Before enabling the integration, QuickBooks Commerce recommends that you set up your products first as they are required for both the importing of orders, as well as the updating of stock quantities in the eBay listings.
Now that you have successfully connected your eBay store with QuickBooks Commerce, it is time to import and match your products (aka as listings on eBay) into QuickBooks Commerce.
Initial Product Setup
The initial product set up will involve a combination of:
- importing new products into QuickBooks Commerce (if they did not exist before)
- matching existing products in QuickBooks Commerce with their corresponding eBay listings
Importing and Linking products perform checks based on the SKUs. Please ensure that your eBay listings do not have blank or duplicated SKUs as these could lead to errors. The diagnostics on the channel dashboard can help you identify any of such listings.
Importing New Products
During the eBay install flow, we do not import any item listings into QuickBooks Commerce. To run the import, first, go to the diagnostics section in the Dashboard and click on 'Unimported Products' diagnostic.
It will show you the number of products that can be imported into QuickBooks Commerce from your eBay store.
These Identified products can be imported because each of their SKUs in eBay exists (are not blank) and do not have any matching SKUs in QuickBooks Commerce.
Click the ‘Import Products’ to start importing the products after reviewing the list of products as shown in the Importable Products CSV.
Linking Existing Products
To run the import, go to the diagnostics section in the Dashboard and click on the 'Unlinked Variants’ diagnostic box.
This shows the number of QuickBooks Commerce variants that can be linked to their corresponding listings on eBay. We then try to match the variants solely based on SKUs.
Any eBay listings without SKUs or with duplicated SKUs will not show up in these results. You can always re-run the diagnostic checks once you have updated the SKUs of the listings on eBay.
Click on the ‘Link Variants’ button after reviewing the list of matches in the ‘Linkable Products CSV’ to link them.
How to fix Unlinkable eBay Variants?
Some eBay listings might have variations with SKUs not present in QuickBooks Commerce and hence cannot be linked to any QuickBooks Commerce variant.
At the same time, other variations in those eBay listings may have already been linked, and hence we would be unable to import those listings as new products as that would cause duplications.
✅ To fix the above, you can
- either edit the eBay listing variation and update the SKU to match an existing QuickBooks Commerce variant,
- or you could create a new variant in QuickBooks Commerce with the corresponding SKU.
Go to the diagnostics section in the Dashboard where a list of such eBay variations can be found under the ‘Missing Variants in QuickBooks Commerce’ diagnostic box. You will also see the number of variants that currently cannot be linked with the QuickBooks Commerce variants.
Click on the ‘Download list of variants’ button.
Two Types of Product Sync Options
QuickBooks Commerce performs two types of syncs for products - price and stock level. Both of these are controlled by sync toggles under the Settings tab (and will only occur for linked variants).
Variants can be linked via the diagnostics section of their integration or the variant's sales channels tab.
1Price Sync
The price of a listing is only updated when there has been a change in the price of the QuickBooks Commerce variant in the selected eBay price list, and the price update toggle is enabled.
QuickBooks Commerce will then update the item in the listing (the particular variant of the item if it has multiple variations) to the new price indicated.
The Price on eBay will not be updated in case the price in QuickBooks Commerce is 0, or not defined, to avoid accidentally zeroing out the price on eBay.
2Stock Sync
The stock sync is only updated when there is a change of the stock level in QuickBooks Commerce for the selected stock location, and the stock sync toggle is enabled.
QuickBooks Commerce will then update the stock quantity of the eBay listing (or of the variant of the item if there are multiple variations) accordingly.
eBay does not support back-ordering or negative stock quantities. Hence, if the stock level of a variant dips below zero, QuickBooks Commerce will still send out 0 to eBay.
Out of Stock Option on eBay
By default, eBay does not allow updating the quantity of a listing to 0. This could potentially lead to overselling, especially when connecting multiple sales channels to QuickBooks Commerce.
if you are selling a ‘Good Til Cancelled’ listing on eBay, enabling the Out-of-Stock option helps protect you from associated defects i.e. when your qualifying listings reach a quantity of zero.
If you choose to enable the Out-of-Stock option, eBay will allow you to set the quantity of a listing to be set to 0. The listing still remains active, but gets hidden from the search and reappears once the quantity is updated to a positive amount.
QuickBooks Commerce recommends that you enable the Out-of-Stock option on your eBay store to avoid potential overselling scenarios. For more information, refer to this article on eBay.
To enable the Out-of-Stock option:
Within your eBay account, hover over your name in the upper left-hand corner and then select ‘Account Settings’. Click on ‘Site Preferences’.
Under Selling Preferences, click Show next to ‘Sell Your Item form and listings’. Then, select the checkbox ‘Use the out-of-stock option’ and click ‘Apply’ to reflect the changes.
What's next?
Great job getting this far! 😉 Lastly, but most importantly, click here to learn how the Order Sync works between eBay and QuickBooks Commerce.