Stop and manage out-of-stock eBay listings through Salestio

Salestio can create eBay listings or stop them depending on the settings and available stock. In today’s article, we will explore the options that sellers have in terms of stopping the listings, and how to customize this behavior in the app.

Available options in Salestio

To customize when Salestio stops the listings, go to Salestio > Settings tab > pick the eBay account > scroll down to the Stop listings on eBay in the following cases section. By default, all the options are enabled:

With the default settings, Salestio can stop a Linked eBay listing in the following cases, which correspond to the three options in the Settings:

• A “Stop listing” or “Stop & Remove” action started for an item or a Selling List.
  Leaving this option off will result in listings staying active on eBay after the mentioned actions. Items will remain up for sale on eBay, but Salestio will not sync them.
• An item is automatically removed from a Selling List. This can happen in Collection Mode Selling Lists when an item is removed from a Shopify or BigCommerce collection. Another case is when the item switches status in the store so it becomes invisible to Salestio (for example, “Archived” in Shopify or “Invisible” in BigCommerce).
  Similar to the first option, leaving this off will keep the eBay listings active.
• Quantity reaches 0 in the store. Salestio stops any sold-out eBay listings by default, so the store would not oversell. By default, any eBay seller account cannot set the quantity to 0, so the only option is to stop the listing.
  Disabling this option makes Salestio compatible with the Out-of-stock control mode (which should be enabled directly from the eBay account). With this option, Salestio updates sold-out listings with 0 quantity, and eBay keeps them up (not available for sale).

How to enable Out-of-stock control on eBay

If you want to update listings with 0 stock without stopping them, disable the mentioned “Quantity reached 0 in the store” option in Salestio, and change the eBay settings. In the eBay account, go to your Selling preferences:

1. Open My eBay > Selling
2. Select the Account tab
3. Click Selling preferences in the sidebar
4. Scroll down to Listings stay active when you’re out of stock and enable it

Use case: automated Selling List in Collection Mode

Let’s consider a possible use case in a Shopify store. We want to have a Selling List in Collection Mode and automatic export enabled. This way, Salestio will automatically publish new items as they are added to the select collections in Shopify (in our case, we want to publish all T-shirts).

Unfortunately, some of our items are not in stock yet when they are added to collections, so eBay would not allow publishing them. To avoid possible errors and make a setup like this work, we have two options: configure it with Out-of-stock control enabled or disabled.

Default Salestio options: Out-of-stock control disabled

Since we can publish only stocked items in this mode, a simple solution will take advantage of Smart Shopify Collections. We will only add stocked items to the Selling List, and Shopify features will help with that.

First off, create a Smart Collection:

1. Go to the Products > Collections tab in Shopify.
2. Click “Create collection” at the top.
3. Pick a title for the collection and select “Smart” for “Collection type”.
4. In conditions, add a condition that selects the desired products. We will use “Category – is equal to – T-Shirts” to create a collection with all tops in the store.
5. As the last condition, add “Inventory stock – is greater than – 0”. This will ensure that we are adding only stocked items.

Save the collection and give Shopify a few moments to fill it with store items.

After the collection is complete, create a Selling List in Collection Mode and add it there. Enable the “Automatically export new products to Ebay” option, so Salestio publishes the items as they appear. Add the rest of the profiles as usual and save the settings. If you want to learn more about configuring a Selling List for creating eBay listings, check out the article below:
Exporting Shopify Products to eBay Marketplace with Salestio

With this setup, only stocked items will appear in the Selling List, and Salestio will send them to eBay automatically. When an item sells out, it will be removed from the collection and Selling List, so Salestio will stop the eBay listing. If an item is restocked, it will appear in the Selling List again, and get published as a new eBay listing.

Enable Out-of-stock control and publish unstocked items on eBay

We can go about the same scenario differently and list items even when they have 0 stock. Before continuing, change the settings in Salestio and eBay:

• Disable the “Quantity reaches 0 in the store” option in the Salestio settings.
• Enable Out-of-stock control on eBay.

With the above settings, we don’t have to use Smart Collections like in the other example. Compose the collection in the way that works best for you, and this time it can include items with zero stock.

Create a Selling List in Collection Mode, add this Collection, enable the “Automatically export new products to Ebay” option, and save the Selling List.

With this setup, Salestio will automatically list all items from the selected collection. If an item is out of stock, it will be published, but not available for purchase. Salestio will update the eBay quantity as soon as the item is restocked, and it will become available to buyers.

Salestio offers choices for ways that the listings can be published, synced, and stopped. You can configure the app to better fit the way you want to manage the inventory. Not a Salestio user yet? Check out the supported e-commerce platforms and get a Free 30-Day Trial.