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Vintage sellers

Record keeping for vintage sellers

You buy by the bag and the box lot and sell one piece at a time, across a booth, a market table and a shop online. Sellers Almanac keeps the record of what you spent and what customers paid in one place, honest about anything still missing.

How vintage selling actually works

Vintage is bought in bulk and sold in singles. A Saturday might start at a church rummage sale where the back room is a dollar a bag. Then comes an estate sale with a basement full of Pyrex, linens and a rack of 1970s dresses. It ends with a stop at the bins on the way home. You come back with a trunk full and a pocket of mismatched evidence: a register receipt, a handwritten slip, and the cash you handed over at the rummage sale, which left nothing at all.

The selling side is just as scattered. One piece goes from a booth or a shared shop. Another sells online after you photographed, measured and described it. A handful go at a weekend market, paid by card reader, payment app or cash. Somewhere in there are the costs that keep it all moving. Poly mailers and tissue. Hang tags and safety pins. Lint rollers, a steamer, stain remover, a dress form, booth fees and market table fees.

None of that is unusual. It’s just more than memory can hold, and it’s spread across too many places for a single receipt pile to make sense of it.

Where the records fall apart

Most vintage sellers know these gaps well:

  • Cash buys with no receipt. Yard sales, flea markets and private pickups often leave nothing behind but your word.
  • Bag and box prices. One amount covers forty pieces, and later nobody remembers which bag it was.
  • Supplies bought in passing. A pack of mailers here, a roll of tape there. Small amounts that add up to a real cost over a season.
  • Sales in three places. Each channel has its own report, and none of them knows about the others.
  • Sales tax mixed into sales. At a market where you collect tax yourself, it’s easy to count the whole amount the customer paid as yours.
  • The “I’ll write it down later” pile. A sale you meant to note, a receipt you meant to sort. It’s still waiting a month later.

How Sellers Almanac helps

Sellers Almanac isn’t out yet, but here’s what it already does in the founders’ test build:

  • Record it at the rummage sale table. A Purchase, Expense or Sale in a few taps, with a note like “three bags, mostly knits.” Mailers, tags and tissue can be classified as materials, booth rent as other.
  • Church basements and farmhouses are fine. Anything recorded offline is marked “On this phone only” until it’s backed up, so you always know where it stands.
  • Sales tax kept apart. It’s recorded exactly as you enter it and never calculated for you. If a sale’s tax amount isn’t recorded yet, the totals say “at least” and tell you why.

If a buyer backs out, correct or void the sale and the totals follow. Partners can each record into the same business from their own phone.

What’s coming

Vintage sells piece by piece, and that’s where inventory items come in: a photo and a cost for each piece, now in development. Until then there are no profit figures. Mileage for sourcing runs, booth features and marketplace connections are planned. There will be one price with every feature included, and it isn’t set yet.

Read more on who Sellers Almanac is for, see how it works, or follow the roadmap.

Where to start

  • Record it in secondsPurchases, expenses and sales, captured in a few taps where they happen: the estate sale, the thrift counter, the booth.In founder testing
  • See where the money wentToday and this week at a glance: what you spent, split into purchases, materials and other costs, beside what customers paid.In founder testing
  • Finish it laterA sale recorded before you know its tax never becomes a lost one: it waits in Needs attention, with anything else that needs your decision.In founder testing
  • Works without signalRecord in a basement or a barn. Anything made offline is marked “On this phone only” and stays out of the totals until it’s backed up. Backing up happens only while the app is open and has a connection.In founder testing
  • Sourcing expense trackingRecord what you spend at estate sales, auctions and thrift stores as it happens, keep it apart from running costs, and see the week's sourcing spend.
  • Spreadsheet alternativeWhere reseller spreadsheets work, where they break, a better template if you keep one, and what Sellers Almanac does differently today.
  • Organizing reseller inventoryA simple inventory system for resellers: number each piece, keep one list, tie it to your money records. Inventory items in Sellers Almanac are in development.

Further reading

Questions

Can I record a whole bag or box lot as one purchase?

Yes. A Purchase is an amount you paid, with a note about what it was, so a bag sale or box lot is one record. Splitting a lot's cost across individual pieces depends on inventory items, which are in development.

Where do mailers, tissue and tags go?

Record them as an Expense and classify it as materials. Money totals show materials separately from purchases and other costs, so you can see what supplies are costing you.

Can I use Sellers Almanac today?

Not yet. It is in founder testing on iPhone and not yet available to download. Join the launch list and we’ll email you when early access opens.