Ebay account for IT dept

[leegcvcc]

Afternoon,

I have asked Finance to look at Ebay for a while now. I want to buy and sell for the school... legitimately. They are not keen! I have told Finance that loads of schools seem to be able to buy/sell on Ebay .. but there maybe some that aren't permitted for whatever reason.

We use Amazon Business and Finance are happy with how that works, but they think ebay is different and don't comply with our processes or something.

 

Is there anyone here who uses Ebay for this purpose and have passed Finance audits whilst doing so?

 

If so, can someone let me know how the process works, from your perspective, with maybe a view to someone in Finance contacting your Finance at some stage if it's viable?

 

Appreciate any help.

[soapyfish]

I have looked at this several times and each time, the problem seems to be,

 

1) The school is writing off the hardware and stating that it has no value,

2) This is then contradicted by the generation of value "the money gained by Ebay selling"

[dhicks]

Is there anyone here who uses Ebay for this purpose and have passed Finance audits whilst doing so?

 

We have a PayPal account set up so we can purchase stuff from eBay, and it also comes in handy for some website subscriptions and similar. Most purchasing is done via Amazon. Both the Amazon and eBay accounts use my school-provided credit card, so ultimatly there's only one source of spending (the credit card) for the bursar to keep track of. I put in details of each transaction when the credit card statement comes through each month (what was purchased, who authorised it, what department it's used for, etc) and that seems to work quite nicely.

 

What is it you're aiming to sell via eBay? We use any older equipment until it simply dies, I'd have thought anything you're likely to be able to sell would be at such a low value it wouldn't be worth the bother of dealing with listing and packaging it. Your time is probably better spent doing other work. If you want still-usable equipment reused/recycled then there are dedicated recyling firms that will take care of that for you, generally for free.

[Chris_Cook]

For us, if we want to buy something, we have to do it on our personal ebay accounts and get the school to re-imburse us. They don't trust ebay and I don't really blame them as you don't know who you are dealing with without vetting them. I've sometimes found that businesses on ebay have other outlets selling the same things.

 

For selling, we did look into it a few years ago, but never had the time to arrange it and deal with after-sales issues. I know some have got in trouble in the past from selling without schools permissions.

 

We also had to be able to demonstrate that you got the market rate for the item.

 

Its normally easier to send for recycling as its mostly junk by the time we are done with it. It would cost us more in someone's wages than we would get back if we go the ebay route.

 

If I were to look at this again, I'd probably work with a recycling company and see if one was willing to do a deal. Or send of something of value to pay for something hazardous that we have to dispose of. We've done that with old CRT TVs before - a couple of ancient macs covered the cost of transport and fees. That, or find another school willing to make a donation.

[MatthewL]

VAT comes into play as well I believe, don't know the ins and outs but seen it before when this has been mentioned before.

[Meldrew]

VAT comes into play as well I believe, don't know the ins and outs but seen it before when this has been mentioned before.

 

Exactly. When the school purchased the items originally, they will have claimed the VAT back, so when you come to sell it on ebay. You must add the VAT again. Looking at it another way, you'll lose 20% of the value of what you sell to VAT.

[noelmm]

We're not allowed to use eBay at all, whether it is for purchasing or selling. The selling part hasn't been an issue as like most others on here we use our equipment until it's failing. Recently though we have been using old desktops and laptops and trading them in when we buy new equipment (HP do a trade in scheme, not sure about others) and in the last 18 months that's returned more than eBay would have.