eBay Marketplace Questions

[jpatrickm]

A couple questions on the eBay marketplace listing creation.

Is it possible to reference custom product fields in the description section of eBay listing?

Can the SKU and Buy it Now Price be auto-populated from the Miva product code and price information?

We have share inventory turned on with GTC listings but the inventory is not changing on eBay. We've watched inventory change in Miva and eBay is not updated. Are there more settings to this? Should Miva dynamically update the quantity on hand throughout the day and automatically end a listing or bring down a variant size if the quantity reaches zero in Miva?

Thanks.

[khansen]

Hello,

No you cannot reference custom product fields in the description, however, you can set custom product fields under Item Specifics. You can do this two ways. You can manually set the eBay item specific and the custom field value. If you know the eBay Item Specific (i.e. Brand or Type) You can go to the Marketplaces - eBay Settings tab and in the custom fields section, set the Item Specific field to the custom field you want. This will pull in the products custom field value and populate the correct item specific on the Marketplaces - eBay Item Settings tab.

SKU and Price are auto populated based on the Products SKU and price.

There are only 2 ways inventory is synced from Miva to eBay. 1 is an order is placed in your store containing the product you have linked to eBay. 2: You can set up a scheduled task to sync the inventory with eBay.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Thanks

[jpatrickm]

Thank you for the response. I have some additional information to follow up on after doing some more testing.

- We were able to see that SKU and Price are auto-populated, however price is lost when the page auto-refreshes after selecting the eBay categories. Not a huge deal, but annoying.

- Auto-Inventory sync is still not working consistently. Here are what we've concluded based on our tests:

1) Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not work. A product in a certain size sold in Miva on 9/11, yet eBay did not change QOH from 1 to 0. Another size (same parent product) sold 2 in Miva, and eBay was updated. None sold on eBay via Miva, no customer returns, no new stock received. Stone Edge and Miva are both showing correct QOH.

2) Another product, size/color 02-3XL we keyed a manual order in SEOM, Miva updated, but eBay did not. Size/Color 44-2XL sold on ebay via Miva and is OK.

Not sure the best way to proceed on this. Are there transaction logs we can review to see what is or is not happening?


Additional issues we have found that are manually being worked around. When creating a product at the parent level in the eBay Listing Settings, we are required to do the following:

-Make the quantity at least 1 from 0, which shouldn't be needed considering it's a parent

-Insert a UPC value, which is weird considering it's a parent

-Add shipping dimensions on the main miva page, we just faked it to 1x1x1

Thanks for your help.
Joe

[khansen]

You are able to see logs on the Marketplaces - eBay Log Console tab which will show what inventory is being changed or if there are errors.

When creating variation products it ignores the parent products quantity and uses the inventory option on the variation creation dialog.

A UPC is not required on the item settings tab. However, if a category requires a UPC eBay will return an error when creating the listing.

Shipping dimensions are only required if you are using a calculated shipping policy for eBay. (this is set through the eBay Listing Detail)

[jpatrickm]

In looking at our Marketplace logs, there has only been 3 inventory update events since 9/18. Nothing prior to that although we had sales - 1) Was there a fix deployed sometime between 8/28 and 9/18 to address eBay inventory sync? We sold (via Miva cart) 2 units of our test product on 9/5 and 9/11 that did not trigger an inventory update in the logs. The next 3 sales came on 9/18 - 9/22 - 10/2, all 3 triggered successful inventory updates. Knowing about a fix would save us some testing time, and avoid a wild goose chase.

2) Regarding a Miva "scheduled task" to update eBay inventory. Need to know more about this:

-Is it a master "push" that will send current QOH values to eBay?

-Will it blast (and generate errors) for every MIva SKU that doesn't have a corresponding eBay listing, or is it smart enough to only talk to active eBay SKUs?

Thanks for the help.

[chetv]

I am having trouble understand and getting results about updating product descriptions in Ebay. I update descriptions in our Miva store and can't find a way that works updating description on Ebay. I have deleted the Ebay listing and tried relisting but that didn't work. I tried the update button. The data doesn't change even in Miva's Ebay section. I can understand why it doesn't change on Ebay. What is the procedure for updating information on Ebay when you have made changes in the product within Miva.

[jpatrickm]

Once the listing has been published to eBay, there isn't a way to update it. Creating an eBay listing with Miva Marketplaces is a one-time thing, it's not dynamic. Deleting the eBay listing and relisting it should work however, so not sure why that didn't work for you. I think updates is something on the to-do list for Miva. You'll have to go directly to the listing in eBay and make any changes you want to the description & price etc. We ended up just writing our own script using the eBay API to bypass Miva for updates, which was a pain but the only way to get it working in production.

[chetv]

Joe,
Thanks for the info. Now that makes sense to what I found.

[khansen]

In looking at our Marketplace logs, there has only been 3 inventory update events since 9/18. Nothing prior to that although we had sales - 1) Was there a fix deployed sometime between 8/28 and 9/18 to address eBay inventory sync? We sold (via Miva cart) 2 units of our test product on 9/5 and 9/11 that did not trigger an inventory update in the logs. The next 3 sales came on 9/18 - 9/22 - 10/2, all 3 triggered successful inventory updates. Knowing about a fix would save us some testing time, and avoid a wild goose chase.

2) Regarding a Miva "scheduled task" to update eBay inventory. Need to know more about this:

-Is it a master "push" that will send current QOH values to eBay?

-Will it blast (and generate errors) for every MIva SKU that doesn't have a corresponding eBay listing, or is it smart enough to only talk to active eBay SKUs?

Thanks for the help.

eBay Update inventory logs are only logged for ebay listings that are good until cancelled listings and your global ebay setting of Sync inventory is checked.

The Scheduled task to sync inventory will send current QOH values to ebay. the variable used is inv_available. It will only attempt to update inventory for active ebay listings that are good until cancelled.