How would you like a secret tip on how to Print Labels you can get FREE for your shipments and learn how to organize all your shipping records for easy access and for important Tax time too?

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I know many sellers have now found that doing your shipping using the Pay Pal shipping services is not only easy to do, but helps keep us all organized.

Imagine not only printing and paying for your shipping right off the Pay Pal web site, but also being able to print a packing slip and offering your customers an email notification with shipping information and taking your shipping costs right off the top payment made to you.  This is a great way to know your gross sales less shipping expenses.  So when doing your taxes you don't even have to include the shipping as a line item, you only have to put in the gross sales you made which is easy to tell from your eBay withdrawals during the year.

But here is the real tip on taking the printed labels from your computer and turning them into a label you can use on the parcel and get a hard copy of the packing slip and label to keep in a binder for future use.

This is what I do...

I either purchase or order (at no cost) labels from UPS that are two on an 8.5X11 page.  So each label is the size of the shipping label that prints from Pay Pal and on one sheet of these labels I can print two shipping labels. 

I use my store bought labels for all my USPS shipments and use the other free labels for my UPS shipments.  UPS asks you not to use their free labels for your other shipments so I try to keep it that way.   They even have printed their logo and a notice that the labels should be used for their shipments only.  I know some people order them and slice off the bottom of the label, but I have to let your conscience be your guide with that.

Now when the label and packing slip print from the computer I take them both to my copy machine. I fold the label page in half (the one printed by my computer), so only the actual shipping label is what I will copy.  The other side of that page has the details of the shipment so I don't want that to show.  I set my copy machine to take a hand fed sheet of paper and now put in the blank label page and copy the paper label onto the one of the actual labels on my label page.  I will now peel off the label from the sheet and use it on the parcel.  The next label I have to print I take the sheet with the remaining one label and feed that into the copy machine, so I can use both labels on each sheet. When I have two labels to print at one time I just line two up on my copy machine and print both at one time on a single sheet of label material.

I then put in the packing slip I printed from Pay Pal into the copy machine and hand feed the original paper printed label from the computer back through the copy machine. Now what I have for my record is a sheet of paper with the packing slip on one side and the original full sheet label that printed from Pay Pal on the other side.

This I then put into a 3 hole binder by date.  The date is on the bottom of the packing slip when it prints from Pay Pal so it is easy to organize this way.  This way if anyone asks about shipments, etc. I can of course go and do a search on Pay Pal, but often it is easier to just go to my binder and look it up.

Another reason for doing this is for tax purposes.  I keep all of these should I ever get called by the IRS or state tax folks. I can separate any sales made in state to determine if I owe any sales tax and also have a hard copy to prove the items I sell that I have purchased as tax exempt from those items I have sold that were my personal property.

There is no other way when doing tons of auctions I have found to really have this control.  Sometimes the best way is the low tech way and even though we are asked to live in a paperless society, there is nothing like having a hard copy of your sales.

You will also find that using Pay Pal for shipping and making copies for yourself will help you keep organized and that means extra time, less stress and more money in your pocket.  Time is money and this will save you plenty of time.