in the tables above.

1. Create a spreadsheet with three tabsItems, Hours and Month, spelled exactly so. The Month formulas look for those names.
2. Paste the headers and labelsPaste each box below into A1 of its tab: headers fill row 1, Month labels fill column A. If a row lands in one cell, split it on tabs with text to columns.
3. Paste the three Items formulas into row 2C2, N2 and O2, then copy them down.
4. Fill column B of the Month tabPaste the eleven formulas in order. Type the month's first day in B1 and fixed costs in B6.
5. Check that dates are datesThe month formulas skip dates stored as text. A date sitting on the left of its cell usually is: retype it in your spreadsheet's date format.

Items tab, paste into A1

Item	SKU	Status	Bought on	Cost	Listed on	Listed where	Sold on	Sold for	Shipping charged	Fees	Postage paid	Supplies	Net profit	Days to sell

Hours tab, paste into A1

Date	Minutes	Task	Note

Month tab, paste into A1

Month starts
Next month starts
Items listed
Items sold
Profit from sales
Fixed costs
Net profit
Hours
Hourly rate
Minutes per item listed
Hours on the sheet
Unlisted stock at cost
Listed stock at cost

What records does the IRS expect a reseller to keep?

Records that clearly show income and expenses, kept as long as needed to prove the income or deductions on a return. The IRS recordkeeping page lets you choose "any recordkeeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses," and a spreadsheet can be that system.

Keep the documents behind the entries too. IRS Publication 583 lists the documents that show what you paid for inventory: canceled checks, cash register tape receipts, credit card sales slips and invoices. Write the SKU on each receipt.

When should you stop using a spreadsheet?

When keeping it costs more than it tells you. Every Sheet session adds up in Hours on the sheet, so price that at your own rate. At $12 an hour, 1.5 hours a month is $18 of record-keeping (an example; 1.5 × $12 = $18). Whether that's worth it is your call, but now it's a number. Three other signs:

• Volume outgrows one row per item. If Hours on the sheet climbs while sales stay flat, the sheet has become the job.
• You list the same item on several marketplaces. The sheet can't end the other listings when one sells, and a missed one sells something you no longer have.
• Rows fall behind the shelf. Once items move without a row, Unlisted stock at cost stops meaning anything.

Until then, a sheet you keep up to date beats any app you don't open. Start with the last thing you bought: one row, a date and a cost. Log tonight's session on the Hours tab. At the end of the month, B9 tells you what the evenings paid.

Keep reading

• Is reselling worth it when you have a day job?

  Work out your hourly rate, what each item has to net, and the one input that moves it.

• How to resell while working a full-time job

  A weekly plan that survives a bad day at work, and what to cut when it doesn't.