eBay Frequently Asked Questions

What is Outright? Why was it created?

Outright is a free, very simple-to-use, accounting service that helps you track income and expenses, pay estimated taxes on time, and see how your business is doing. It's perfect for self employed people.

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What does it cost to use Outright? How is it free?

The current Outright.com bookkeeping application is free to all customers and will remain so. We do offer fee-based services, a simple 1099 e-filing service for example, and will offer other services in the future, but rest assured, the core bookkeeping application for self employed individuals will remain free.

Is my data safe and secure?

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

We encrypt all information you enter before it is sent to our servers. Once you are logged into the site and ready to view or enter data, you can see the 'https' at the beginning of each page URL and the closed lock in the browser status bar. This is the same technology (called secure socket layer) used by online stores that capture credit card information.
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.

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.

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.

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:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p505/15008e19.html.

Can I add my own categories?

You sure can! Just go to the Category Settings page, and click on the "Add a Category" button. Your new category will now show up in the category drop down lists when entering transactions.

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.

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.

How do I track shipping costs?

Your bank or credit card will provide us with your shipping expenses but most sellers offset that cost with a shipping fee charged to customers. Outright.com automatically records that data from some sources such as eBay but for the most part, you'll want to make sure those records are accurate; double checking the income from the shipping fee charged to a seller, and the expense for shipping an order. 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.

Why do I only see the last 90 days of my eBay sales?

Why do I only see the last 90 days of my eBay sales when I first import from eBay?

eBay provides access to the last 90 days of sales data. You can certainly add prior history yourself, but going forward, we'll grab all new transactions.

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.

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.

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

Unfortunately, no. During the first import we are able to pull down the last 90 days worth of history. However, over time, Outright will be able to build up your entire history from this point going forward.

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

You most certainly can. Enjoy!