Feature request: Better report filters

Love using Garage Sale and it has made my eBay life a lot easier, thanks for creating and maintaining it.

Does anyone use the reports generated by GS8?

I like the data they contain save for one thing: All the extra space taken up by listings that had no sales and no costs associated with them… Would it be possible to create filters to remove these listings from reports? I never go over the 200 free listings per month (or even 50 for that matter), but every existing listing gets shown in the report whether it sold or not.

I requested this feature before the release of GS 8.0 and was told it was added to the list, but it has yet to make it into the release. Perhaps there is a way to do this already that I’m missing?

Thanks for your time, and keep up the great work!

I’ve never had any use for the reports feature in any version of GS.

In many cases such reports are a clear case of overanalysis.

It reminds me of a restaurant I worked at as a youth. The managers would would gather together in one of the booths at one of the slow times. They would pull out a bunch of binders with various data and other nonsense from the corporate office to study while they drink coffee.

But they would ignore the real issues right in front of their faces every day which were the real causes of lowered sales. Things like the pile of vomit that had been sitting on a rear sidewalk for days. Damages landscaping that you see every day simply by driving into the parking lot. The influx of drunks during the overnight hours which they went of of the way to tolerate rather than throwing them out of this supposed family restaurant chain. One drunk took a bottle of ketchup off the table and smacked it across the edge of the table to break off the end and then threatened a bus boy who he has mistaken for a waiter. Did they throw the guy out or call the cops? No, they cleaned the mess up and gave the guy some more free coffee to calm him down.

All I care about is assembling listings as fast as possible with the least amount of work.

Take for example the cost of goods sold in data. I acquire most of my goods at estate and business auctions. Items are typically bought in lots. My advantage is that I live in less populated area where such things sell for very little. It would be a waste of time to figure out the cost of goods for a lot of 25, 35, 50 items that I paid $2.50, $5.00, $7.50 for. Any larger ticket items I know what I paid for them by memory. Group lots have so little cost per item it makes no sense to figure the cost per item out. Instead the total amount paid for the lot is recorded as a inventory expense.

For example, I paid $4.00 for 9 late 1970s and early 1980s items of clothing from a farm estate auction of a 101 year old man that were unsued / sealed. That works out to $.50 each, but what do I gain from entering that data in GS over simply recording the total amount as an expense? I gain wasted time. I’ve sold 5 of these items for $87.80 and have 4 left.

While your points are well-taken, the only report I really care about is the listing of sales with the totals. Since I enter my actual postage paid (vs. what I charge for it) for every items and it will track the cut that both eBay and PayPal take, I find it useful. If you don’t, that’s fine.

I guess I’ll keep refreshing this thread until I can get a response from one of the developers…

In a separate note, I did decide to buy an annual license for GS Pro after my free trial runs out. After seeing the total amount of money I’ve made over the years using GS for eBay, the least I can do is buy a year of GS Pro to help out the developers. It’s a small price to pay compared to the value GS has provided me.

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Bumping for developer response…

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