Connect existing eBay inventory with Shopify items through Salestio

If you have been actively selling on eBay and now want to connect Shopify products to your marketplace inventory, Salestio has an easy way to do so. The app offers a few customizations and options for product connection, so in this article, we will explore the possibilities and explain the process.

• Create a Selling List
• Download the inventory list from eBay
• Connect the items and review the results
• Sort the linked items
• Troubleshooting
  • Products missing from the Inventory tab
  • Some items remain Not Linked
  • Mismatched variations

Before connecting any of the items, connect the eBay account to Salestio. This can be done in Salestio > Accounts tab.

The article assumes that the connected marketplace account already has some listings published on eBay. For a guide to publish eBay items through Salestio, see the article below:
Exporting Shopify Products to eBay Marketplace with Salestio

To successfully connect the items between platforms, the products must have matching SKUs and a matching variation structure (same options and variation count).

Create a Selling List

Adding a Selling List is an optional step that can help to organize the products inside the app before they are connected. Creating a Selling List manually can be useful for a few reasons:

• Customizing the rules for quantity and price synchronization. Default Salestio settings use the current Shopify price and quantity, so check the guides below to learn more about setting specific rules:
  Custom Pricing Rules for Ebay and Amazon Listings
  Manage Listing Quantities with Salestio
• It is useful to have the option of connecting existing listings with Shopify and publishing new products to eBay. For example, add all desired items to a Selling List, link the existing products, and run the “Send to eBay” action for the rest of the items. We covered this specific scenario in one of the recent articles:
  Use Case: Connect existing eBay/Etsy listings and send new products with Salestio
• It can be more convenient to sort different product categories into different Selling Lists. Having different product groups in separate lists can make it easier to view and manage the products.

When creating a Selling List in Collection Mode for product connection, we suggest keeping the automatic listing option disabled. This is to prevent listing copies of the eBay listings before they are connected.

If you skip creating a Selling List at this step, Salestio can automatically create a “Migrated…” Selling List when syncing products.

Download the inventory list from eBay

Before the items can be connected, we must retrieve the available eBay listings on the account. Go to Salestio > Inventory tab and click “Download inventories” to get started. Select the target eBay account in the list to start the download.

Depending on the eBay product count, it may take 10 to 60 minutes to display all of the products in Salestio.

It is possible to sync only one eBay marketplace at a time. This marketplace is selected when an eBay account is added to Salestio.

Salestio uses the product SKU to find item pairs and establish a connection. If the SKUs already match, skip to the next step and start connecting the products.

For cases when the SKUs are different, edit the Shopify products to match the SKUs to eBay. Also, the eBay SKUs can be edited instead.

Connect the items and review the results

To start the connection process, click the “Sync inventories with selling products” button in the Inventory tab. Select the target eBay account and start the sync.

The syncing process may take a while and depends on the total product count. Give Salestio some time to process all items.

As another option, you can link individual items. Find the target item in the list and click the “Move to Selling List” button. Select the Selling List, and Salestio will create a connection.

The “Move to Selling List” action works only for Selling Lists in Product mode. The button is active for items with a matching SKU in Shopify.

Check the results in the Selling Lists tab. If you created some Selling Lists beforehand, the items will remain there, but the status will change to “Linked”. It means that the connection between Shopify and eBay products is established, and Salestio will keep syncing Shopify quantities/prices to eBay. If Salestio finds some items that were not in any of the Selling Lists, they will appear in an automatically created one called “Migrated for *eBay account name*”.

Salestio will sync the “Linked” items in the background when stock or price changes in Shopify. If you would like to push the stock and/or price numbers from Shopify to eBay immediately, run this action manually from the Selling Lists tab.

Select the Selling List (or individual items inside) and run one of the update actions (Revise Price, Revise QTY, or Revise Quick to update both).

In addition to updating price or stock, Salestio can make edits to eBay titles, descriptions, and images based on the Shopify product page. To update all product information, select the item and run the Full Revise action.

Full Revise relies on information added to your Creation Profile, so it has to be configured and enabled in the current Ebay Profile or Selling List settings. For more details on configuring a Creation Profile, check our guide for listing items.

Sort the linked items

If you want to sort the items later, select them in the Selling List and click the “Move” action to place them in another Selling List. This can be done whether the item is linked or not. Keep in mind that the products can be moved between Selling Lists with the same eBay account and marketplace.

Troubleshooting

Salestio offers a simple way to form a report of all marketplace items and their status. This tool can be helpful when trying to identify the issue and find unlinked items. Before creating the report, click “Download inventories” in Salestio > Inventory tab to get the updated list. After the app has the up-to-date item list, click “Download report” to get the file.

Check the full guide below:
Use Synchronization Report in Salestio

Products missing from the Inventory tab

Salestio downloads the items from the selected account. This is important to keep in mind when retrieving the list from eBay.

Check the account connection in Salestio and ensure the correct settings. Linked accounts will have a green “Active” badge. If the account shows up with a red badge, try reconnecting it. Click the account in the list, select the marketplace, and click “Save account” at the bottom. Salestio will redirect you to eBay to confirm the connection.

Try downloading the inventory again after reconnecting the account.

Some items remain Not Linked

To link the items, Salestio checks if the SKU and account match. Please try the steps below to find out the issue:

1. Check if the SKU matches for the eBay – Shopify item pair. If the SKUs are different, edit the Shopify product page directly or change the item SKU on eBay to match the two platforms.
2. Check if the correct account is selected in the Selling List. This can be viewed from the Selling Lists tab. If the product was placed in a list with incorrect settings, Salestio will also add it to a “Migrated…” Selling List for the respective eBay account.
   Account selection is locked after a Selling List is created. To select something different, please create another Selling List.

Mismatched variations

You may want to update your selling products by adding more variations at some point. For example, we have one lipstick color listed on eBay. After adding a new color, only one variant will be linked:

After automatic updates or running “Revise QTY” manually, the item will remain in the Update Error status:

By checking the logs we can find the following error:

Missing name in the variation specifics or variation specifics set

To resolve this, select the item and run “Full Revise”. After a minute, both variants will be “Linked”, and the new variant will appear on eBay.

Keep in mind that this resolution only applies if the variant structure does not change. If the product had a variation in Size and we added another size, the items can be updated via the Full Revise action. At the same time, if the product had a variation in Size and we added a Color theme on top, the update would not work. To change the variation structure, we suggest stopping the item on the marketplace and listing it again through Salestio.

Don’t have Salestio yet? Find the app on the Shopify App Store and start a Free 30-Day Trial.