What should I think about when I buy and sell (limited) products?
As you know, we at The Bookie specialize in supporting accounting for service entrepreneurs and unfortunately you cannot use our subscription if you only sell products. Nevertheless, it may happen that you also sell products sporadically or supportively or that you change course. In that case, together we'll see what we can do for you. Purchasing (and selling) goods or products for your business does not in itself have income tax consequences. But purchasing creates a stock of goods. For this, the Tax Office does have some special rules in place, which do not always fit into The Bookie Webapp or subscription. Therefore, before taking out a subscription or changing business operations, make sure you contact us at info@thebookie.nl or by calling 030 2072077. We will be happy to think with you.
Stock
If you sell limited products and or have a small assortment, you should keep track of your inventory in your records. Or as the Tax Authorities explains:
Inventories can consist of raw materials, auxiliary materials, semi-finished and finished products. For example, you have purchased raw materials and you cannot process them immediately yet. Or you have a stock of finished products ready, but you have no customers for them yet.
Your company's inventories represent a certain value. You include the value of your inventories in your balance sheet. How you determine the value of your inventory and what rules apply can be read in the section: What special rules apply to inventory valuation?
Stock administration and valuation stock
At the end of each fiscal year, you must determine the value of your inventory that your company owns at that time. In doing so, you generally value inventory at cost. Only for obsolete (proven difficult to trade) products, such as clothes and shoes that are out of fashion, may you record a lower value than the original cost.
In general, this is not that complicated. You can manually process this per order or sales summary from your reseller Bol or Amazon in Excel or an online spreadsheet. If the sales increase and you spend many hours on this, it is often more convenient to switch to another software program and it is also the sign that it is cumbersome to work in The Bookie Webapp. This also means that you can no longer make use of the subscription and together we will decide to work on our hourly rate or recommend you to work with a colleague accountant who is focused on product selling entrepreneurs.
Purchases under expenses
As soon as you buy products these are seen as business expenses. As soon as you purchase products, these are of course business expenses. So you create an expense and add the receipt as always. Read here how to add a Dutch expense. Read here what to consider if your expense is with a foreign company.
As categorie you note Purchase Products.
Private individuals
If you purchase from private individuals (e.g. via Marktplaats) then you do not pay VAT. If you buy from private individuals, it is possible that another regulation applies: the margin scheme. Please contact The Bookie for this.
Sales under income
If you sell to you to other business owners, just send an invoice. Read how to do that here. If you sell to individuals and a separate invoice is unnecessary or already generated, you can record the income on different invoices. Read how here.
Credit Invoice
If you sell through a site of Bol.com, Amazon or another web shop, you will often receive a credit invoice from them. This shows the amount you receive from them, minus the costs they incurred to sell your product.
Be sure to record shipping costs properly. Shipping costs, from stamps to the cost on sending a package, often have the same VAT as the product. Pay close attention to how this appears on the credit invoice you receive.