ThredUp Starting Tips: Keeping Track of Inventory

We are on our LAST email of the ThredUp series! I hope you have learned so much so far and are excited to continue to dive deep into this platform.

But we could not finish talking about ThredUp without mentioning the behind the scenes admin work.

Staying Organized

Staying organized with ThredUp is CRUCIAL. I highly recommend having a Google Doc spreadsheet to keep track of all of your available items, item at ThredUp, and sold items.

Lucky for you, the exclusive to this email is my sheets! Click here to access. 

Color coding has helped me a lot with keeping track of all sorts of inventory. I color differently for items sent in vs. items accepted, items in my possession vs. rejects vs. reclaims, and pending solds vs. paid out sold items. 


Keeping Track of Boxes

After putting a box together and tracking it in your sheets, it is good to put an inventory sheet in the box. I am not sure how much they actually use it, but I like to think it does help. It also helps cross reference that you have everything in your excel in the box. 

A good way to follow the process of your boxes is to stay on top of emails. ThredUp will send you all the emails of when a box is recieved, when it finishes processing, etc, so if you do not want to check the app 24/7 (I still do) you can always rely on these emails.

I also NEVER delete these emails - I put them in a separate folder - so if I missed something based on ThredUp's behalf, I have proof I never received it. 


Sold Items 

In order to keep track of the alive time of an item, I like to track when it sells on the platform. However, just because an item sells, doesn't mean you'll get paid out - it can get returned. 

I will move items over to the Sold tab of my sheets, but keep it highlighted in pink until I get paid out and mark the pay out date. I know it is paid out when I receive the email from ThredUp. 

If I never received that email and the item sold from the site a while ago, I'll check the box to see if it is still marked as sold. If it has been returned, it will show up as available as the last item in the box. 

At that point, I will remove it from Solds.


Reclaiming Items

The most important reason you have to stay on top of your admin work is because you do not want to let items expire and have ThredUp take possession of them.

The reclaim period has changed with ThredUp. You now have the last 7 days of the consignment period to reclaim your items.

The good news is that ThredUp still sends you an email when you have 7 days left to reclaim. I have decided to take that email as the day to reclaim and just act like the consignment period is over at that point. I'd rather be safe and reclaim my items earlier than chance it and wait till the last day, potentially forget, and lose my items. 

When I reclaim items, I copy them over to the Available tab, but keep them marked in purple. I will not change the color to yellow until I receive the items in hand.

This allows me to know if I am missing items. I am able to see a chunk of purple has been gone for a while, so I will find the items the box was in, check My Orders, find the order number and box number, and reach out to ThredUp about it. 100% of the time they have paid me out as if the items had sold. 

The same goes for rejects that I never received back - but I have never not received rejects back at this point in time, only reclaims. 


Contacting Support

Never hesitate to reach out to ThredUp's support team when you need. It is your items and your money, so you have every reason to make sure everything is correct. 

Chat on the app is the best way to get in contact with them. They do have business hours, so try to contact them during the weekday hours if you can, you will get a quicker response. 

Getting a ton of boxes and reclaims can seem un-inspiring at times, but know it is the name of the game with ThredUp and completely normal! It is rare that someone sells everything they send it.

Repeat the process and send it back. From there, you get into a groove and eventually you build up a whole stock on ThredUp and kill it!

Not too sure what will be of discussion next week, but hope to see you then!


XOXO
- Ashley

Need more? Enroll in Kreithchele's ThredUp course! It has everything you need to know to be successful selling on ThredUp. Check it out here.