Another unique feature of the calculator which I think will be very useful to people is what I like to
call the Reverse Shipping & Handling Calculator. Here's how it works. Let's say you're selling
an item on eBay but you're not quite sure what to charge for Shiping & Handling (this is actually a very common
occurrence). People know what their actual cost of shipping is, but they don't know exactly how much they should
charge their buyer for shipping & handling to completely cover all of their operating costs
(eBay fees, PayPal fees, etc). eBay has a rule against charging excessive shipping & handling and most sellers
don't want to charge excessive amounts for shipping but they do want
to completely cover their all of their fees and expenses as a seller. So what do you do? Well one thing you can do
is to add your eBay and PayPal fees into your S&H cost (the amount you charge to your buyer for S&H). This
is not considered excessive shipping so you will not be violating any eBay policies by doing
this. All you will be doing is increasing the handling portion of your shipping & handling amount ever so slightly
so that it completely covers all of your eBay and PayPal fees. You buyer won't even know it but they'll actually be
paying your eBay and PayPal fees for you.
So how do I find out the right (or "ideal") amount to charge for S&H?
To find out the right amount to charge for S&H (so that it completely covers you actual cost of
shipping, all of your eBay fees, and all of your PayPal fees) all you have to do is begin to calculate your eBay fees
as you normally would, but instead of filling in the textbox labeled S&H Charged, you leave it
blank. That's right, just leave it completely blank. You fill in everything else (all of the other white textboxes)
except for S&H Charged. Once you do that and you press the Calculate button,
eBCalc will "reverse" calculate your S&H for you and display it in the S&H Charged textbox.
It will then change the background color of the textbox to yellow to indicate to you that it has performed a special
calculation. Let's go through a simple example. Let's say I were to sell an item on eBay using a Fixed Price
(Buy It Now) auction for $100. I don't know what to charge for shipping but I do know what my actual cost of
shipping is (let's say in this case it's $8.10). So I type in $8.10 into the textbox labeled Actual
S&H and then I press Calculate. Once I press Calculate the calculator
will notice that I didn't type anything into the S&H Charged textbox, so it will figure that
amount out for me. After I press Calculate I can see that my total eBay fees for this
auction have come out to be $5.96 and my total PayPal fees have come out to be
$3.72 making my total (combined) fees $9.68. eBCalc will then take these combined fee
amounts, $9.68, and add them to my actual cost of shipping (in this case, $8.10). So
if we combine our actual cost of shipping, $8.10, with our combined eBay and PayPal fees,
$9.68, we end up with exactly $17.78. And low and behold, this is the exact amount
eBCalc has calculated and displayed to us. That is the exact amount (in other words, the "ideal amount") you
should be charging for S&H if you want to completely cover your
eBay fees, your PayPal fees, and your actual cost of shipping.