One thing I hated about selling on Etsy was having a bill due at the beginning of the month or having that bill auto deducted from my personal bank account.  It complicated my accounting and made me feel like I wasn’t making as much money as I thought I should be.  Want to know how to pay your Etsy bill without using your personal bank account? Yep, it’s totally possible and really easy to set up.

 

Let’s start with why you have an Etsy bill.

You have listing fees each time you create a new listing, transaction fees when you sell an item and a renewal fee to relist the item. You also rack up shipping fees. This little fee here and that little fee there really start to add up and before you know it, you’ve got yourself an Etsy bill. And yep, that sucks. So, take a minuet to balk at the bill, rant about how ridiculous it is, feel cheated and then pick yourself up by the boot straps and move on. These fees are a small price to pay for the worldwide exposure Etsy brings and the huge potential for profit.  Simply put, when you’re first starting out the benefits of Etsy far outweigh the fees.

Payment Options

So now that we’ve established that you’re going to have fees, how will you pay them? You have 2 payment methods with Etsy. You can choose from either autopay or manual payment.  When you first set up shop Etsy will enroll you in autopay and deduct the fees directly from your account on the 1^st of each month (you can choose what kind of account, debit card or checking account).

Fee Thresholds

Etsy has fee thresholds. To begin with, Etsy will not let you carry more than a $50 balance. Once you reach $50 in fees they will automatically deduct that from your chosen account and they will up your threshold to $100. Once you reach $100 in fees they will deduct that from your chosen account and bump your fee threshold again to $200. This process continues on and on. When you’re in the beginning phases of selling you will see Etsy deduct from your account whenever you reach these fee thresholds whether it’s the first of the month or not. And then again on the 1^st if you have any outstanding fees left.

Etsy will always tell you when you are getting close to your fee threshold. If you use the “Sell on Etsy” app you will get a notification when you are close to your threshold. They also let you know when you bill/statement is ready and you can go in and view it. You can actually view it at any time it just won’t be a full accounting for the month if the month has not ended.

The autopay method works great for a hassle free, foolproof option. No action is needed from you, they just take the money and you’re good to go. But some sellers prefer to have the funds taken directly from their Etsy payment account rather than their bank account. This way you don’t get a big happy Etsy payday followed by a big fat Etsy bill auto deduction. That can make you feel like you didn’t make anything at all. One minuet you’re all “woo-hoo, pay day!” and the next Etsy is like “haha! Just kidding!” Not fun folks, not fun.

Using your Etsy payment account

So, how to use your Etsy payment account to pay your Etsy bill. This is when you’d want to opt in for manual payments. There are 2 ways to go about this as well. You can switch to manual payments and pay your Etsy bill directly from your debit card or checking account whenever you want as long as it’s paid by the due date. But if you do that you’re still going to see money coming out of your personal account and going to Etsy which brings you right back to that not so fun feeling. Or, you can pay your bill directly from your Etsy Payment account without the money ever having been transferred into your personal account.

Now, in order for this method to work you need to have available funds in your Etsy Payment account. If you’re going to use this method I suggest switching your deposit schedule frequency to every 2 weeks or once a month. This will give you some time to build up funds in your Etsy payment account. Your bill is due the first of each month but you can pay whenever you’d like. If you’d like to pay weekly, bi-weekly or monthly it’s up to you.

How to set it up

Here’s what you’ll do. Log in to www.etsy.com from a computer, not a mobile device. Navigate to your Shop Manager (pic 1). Scroll down to “Finances” and then “Your Bill” (pic 2). Once you are in the bill section click the link at the bottom that says “Looking to turn off automatic bill payment?” (pic 3). You will get a popup to confirm this. Go ahead and confirm (pic 4).

Now if you look back to pic 2 you’ll see that my outstanding balance was $12.16. When I switched to manual payment it now says statement balance $0.00. The outstanding balance is still there, it’s just shown in a smaller font below (pic 5).

 

 

 

 

Now you’re all set up to make manual payments. Click on “make a payment” and make sure “apply from shop payment account” is checked (pic 6). Now you’re paying your Etsy bill directly from your Etsy payment account before the funds ever hit your personal account.

 

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