Did you make a profit or a loss on something you sold second hand? How to work it out

The formula, and which amounts to use

Profit or loss = sale amount − purchase amount. The formula is simple, but which amount you write changes the answer. For the sale, write the money that reached you, not the listing price: the amount after shipping, listing fees or marketplace commission. If you sold a bike for 500 dollars and paid the 20 dollar shipping yourself, the sale amount is 480.

On the buying side, add everything you paid to get the item, such as delivery or setup, to the purchase price. Repairs and upkeep while you used it do not enter the item's profit if you log them as separate expenses. If you want to see how much a repair ate into the profit, you can add its cost to the item's purchase price instead.

Step by step: recording an item and selling it

Buying and selling an item are not two separate records but two steps of the same item:

• On the New entry page, tap I bought an item. Write the item's name, purchase price, purchase date and the account you paid from. If you bought it years ago and that money did not come out of your current accounts, choose No account (bought earlier).
• Set the status to In hand or For sale. For sale keeps the items you have listed on their own tab.
• When you sell, write the sale price, the sale date and the account the money went into on the item's page, and press I sold it.
• The item's page then shows the result as Profit or Loss, together with how many days you held it.

What does the Items page show?

Three numbers sit at the top of the page: Total profit, the number Sold and Avg. holding time. Total profit adds up the profits and losses of every sold item; losses come off the profits, so the result can be negative. Average holding time is the average number of days between buying and selling the items you sold.

Below are the In hand, For sale and Sold tabs. Every sold item carries a Profit or Loss label with the amount. Items you have not sold yet get no profit figure; instead they show how many days you have had them.

Example: two sales, one total

On 10 March you bought a phone for 900 dollars and on 10 September you sold it for 650: a loss of 250 dollars after 184 days. You also sold an old game console you had bought for 100 dollars, for 160: a profit of 60. Total profit on the Items page shows minus 190 dollars. That number says you lost money on your item trades overall; the labels on each item show which sale paid off.

Items bought in another currency, and inflation

If an item was bought in a currency other than your main one, the purchase is converted at the rate of the purchase day and the sale at the rate of the sale day, and the profit is the difference between the two. An item bought for 500 euros and sold for 500 euros shows a profit in your main currency if the euro rose in between. That is an exchange rate gain; you did not sell the item for more. For a sale in a foreign currency, the account the money goes into must use the same currency.

Years of high inflation create the same illusion for items bought and sold in your own currency. Selling for more than you paid two years later does not have to mean you gained buying power. Wiozen Ledger shows the plain difference between the two prices and does not adjust for inflation.

How do item trades affect the monthly report?

Buying an item is recorded as an expense in the Item purchase category, and selling it as income in the Item sale category. Your account balances stay right this way, but the month you sell a car your income jumps. The switch at the top of the monthly report shows the report with item trades excluded.

Tags you give an item are copied to its sale record; if you use a project tag, the profit from the trade shows in that project's net. You can give unsold items an estimated current value; that value is used in your net worth, not in the profit.

If you entered something wrong

If the sale amount or date is wrong, fix it with Update sale on the item's page. If the sale never happened, Undo sale deletes the sale record and the item goes back to the In hand tab. A sale date cannot be earlier than the purchase date. Deleting the item deletes its purchase and sale records with it.

Which plan includes this?

Pro includes item tracking and profit and loss. Every new account gets 14 days of Pro without a card; after that Pro is $39.99 a year or $6.99 a month. The free plan has 1 account and 30 records a month. Details are on the pricing page.