Where every pound of your sales goes, and when eBay will pay you next

This article explains the Cash flow view: a 90-day breakdown of what happens to every pound of your sales between a buyer paying and the money landing in your bank, plus a forecast of when eBay will pay you next.

The 90-day fee waterfall

Cash flow looks at your last 90 days of sales and lays them out as a waterfall: starting from total buyer payments, then stepping down through each deduction until you reach what you actually keep. It shows eBay’s take, the fees, final value charges and any other eBay deductions taken from your sales, next to what you keep once cost of goods, postage and expenses are also accounted for.

Alongside the waterfall, a fee donut breaks the eBay side down further, so you can see at a glance how much of what eBay takes is final value fee versus other charges, rather than just one lump “fees” number.

The point of laying it out this way is to make eBay’s take rate visible. It is easy to look at a sale price and feel like you know what you made. The waterfall shows the real path from that headline sale price down to take-home profit, so you can see exactly how much of every pound goes to eBay before anything else is subtracted.

Your next payout, forecast

Below the waterfall, Cash flow also forecasts your next payout date: an estimate of when eBay will next pay money into your account, based on your own payout rhythm over the same 90-day window. Instead of you having to remember or check eBay’s payout schedule yourself, DashVue looks at the pattern of your recent payouts and projects forward to give you a working estimate of when to expect the next one.

This is useful for short-term cash flow planning, for example knowing roughly when to expect funds before a stock order or a bill is due, without needing to log into eBay separately to check.

Why cost of goods coverage matters here

The fee side of the waterfall is always reliable, because eBay’s fees are known, actual figures taken from your sales. The take-home profit side depends entirely on what you have told DashVue your items cost. If most of your listings are missing a cost price, the waterfall can still show you eBay’s take accurately, but the “what you keep” figure will be based on only the sales that do have a cost price attached, not your full 90 days of trading.

Keeping cost prices up to date across your listings is the single biggest thing that determines how trustworthy this view is. The more complete your cost data, the more of your sales are included in the take-home profit figure, and the closer it gets to reflecting your actual 90 days of trading rather than a partial sample of it.

What this means day to day

Use Cash flow when you want to see eBay’s real take rate on your sales rather than an assumed one, and when you want a rough idea of when your next payout is likely to land. Just remember the two limits: the take-home profit side needs good cost of goods coverage to be meaningful, and the payout date is a forecast from your own history, not a promise from eBay. See the related articles below for more on recording cost of goods and understanding your profit figures.