Does ExpenseBot work as an Etsy seller expense tracker, and can it help with my Etsy taxes?
ExpenseBot captures and organizes your Etsy-related spend into a Google Sheet you own — it's spend capture, not a full accounting suite. It makes your Etsy bookkeeping easy to keep and your 1099-K easy to reconcile; it does not replace your accountant.
What an Etsy shop spends on
- Listing fees — charged per listing and on renewal/sale
- Transaction fees — a percentage of the item price (plus shipping/gift wrap you charge)
- Payment-processing fees — a percentage plus a fixed amount per order, varying by country
- Offsite Ads fees — a share of sales Etsy attributes to its off-site ads
- Etsy Ads — your budget for promoting listings in Etsy search
- Materials / COGS — the raw materials or inventory your products are made from
- Shipping & packaging — postage, mailers, boxes, labels
- Tools — design software, label printer, photography gear
Also: subscription fee if on a paid seller tier, currency conversion fee when listing and payout currencies differ, and a regulatory operating fee in certain countries.
Exact fee figures change and vary by country — check Etsy's official fees page for current rates. Never quote Etsy fee percentages from memory or from a third-party blog; the amounts that matter for a seller's return are the actual charges on their own Etsy payment account statement.
Why Etsy fees get missed at tax time: the seller never pays them — Etsy deducts them before the money reaches the bank. They therefore never appear as a purchase in a bank account, so anyone reconciling from bank deposits alone understates their deductions on every single order.
What the Etsy CSV export does NOT cover
Etsy's export is the authoritative record of what happened inside Etsy — orders, the fees Etsy charged, and what it paid out. It cannot know about spend that happened elsewhere: materials and inventory from suppliers, packaging bought in bulk, postage bought outside Etsy, design software and tools, the business share of a home studio, or mileage to the post office. Reconciling from the export alone understates costs, which overstates taxable profit. Export fields and available reports change over time — check the actual download rather than a guide.
How ExpenseBot captures it
- Gmail capture — connect Gmail once; ExpenseBot reads your Etsy statements, supplier invoices and shipping receipts and writes each to a Google Sheet you own. It labels what it reads (no double-counting), never sends email, and never deletes anything.
- Photo capture — snap paper craft-supply receipts and they're filed the same way.
- AI categorization — fees, ads, materials, shipping and tools are sorted automatically so the ledger is tax-ready.
Makers vs. resellers
- Makers buy raw materials that become cost of goods sold as finished items sell.
- Resellers deduct what each sold item cost them (inventory).
Either way, capturing every supply and inventory purchase is what lets you calculate your real margin.
The Etsy 1099-K
An Etsy 1099-K reports gross sales — including buyer-paid shipping and before Etsy's fees. It is not a bill and not your taxable profit. You subtract fees, shipping, packaging and COGS to reach taxable profit. The federal reporting threshold has changed repeatedly, so confirm the current IRS threshold (and your state's, which can be lower). This is educational, not tax advice — confirm with a tax professional.
Landing page: https://www.expensebot.ai/etsy-seller-expense-tracker