To make things as straightforward as possible, the Reseller Toolkit has some design and spreadsheet features built in to make things as intuitive as possible. Understanding what those are, and how to use them, will make it easier and more efficient to use the template.
Color Coding #
Generally speaking, if you’re supposed to enter data into a cell, the text color will be black and the cell background will either be white or grey, like this (the alternating colors are to make it easier to tell which row you’re on):
In that image, all rows in those columns are intended for data input. You can type text into Item Title and choose a Category by clicking the drop-down list.
Cells that have blue text on a blue background, on the other hand, are generally read-only. Here’s an example:
SKU, Bin, and Category are read-only here because those records are automatically populated from another tab; since the data is already there, we use formulas to look up the records so you don’t have to repeat data input or copy/paste records. When you see blue cells like this, you should not change or overwrite them.
For entire tables that are read-only, the text is dark blue and the rows alternate between white and blue instead of white and grey, like this:
In a read-only table, no data should be modified. It includes formulas that look up and analyze data from other locations in the spreadsheet. Generally speaking, worksheet tabs with a lock on them are either entirely read-only or have only a few cells that you should edit (like date range in the Profit & Loss report).
Tooltips #
Wherever possible, we try to include contextual help in the spreadsheet by adding tooltips to columns and certain cells. A “tooltip” is a helpful message that pops up when you click a cell. Here’s an example of a tooltip that appears if you click the “Selling Price” column header in the Sales tab:
You can click anywhere else to dismiss the tooltip, but they are available throughout the file to point you in the right direction.
Filtering and Sorting Data #
Filtering and sorting tools are available in the tables to better understand and organize your data. Do you want to see all sales in a certain category? No problem, just click the filter icon to the right of the column header in a table (see screenshot below) and choose how you want to filter the data.
Don’t forget to clear the filter after you’re done. There’s nothing more frustrating than forgetting you set a filter and then thinking you have missing data! You can tell when data is filtered because the column heading will have an icon that looks like this:
Just a note here that filtering can in most cases only be done by the owner of the file, so if you shared your file and are just entering data into it, switch to the owner account so you can apply filtering.
Fixing Mistakes #
You’re bound to make some mistakes with the spreadsheet as you work with it, especially early on. Here are a few ways that you can try to recover from your mistakes:
- If it’s just a minor error, try using the Undo function. You’ll find it at the top of the Edit menu in Google Sheets.
- If you have broken formulas and restoring a previous version isn’t an option, you could return to the original purchase email, create another copy of the spreadsheet, then copy in whatever is broken from that original template into your file.
- To roll back to a previous version (since Google keeps a backup of all changes you make), look for this icon at the top of the page and choose a previous version to restore:
Formats #
Dates are always in the format 12/31/2025, so month/day/year. In most cases you can type in something like “Jan 1” and it will be automatically converted, but when in doubt, use the 12/31/2025 format.