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Small business invoice example for Shipping

hello friends welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new in today's video we're going to be talking about shipping as a small business owner now i know that this is such a gray area when it comes to selling you might have a new product and have no clue what to charge your customer so you end up guessing and maybe you lose money and i don't want that to happen to you anymore so i'm definitely no expert when it comes to shipping but i have been selling online for about six seven years and i've sold around 15 000 products so i've learned a lot but like i said there's still probably so much more to learn but i want to share my tips and tricks with you all today to help you as best i can so i have a couple of different scenarios here today we're going to take you from packaging your product weighing and measuring popping that into the computer and figuring out how much to charge for your products so you might have your own website you might have your own etsy shop or both so regardless these tips will help you to accurately calculate your shipping cost at least to the best that you can and be able to stop wasting money because i know that in the past i've definitely done that throughout the years i might have plugged in a number wrong and ended up eating the cost of shipping so if you do these methods that we're going to talk about today it'll at least help you to prevent that from happening in the future so let's go ahead and get on into this video and i will show you some of the scenarios that we got here all right so what do we have here so we have something with a basic poly mailer such as a vinyl decal or maybe stickers or something that's very lightweight so i'm going to show you this scenario along with that we have a coffee mug um in just a regular brown box and then we also have a wooden sign that is a little bit larger in dimension these are not actual products that i'm going to be shipping out i just kind of like wrapped it really quickly to just kind of give you the scenario but those are the three that we have and the three different options and we're going to weigh them we are going to measure them and we are going to like i said plug them into the computer and get accurate cost and i'll let you know how to figure out a good range to be able to charge your customer so the first thing that you're going to want to do is of course take your product and do a mock package so what that basically is is you're going to create a product um such as a vinyl decal a mug or a wood sign or whatever you make or sell you're going to fully package it up now one tip i'd give you any tips at all with this make sure that you get the item packaged pretty much as small as you can because when it comes to shipping a lot of things can be charged by dimensional weight so a lot of these shipping companies might charge by dimensional weight which is basically length width and height rather than just weight so um keep that in mind so get it as small as possible for example this mug i wanted to make sure that i had it in a box that was pretty close to the size of the mug now stuff small doesn't really matter as much as larger items such as wood signs i have some signs that i ship up to 48 inches wide so i have to make sure i get that as small as possible right at the end of the sign so just make sure you do that so wrapping it safely securely putting a lot of things like filler inside of it which is what i did for this coffee mug as you can see is packed in bubble wrap as well as it has filler around that as well as filler on the top for stuff like vinyl decals so if anything in a poly mailer like this you are going to want to make sure that you put something like a packing peanut inside of it i know a packing peanut crazy i used to get questions all the time on sally why do you have a packing peanut in your package and the reason why is because these can sometimes be upgraded to priority mail packaging in the us that's basically an upgraded shipping charge which usually is around eight nine dollars so your customer will either be charged this extra package pricing or you're gonna be charged that extra package pricing if it doesn't have a thickness of at least i think it's a fourth inch i could be wrong but i think it's a quarter inch so this packing peanut gives it that quarter inch thick to not qualify as either letter or priority you want it to be just like this to be able to get that most accurate shipping price as you can so you want that little pack of peanut in there if you haven't seen my video where i package up vinyl decals this is how i do it i use cardstock in it as well as this is not a real vinyl decal but i put vinyl in it and you know just thank you stuff and whatnot so you want to literally package it up exactly as if you would ship it to a customer this is just a package label that is unprinted um i just have it on here to kind of help with our weight a little bit so that's all there really is to something like this with a poly mailer super easy um but then you might be upgrading you want to sell products that maybe have a little bit of weight to them a little bit of fault to them like i said the coffee mug so um stuff like this get it as small as you can be able to package stuff like glass very well you don't want anything shaking around in here so once i have all of this taped together my item's not going to move if i shook it or threw it across the room which let's not do that but if i did that it would be safe so that is safe and secure okay so now we have our wood sign so this would be bubble wrapped as well as brown paper wrapped or maybe you want to put it in a box of your own so in these situations it can be different depending on what size or what large item that you have do the same thing you want to package it well and you want to get it as small as possible certain things you can kind of alter the dimensions a little bit before you ship your order out so if i know that i have a sign that maybe varies in height depending on their last name i will make sure that i go and figure out where they're from so if they are across the us for me such as california i know that i need to make that as small as i possibly can in height so that it will ship at a lower cost for my customer and for me so that is what i'll do for things like signs so just be careful when it comes to big items because you might get an unexpected shipping charge that you're not ready for so now that we've talked a little bit about mock-up packaging let's talk about what if someone orders two items from your shop or even five items from your shop but you do not know how to package that together let's say someone ordered a coffee mug and a sign how the heck am i gonna ship these two together right something i struggled with but i have a solution so let me show you okay so here is your solution now i decided i think i'm gonna actually make a full video on this so how to use cardboard sheets to make your own boxes so i'll show you exactly how i can't include it all in this video today because then it would take up too much time and maybe you already know how to do that until you just wouldn't want to watch that part but so our scenario was that someone ordered a wood sign along with a mug how do we make or find a box that would fit that but what it cost us way too much to ship because yes we could go to the store and buy a gigantic box and just put those in there and ship it out but then you run into the problem of dimensional weight where they're charging you by the inches all added up together and it's going to cost you way more than you need to be spending so in that situation you're going to want to find cardboard sheets so i will show you guys in a video if it's already created i'll put it in the cards but if it's not created yet stay tuned for that coming soon alright so you have your cardboard sheets now what do you need you will need something to measure you will need a perforator tool this is from amazon basically what it does is you run this along your cardboard and it will leave little holes in your cardboard and you're able to bend your cardboard and it makes a perfect box so that's really handy to have but how do you cut your cardboard you need a handy dandy cardboard cutter it is not really made specifically for cardboard it's made to cut lots of different products but i'll tell you using scissors they're going to dull up really fast and it's going to really hurt your hands this is like my favorite tool i'm sure you guys have seen me use this in like every single video so i really like it a lot it's by ryobi which they don't make these at all anymore i will link some that are extremely comparable down in the description box below from amazon and they are amazing work really well but basically what it does you just push the button and it moves really fast and it cuts your cardboard just have a way to mark a straight line so you're able to cut it but that's the basics of what you're going to need to make your own boxes so then you're going to need your products as you can see here i have something glass along with something wood glass and wood it's not good together um so we're going to want to make sure we package this glass up extremely well so i would wrap this in bubble wrap put it on the top of my sign and i would probably do something like tape around so that this doesn't jolt around and move then the next thing you're going to want to do is measure this box out like i said i can't include the entire diy here in today's video but stay tuned for that so once you've measured out your size you're able to create a box that fits your items perfectly so this could go if i had a bunch of different products i don't have to go out and keep stock of a lot of different size boxes i can just create my own for a fraction of the cost so worth it um and then after i have my box created taped up i would want to fill it in so that this glass doesn't get broken and there you go that is how you ship multiple different products in one if you have something just like signs um i would and i've done this lots of times i just tape each sign up and then i just tape them on top of each other and send them out like that and that's fine then you don't have to make a box but if it's something that you might have like two really weird different sizes i would do this method for sure stay tuned on that video coming soon but that is how you ship multiple different products okay so now that we have all of our products um packaged up our mock products we are going to want to figure out the dimensions so you're going to want something like a shipping scale ignore how dirty it is if you can see it in the camera but i actually tote this thing around out in the shop i bring it wherever i'm shipping my orders and that's the lovely beauty of being able to work from home is you can kind of package up orders in your kitchen your dining room your office your outside workshop wherever so this baby goes around everywhere with me and the cool thing about it is it has batteries so you can unplug it or it has a plug and it can run through the wall but you're gonna want a shipping scale now i used to not have this for a very long time i went and utilized a scale that we would like stand on like a normal person scale but um i wanted to be more accurate so i got this on amazon it is just an accu-tech i will link it down below if they still have it on amazon but it has been a great scale so you'll need a scale something to write with and um something to measure your product i usually use a fabric ruler but it is out in the shop right now so i just wanted to kind of give you guys an idea of needing some kind of way to measure your product okay let's start with our polymailer um so all that we need here is our exact item it is finished it is packaged up i have everything right inside of its polymailer we have our packing peanut in here as well it is ready to go so here is a label just to kind of give us that extra weight we might need so we are going to first turn on our scale [Applause] let it zero out okay now we're gonna just set our poly mailer right on top so this item is zero pounds 0.8 ounces which means that it is under an ounce so i will show you in a minute once we get onto the computer how to plug that in but we're going to basically take down our paper and we're going to write down that our poly mailer is 0.8 ounces so now that we know how much one single vinyl decal would weigh you might wonder okay what if someone orders a bunch of different vinyl decals what do i do then well i'll show you in a minute how i plug all of that in to just be on the safe side but you know that one is less than one ounce so if you put a bunch of vinyl in there which i will go and find here's two more examples i'm just gonna throw those in there let's put it back on the scale it's zeroed out so this is zero point okay oh it went up to one ounce so as you can see three vinyl decals here or four vinyl decals is only one ounce so play around with that a little bit but i'll show you how to get pretty accurate here on the computer once we get done with this portion but our singular vinyl decal was 0.8 ounces so let's go ahead and measure this okay so if our item was fully packaged up just like this we know that these are six by nine mailers but we want to make sure so let's go ahead and just check so nine it's a little bit over six it's about six and a quarter so six and a quarter is actually would round up to seven so we have some nine by seven poly mailers now the thickness so we know that this is about a quarter inch thick but online they have no way to put anything under one inch so we're going to go ahead and write one inch down for that so this product right here one vinyl decal is 0.8 ounces and it is a nine by seven by one inch poly mailer so i wrote all those dimensions down this one is done and ready to go be plugged into the computer let's move on to the next one okay so now we have our coffee mug so let's go ahead and see how much it weighs we have our scale zeroed out so let's put this on top i did not tape it up because like i said this isn't a real order but let's see how much it weighs okay so this exact order is going to be one pound 10.2 ounces so let's go ahead and write that down something very important to note is if it is anything greater than one pound it is automatically goes up to two pounds so even though we put one pound ten ounces it's really two pounds so you wanna go ahead and write two pounds okay next let's check our dimensions so we have nine next is six and a half which really goes up to seven so nine by seven nine so this box is nine by seven by nine so we're gonna go ahead and write that down and these are all in inches so nine by seven by nine okay so our mug box is finished okay now we have our wood sign let's go ahead and weigh it we have two pounds seven ounces so that rounds up to three pounds now our dimensions now remember that length is always going to be your largest side so we know this is our length [Music] so this sign is exactly 24. just remember that if it says 24 and a quarter it automatically goes up to 25 that is how they're gonna charge you so this one is exactly 24 [Music] by seven and a half which is really eight so 24 by eight now our thickness exactly one so 24 by one by eight all right this one's done let's go ahead and head on over to our computer so when it comes to calculating your shipping cost you can do a couple different things you can go to your local post office and you can get them to weigh and measure and calculate the cost for you but that is a lot of time and a lot of work for you and you're not really going to get accurate shipping costs because going to the actual post office they charge you way more than you're gonna pay if you buy labels online so i like to utilize websites like etsy labels pirate ship and shippo to ship my labels out and you save a lot of money so that is kind of how i do my calculations as well we're going to make a package or we made our package and we're going to pretend like we're creating a label for somewhere that we're not really going to ship so we're going to find somewhere that is very close to us such as a state over and then we're also going to find somewhere that is extremely far away so for example for me i'm in south carolina so i'm going to go find somewhere like california and that is going to give us our margin cost for each product so i'll go ahead and show you how to do that on somewhere like pirate ship so what you're going to want to do is create an account it is free to do doing all of this cost you nothing so it's good to be able to get you a good rate this way so let's go up to the top and hit create a single label so pirate ship already knows our address so where we are shipping from so we don't have to worry about our from but what we are going to do is we're going to create a ship to label and this is going to be the place that is close to us so let's just make a name here we'll just say her name is rachel s and her address here we're going to type in an address close by so i'm going to make sure it's not someone's home address but i'm going to go find a random address in georgia and i'm going to put it in here i went online and just found a random store so i'm just going to put the address in here okay so it autofilled for us it has the address here you can leave all of this blank we have our name so now let's scroll down a little bit okay so now it's going to ask you the type of packaging so let's go ahead and start with our vinyl decal so i'm going to go and select envelope padded envelope poly bag or box in a bag because that's what we're shipping next we're going to do our dimensions so we know that this package is nine by seven um and usually sometimes it'll ask you the thickness as well and we would just put one here and if you don't have an option for an envelope padded envelope polybag whatever you can just put package or box so it doesn't really matter as long as you're putting the dimensions in correctly that part is not as important so um this just helps them understand a little bit what it is okay so now we have our product weight our weight here was 0.8 ounces which really goes up to one ounce so let's go ahead and put one ounce here next it's going to ask you is this any hazardous custom forms or save package whatever we're not going to hit any of that we are ready to go so let's now hit get rate so as you can see here it's telling you to choose a service so here we know that first class is the way that we probably need to ship this order and the reason being is because first class it includes tracking and insurance and it is safe it is way better than shipping letter you will not get any good tracking that way so we know we want to do first class packaging and we know it's going to cost us 3.37 to do that so that is what we're going to write down so we know that shipping to georgia is going to cost us 3.37 so let's go back and we're going to go ahead and figure up our two other products being in georgia and then we will head to our state far away and calculate those pricing our next box was a mug so we're going to go and select box or packaging and then we're going to import our package dimensions here okay so we got everything plugged in now let's go to get rate so as you see here this is gonna cost us about eight dollars and two cents if we choose priority mail but let's go ahead and see if we can get it a little bit cheaper so here parcel select ground is a little bit longer in transit as you see here it says it can take two to eight days to ship but we know that georgia is very close to us so it probably wouldn't take maybe two days so that's something definitely to keep in mind when you're looking at all of these rates to choose from sometimes you ups and fedex are cheapest but it depends on how large your product is but something small like a mug usually it's going to cost more to go with ups so we're just going to scroll down and see all of our options here so obviously up here it's going to give you your cheapest so to me if i was choosing 8 versus 728 i'm probably going to go ahead and choose priority mail just because it's not that much of a difference so i um of course this as well parcel does not come with insurance so i'd have to pay for insurance so it's going to pretty much be the same cost for this state so we're going to go ahead and select priority mail and we know that this is going to be our cost for our product so i'm going to go ahead and write down the eight dollars and two cents is how much our mug is going gonna cost us to ship to georgia okay let's go back and calculate our last product so our our sign it is not a box but it still falls into this category so we're gonna go ahead and keep that the same and we're gonna change our dimensions here so as you see here the pricing didn't go up too much it went from 802 for our last package to 824 for this size so um that is not bad and as you can see here it's 734 for a little bit more cheaper but we know that this is best i'll tell you from experience large signs this parcel select will be the cheapest out of all of these options this is a great option for extremely large items i've used it several times and it is great as long as you um pay for insurance i feel like this is not big enough of a difference to choose that so we're just gonna go ahead and keep priority mail and we're gonna write down that eight dollars and 24 cents is our lowest rate that we will get for the sign okay so i went and found another store in california so let's go ahead and put that address in here and everything auto populates for us so now we're going to scroll down and enter our packaging just as we did before but we're going to do it again with the further state all right so as you see here our first class package it is giving us a rate of 3.86 to ship to california so i'm gonna go ahead and write that down so it went from three dollars and 37 cents being the state over from us to three dollars and 86 cents being the state further so i went ahead and wrote those both down so now let's go ahead and move on to the next one so now we're going to calculate our mug so here it's letting you know that ups ground is going to be the best option but let's go ahead and take a look ourself so the parcel select ground is 10.85 priority would be 12.66 so yet again it's not much of a difference if you already have a bunch of packages going one place sometimes it's best to just choose that same location so most of the time i ship my items priority and going through the post office so if it's only a dollar difference i'm not going to go and choose ups for example because i'll have to make a whole another trip to ups so more times than none i'll i'll just click what's easiest unless the price difference is dramatic so for example if it said that i was gonna save like five six seven eight dollars i would of course choose the cheaper option here but just use whatever works for you in your situation um so you have a couple options to choose from but in my situation i'm probably going to go ahead and select priority mail um now for a mug that is a lot so you need to make sure that you're including enough of your cost into your product to be able to cover and be able to pay for this pricing so 12.66 is a pretty big jump from our eight dollars and two cents that it would be closer to us but this is our margin um so we need to go ahead and write it down but we're going to go ahead and write that down and i'll tell you how to calculate the best margin here in a minute so now we're going to go back and calculate our last step okay so here is our wood sign price yet again it's telling us that ups ground is the best option but let's take a look at what else we have here so um we have 12 25 but i want you to take a look here if we chose priority mail it's going to cost us 17.74 to ship a three pound package to california that's a big jump from our eight dollars and 24 cents that we had from georgia so as you see here that's a pretty big margin so something like this i would probably select some other method i would probably choose ups ground because it's a little bit better than this parcel select ground but this is what i would choose for this price difference that is worth it to me to drive a little bit to save a little bit of money and give my customer a better deal so i'm going to go ahead and write 12.65 is our other option here so you really just have to think of your specific scenario and see what works best for you but we know this is the rate that we're given for the furthest away from us so before we do anything with these rates that we just got here we need to do one very important step and that is to go and see what other sellers and your competitors are doing with their shipping rates so the reason this is important is because when shoppers are on etsy or wherever they're shopping they're going to look and compare so you need to make sure that you're kind of staying within the range of other sellers because if you're way off um either they're going to keep scrolling and find somebody else or you're going to end up losing money if you charge too little so that's why it's very important to check that out before you do anything at all and just write down what you notice if you see that all of the sellers that are selling those products are doing free shipping you need to figure out a way to calculate this cost that we're about to figure out in a minute into the cost of your product but if people are charging rates for shipping then that's something that you need to figure in so you kind of have to go and stay within the range of these sellers take notes write down what prices they're charging for shipping are they doing calculated shipping are they going and charging a flat rate etc so that's kind of the first step before we get into this next step of looking at our rates so once we went and calculated all of those rates from the closest state to us to the furthest state from us that gives us what we call a marginal rate or what i guess i like to call marginal rate so it will be for a poly mailer about 3.37 being the lowest cost from georgia all the way up to 3.86 to go to california so that is for that item the next item was our mugs so we know that it would be about eight dollars and two cents to go to georgia and 12.66 to go to california and then for our sign that was a little bit longer it was going to be eight dollars and 24 cents being the lower rate to 12 dollars and 65 cents being the higher rate so what that does is it lets us know that is how much we will have to spend to ship that product after you've calculated this cost you're gonna have to figure out a couple of things are you going to charge your customer for shipping some people like to use calculated shipping for example on etsy it has where it calculates it for your customer i personally do not use that on etsy because i found that sometimes it can turn buyers away so what i like to do is come up with a flat rate shipping for my customers so if it were me and i was looking at these rates i would probably charge somewhere around the rate of 3.95 for a single vinyl decal now i do have the free shipping guarantee turned on on my shop so if they spend 35 they get free shipping and it's kind of a win-win for you and your buyer because they get free shipping if they get a couple more items for your shop and you get to have a couple more sales so um we'll talk a little bit in a minute how to factor in the cost of shipping when they buy multiple products but let's go ahead and move on to the next scenario so we know that our mugs can cost us between eight dollars and two cents to 1266 it's kind of a big variation and sometimes they can be even more broad so you might be like oh what do i do i probably would factor in a little bit of the cost of that shipping price into my product and i would charge a flat rate for shipping i think for my mugs right now i'm charging five dollars and fifty cents to ship those and i include a couple dollars of that as well into the price of the product because to me when i was charging a higher rate for shipping people were very turned off by that for just a singular mug so sometimes you have to get a little bit creative with your pricing and figure a little bit of that cost into your product and then charge a little bit for shipping and it's i've never had a complaint so far and i've always covered my cost for my shipping with these products okay our last scenario was our wood sign so we had a margin of eight dollars and 24 cents all the way up to 12.65 so for that sign i always have free shipping for my signs because i have the free shipping over 35 turned on so with that product i'm gonna have to factor in the cost of shipping into my product so i know 1265 could be a cost that i have so what i'm going to do is is probably add about 13 on to my price of my product so that is something that you're going to have to figure in okay so now let's talk about some different scenarios so let's say that your site you so let's say that you offer a product that is different for every single person so i have a wood sign that i sell that is different based off of names so it the dimensions change based off of the height of the name so examples like that can vary as well but i do kind of know after doing it a couple times i know what my marginal rates are going to be for that product and like i said earlier you can kind of sometimes modify your products to be able to fit within a certain rate i've had before where even one inch can jump the price up to like 50 instead of like 20 so keep that in mind when you're creating your products as well that there might be a rate change or you might have a certain situation where you're gonna have to charge more for shipping different things like that so what i like to do for a scenario like that is go on my computer and make a mock-up sign i will pretend to package it up but not necessarily packaged up because it hasn't been created but i know that my packaging is going to be a little bit more than the dimensions of my sign so then i go and do exactly what i showed you on the computer is mocking up a package on the computer and figuring out some different rates so i had my long sign i had my short sign so i know that this is the max width that i might have for this sign and so on and so forth it's all kind of a game of plug and play you have to go and practice before you go and just say a random guess for shipping because it can vary so much and there's so many variables so that's kind of how i do for situations like that so let's talk about the scenario that a lot of people wonder what happens if someone orders multiple different products for me how do i cover my cost for shipping for that so let's use vinyl decals for an example i'm charging for shipping for that for one product but if they spend 35 or more shipping is free well to me a small product like that and something that i can make and more than cover my cost and they're ordering that many products from me i am more than happy to cover shipping for that because they were generous enough to buy that many products for me so to me this is part of the business you are going to sometimes cover shipping yourself when your customer spends a certain amount of money and since that's such a low cost product we're not losing any money that way we are making money so a situation like that don't worry about it so sometimes with larger products you might be concerned that you're not covering your cost it kind of goes along with the analogy of the vinyl decals how they're spending more money to get free shipping well my wood signs they have the cost of shipping included into them so we have our 13 added on to this product cost let's say they ordered a mug on top of that shipping is not added into the cost of your mug you had a couple dollars added into it but not fully but those couple dollars that you added into that mug on top of the shipping that you already covered onto this sign adding a couple of pounds onto this weight is not going to dramatically change the price of your shipping so you're actually probably going to cover the cost of your shipping because you figured in those in your pricing formula you figured in that scenario like i said with mugs i charge a flat rate of five dollars and fifty cents and in my head i add in an extra dollar or two of shipping onto that so that's going to cover our shipping for our two different products i know that seems extremely confusing now that i say it out loud so as long as you're pricing your products ingly you're gonna cover your cost of shipping you just have to make sure to think of all the scenarios and remember that you're a business and these people are spending their money on you and they're buying multiple products from you it's okay to take a little bit of a discount because they're buying more products from you it's kind of like one of those marketing costs right you're okay to spend a little bit of money of your own because you're making more money right you have to spend money to make money so since they bought a sign from you and a mug from you and maybe a decal from you you're okay to cover those couple extra dollars in shipping because you sold more all right everyone so we pretty much figured out all the scenarios we figured out our marginal rates we figured out what other sellers were doing so that is how you come up with what you're going to do here and you got to figure out are you going to include the cost into your product are you going to put a couple dollars into the cost of your product so you can give your customers a lower shipping cost or are you going to do a flat rate there's a lot of different options but you have to do your research and know what other sellers are doing and be able to know how to cover your cost or otherwise you're going to be in a hole and you're going to lose money and all of these steps are pretty easy once you've been selling for a while it's pretty easy to guesstimate um certain things and be able to figure things out a lot quicker so i also wanted to mention that i have the etsy listing class available for the month of april i still have classes and spots left they are thirty dollars and it is a two hour zoom call with me i go over every single thing that comes to how i figure out what products to sell that i know will rank in the algorithm i talk about seo i talk about how to create your etsy listing from start to finish so we go over absolutely everything and like i said it's live with me on zoom and i answer questions and we just have a really great time so um that is available i'll link it down in the description box below but i wanted to mention that that is going on right now for those of you who aren't in the facebook group and all of that um so i wanted to mention it here it just this kind of stuff just scratches the surface of some of the stuff we go over in the class all right everyone so that pretty much wraps it up for today's video i hope that y'all enjoyed it and got some value out of it i know that shipping can be a very scary thing when it comes to starting to sell that is the thing that scared me the most and i did a lot of mistakes throughout the years so hopefully my tips helped you today if you liked it give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see y'all in that next one talk to you later bye