FAQs

  1. What is Outright?
  2. Is my data safe and secure?
  3. What does it cost to use Outright?
  4. Do you support countries outside the US?
  5. Does Outright work well for corporations or partnerships?
  6. How accurate are the estimated tax calculations?
  7. Can I add my own categories?
  8. Can I get my data back out of Outright?
  9. Is there a limit to the number of eBay transactions Outright will store?
  10. How are my eBay transactions categorized?
  11. How do I track my inventory purchases?
  12. How do I track shipping costs?
  13. How do I track sales tax collected and paid?
  14. Do Sales Tax Collected and Sales Tax Submitted transactions affect my profit and loss?
  15. What do I do if I've already created a sales tax category?
  16. Can I import all of my eBay transactions from the first of the year?
  17. Can I track sales from other online channels in addition to eBay?

What is Outright? Why was it created?

Outright is a super simple online accounting application designed specifically for eBay sellers. Outright imports up to 2 years of sales and expense history, places them in the proper categories and automatically grabs new transactions every night. It also keeps you on top of quarterly, sales and end-of-year taxes, and it shows at-a-glance views of profits, best customers and more.

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Is my data safe and secure?

We do a number of things to make sure your information is safe and secure on Outright:

  • We always transmit your business & financial information using the highest encryption standard (256-bit SSL).
  • Your data is stored in a secure facility protected by multiple security measures including security guards and biometric scanning.
  • The site itself is password protected and that password is stored in an encrypted format that even we can't read.
  • All information is backed up on an hourly basis, so it won't get lost if the service goes down for a little while.

Plus, we believe strongly that your data belongs to you. For that reason, we provide the ability for you to export all of the data you've entered in a simple, comma-separated format, which is basically a text file that can be read by any spreadsheet or text editing program.

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What does it cost to use Outright?

Outright offers your a free account. No monthly fee, no credit card, no trial or expiration. We also offer Outright Plus for $9.95 per month, which has more features than a free account, including Annual, Quarterly and Sales Tax tracking and reporting.

In very few cases, your financial institution may charge you a fee for downloading transactions into Outright.

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Do you support countries outside the US?

Right now, Outright is designed for the US tax system. We have added some basic currency customizations for a number of additional countries (AU, CA, CN, DE, IL, MX, SG, ZA, KR, TH, UK) and are adding more all the time. You can check the most recent list of countries under the Settings section.

We hope to add support for more countries down the road, so stay tuned.

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Does Outright work well for corporations or partnerships?

At the present time, Outright is designed for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs who file a Schedule C tax form. We continue to hear requests for support of other business entities and have that in our feature queue.

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How accurate are the estimated tax calculations?

Because every person's tax situation is different, we cannot provide an estimated tax calculation that is guaranteed to be accurate. Instead, we provide a conservative guidance based on the following:

  • We calculate your businesses profit through the end of the IRS quarter (or through today's date if the quarter hasn't ended.) For example, if you were to look at the taxes page on June 10, you would see profit - or loss - through May 31, which is the end of the second quarter for IRS purposes.
  • We then calculate the self employment tax (which consists of social security and medicare contributions) using the latest IRS rates.
  • To the self-employment tax, we add your business income tax. For this, we simply use the marginal tax rate based on the profit to date. For businesses earning higher income, this may result in a higher tax payment than using the average rate, but we figure it's better to be safe than sorry.

If you would like to know how to accurately calculate estimated taxes, simply view the IRS estimated tax worksheet at www.irs.gov

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Can I add my own categories?

You sure can! In fact, you can just type in the category name in the Category field when you're entering a new transaction by hand. You can also click View Categories on the Money In or Money Out tabs. Select the "New Income/Expenses category" button and enter the name of your new category. If you'd like to attach your new category to a specific tax category then click the "Advanced" link and select the desired tax category. Your new category will now show up in the category drop down list when entering transactions in the ledger.

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Can I get my data back out of Outright?

Absolutely - it's your information. Just go to the reports screen and choose the time period you wish to export. Then, you may click either the "Export Report" link at the bottom of the report or the "Download" link off to the right of the report to export your income and expenses in comma-separated format. The "Export Report" link provides summarized information, while the "Download" link provides all of the individual transactions.

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Is there a limit to the number of eBay transactions Outright will store?

Nope. While we can't download all of your prior history, we're starting with the last 30 days and will then keep all of your transactions from now on. And because we back up our database every hour, you'll never have to worry about losing or forgetting sales and expense records again.

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How are my eBay transactions categorized?

Your eBay sales show up under the Income tab. You will see transactions for both the item sale and any shipping or insurance charges you collect.

Your eBay fees, including insertion, listing and final value fees, show up as expenses, using the "Cost of Goods Sold" category. We are working on ways to let you choose which categories to use for these fees.

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How do I track my inventory purchases?

For any items that you purchase for resale, simply choose the "Cost of Goods Sold" category when entering that expense. This will ensure that you subtract the cost of your inventory purchases from your sales before calculating profit.

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How do I track shipping costs?

While eBay provides us with the shipping fees you charge customers, you will need to enter your actual costs as an expense. You can use the "Other expenses" category or create a custom category such as "Shipping expenses" to track this information.

Note, if you charge more for shipping than it actually costs you to ship an item, the difference will show up as profit.

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How do I track sales tax collected and paid?

Outright uses a category called "Sales Tax Collected" for transactions where you collect sales tax from a customer. When you make your payment to the state, we use a category called "Sales Tax Submitted."

For some imported deposits that contain sales tax collected as part of a sale (for example, from a sale on eBay or through PayPal,) Outright will automatically enter the amount of sales tax collected using the "Sales Tax Collected" category.

To manually enter a sales tax transaction, simply go to the "Money In" tab, click the "Add a Transaction" button, and use the "Sales Tax Collected" category when entering the sale information.

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Do Sales Tax Collected and Sales Tax Submitted transactions affect my profit and loss?

No, they do not. When you collect sales tax from a customer, it is not your income. That is money that is owed to the state. Consequently, when you make the payment to the state, it is not your expense. You're just passing along that money to the state.

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What do I do if I've already created a sales tax category?

If you have created your own categories to handle sales tax, but want to make sure that transaction in those categories don't impact your profit and loss, you can "merge" them into the "Sales Tax Collected" and "Sales Tax Submitted" categories. Just go to https://secure.outright.com/categories, find the category you created, click the link that says "Merge into another category" and select either "Sales Tax Collected" or "Sales Tax Submitted," where appropriate.

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Can I import all of my eBay transactions from the first of the year?

Finally, YES! Just link your PayPal account to Outright and we can grab your transaction history starting from the first of the year and the prior tax year.

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Can I track sales from other online channels in addition to eBay?

You most certainly can. Enjoy!

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