Outright Integrates Bookkeeping Service on eBay via SM Apps

[eBayNews]

Outright's bookkeeping service for small businesses is one of the applications that will be integrated into eBay through the new SM Apps program. Sellers will see a host of new, third-party applications when the program launches later this month, including listing templates, email-management, inventory bar-coding labels, review gadgets, video players, shipping and payments services, research and reporting services and more.

Outright, which launched its website last year, will offer an application that imports sellers' eBay data into its web-hosted bookkeeping service and keep a full transaction history. Sellers can enter sales data from other marketplaces as well, and can enter cost information into Outright in order to generate expense reports and profit & loss reports. Outright cofounder and CEO Kevin Reeth, who previously worked for Intuit, said Quickbooks can be overkill for very small businesses, and said that entrepreneurs often rely on "shoeboxes and spreadsheets" to help them pull together information for tax time.

eBay sellers will be able to import 90 days of transaction history when they sign up for Outright, which will then add daily updates to their accounts. There are no fees for the basic service, but Reeth said Outright will add some fees as it rolls out additional services down the road. He said users can export all of their data into a comma-separated file at any time.

According to Reeth, eBay sellers who have tested the service are excited that they can view all of their sales on one screen and can determine whether they are making money with their business or not.

Another program launching on eBay via the SM Apps program later this month is Quantity Manager. Its service is uniquely geared to eBay, targeting sellers of multiple quantity items who want to take advantage of eBay's Recent Sales algorithm. The company explains on its website

eBay's best match algorithm gives a boost to fixed price listings with recent sales. This encourages sellers to post most of their items within one listing, but buyers tend to buy when quantity is scarce. This site will automatically refresh your listing's available quantity when a buyer buys from your listing until you run out of inventory.

Quantity Manager charge sellers a $5 monthly subscription fee, plus 2 cents per transaction for "refreshing inventory available."

eBay is marketing SM Apps to developers as a way for them to gain exposure to "hundreds of thousands" of professional sellers via the eBay's applications directory, viewable from My eBay, and eBay also manages subscription and billing for the vendor. eBay's PayPal online payment service recently announced that it, too, would open its platform to third-party developers.