Thread: How to track your sales, via Spreadsheet

Good morning all

So yesterday I sat down and did a fair bit of "grunt" work in relation to my strategy for gold making. I investigated and investigated, tinkered and tinkered and feel I'm getting some noticeable returns. I increased my efficeny, diversed a little and feel more confident in my gold making ability.

Quickly put together last night was a little spreadsheet that calculates my cost price for Living Steel and Glyphs. Then it dawned on me, that I should really track what Glyphs I'm selling regularly or by high volume, so I can keep them stocked.

Then obviously that spread out to Enchanting, what scrolls do I sell the most, and then gems, what gems am I shifting the most. I've had problems where I've been WAY to reliant on the the price that TSM crafting indicates the item is currently selling for, and if I'm honest I don't trust it anymore, as its incorrect everytime I check the realtime data, in most cases nowhere close.

So I'm wondering how do people track their sales. What do you find the most effective?

I tried obviously a few methods last night

Method One

I exported my MySales data to Excel. The process of cleaning the lua file wasn't difficult, only about 5 minutes. Then I organised everything by name. I took out the Glyphs into a new spreadsheet and then formatted the data better. So I had item name / quantity sold / avg price/ total revenue.

I then did this for Scrolls and gems.

It was a bit of a tedious process once it came to moving into my own spreadsheet. Alot of copy and pasting and editing. I'd ideally like to have the information in my own spreadsheet that I can filter, graph and all that jazz.

Method two

Viewing through the UI. SO I have obviously TSM_Accounting and MySales. Both contain accurate data on my sales recorded via the mailbox which is good. It has the ideal format really, its there, its done, its quick and easy. I can't remember which one it was, but one even bulked items that have sold multiple times showing amount sold, total revenue and avg price. This is ideal information. I could just read the UI, but I'd prefer to export to a spreadsheet I can hold onto.

So I'm wondering how do people track their sales. What do you find the most effective? I want to be more vigilant of what I'm selling and what sells well, instead of seeing TSM_Crafting telling me a glyph sells for 200g only to craft and post it and see it sells for like 7 g

And this excercise last night showed me some scrolls I've been selling a few of, and I was able to make alot more then normal and shift them all in the same night.

Hi,

I have just a quick question regarding the cost of glyphs: Do you deduct the cost based on the herb prices? Personally, I just view the cost of each glyph as 18g75s because I could just use those 3 Ink of Dreams that i need to craft a glyph and make a shoulder enchant that vendors for that amount. I then add the 5% for the AH cut + a margin below which I just CBA to craft glyphs (~5g ea). I then just craft 5x each glyph which sells at the moment above this threshold (~approximately 25g).
As for posting, if TSM says the market price is 200g (probably an average of the last x days?) but the current price is below my threshold I'm not that bothered - I just don't post it. Glyph prices are volatile, I'll just get to post it later. Also, the maximal craft of 5 of each glyph prevents me from having too much inventory that is not moving.

If you accept the premise that each glyph costs 3* 6g25s you can just manually set the price of each of the inks that are needed to craft glyphs to 6g25s in TSM.

However, if you use older herbs for cheaper inks I can't really help you. I'd probably just leave the price per ink at 6g25s as I don't think it is worthwhile to post glyphs lower than ~25g.

Thanks Schneider I never thought of manually setting the ink cost tbh.

I have a relatively steady supply of herbs at the same price. So working out the mats

Ink = 6g
6 * 3 = 18g
Cost of glyph = 18g

I have my thresholds for Glyphs set at 25g myself, as I'm not really bothered crafting for that low margin. And I don't normally do an auto re-queue within TSM, I pick the glyphs manually. My operation isn't that big, that it would warrant just a auto restock.

After selling glyphs since the introduction of the profession, I left the glyph market at the start of MOP because it was just boring me to death. But AH addict that I am, it's hard to stay away from something that offers steady profit. Thanks for framing the thinking about glyphs this way; it's a very simple and appealing framework that I may have to try.

Glad I kept those inscription bags. I think.

Originally Posted by Furyio

Thanks Schneider I never thought of manually setting the ink cost tbh.

I have a relatively steady supply of herbs at the same price. So working out the mats

Ink = 6g
6 * 3 = 18g
Cost of glyph = 18g

I have my thresholds for Glyphs set at 25g myself, as I'm not really bothered crafting for that low margin. And I don't normally do an auto re-queue within TSM, I pick the glyphs manually. My operation isn't that big, that it would warrant just a auto restock.

With everything i always set my crafting/material costs manually. Partly because prices fluctuate so much that getting a steady price is often quite rare and materials i buy i often set a threshold and purchase only below that price, which is often below the 'market price'. (Weekends are traditionally a prime time to stock up on cheap materials).

If you stockpile also then to a great degree you can have a steady price much more than if you work hand to mouth. There have been periods where i have seen spikes in material costs (bots ban waves for example) but because of my stockpile i have been working at a much lower crafting cost and been able to make profits in places others couldn't because they were working off the current prices.

If you are restocking or deciding what to sell via an add-on like TSM and using the scan price then it may tell you it is not profitable when you can make a large profit because you don't pay the AH price.

Also with some materials i gather them via other professions so the price i can acquire them at is often vastly lower than they can be purchased on the AH.

Setting them manually also lets you 'fiddle' the prices in the latter case so where you get multiple items you can give more or less value to one item if it is propped up by selling another.e.g. a common one i heard people doing was you could technically class glyphs as free as you made your profit from milling the flowers via selling DM cards/trinkets so glyphs were considered a by-product or visa-versa.

I export and parse TSM accounting data on
http://goblineeringtools.herokuapp.c...accounting_csv

You will get data in nice .csv format. You can import it into Excel/Access and get whatever data you need out of this either by using filters or some sql queries.

Originally Posted by Stede

Just as a reference:

How To: Importing MySales Data into Excel

Yeah have done that a fair bit. But then MYSales data puts like multiple items into individual lines which is a bit annoying to try determine certain things. But at the moment it seems like the best method I have, albeit time consuming

Originally Posted by dionys

I export and parse TSM accounting data on
http://goblineeringtools.herokuapp.c...accounting_csv

You will get data in nice .csv format. You can import it into Excel/Access and get whatever data you need out of this either by using filters or some sql queries.

Interesting