WholeCell's eBay integration provides stock level sync, order importing, and shipment tracking number exporting between WholeCell and eBay. For sellers who create one-off listings for specific items on eBay, this integration allows you to link your eBay listings to specific items in WholeCell.
This integration syncs:
Inventory quantities (WholeCell → eBay)
Listings (eBay → WholeCell)
Orders (eBay → WholeCell)
Shipments (WholeCell → eBay)
eBay Listing Type | Order Import | Inventory Qty Sync |
Buy-it-now | ✅ | ✅ |
Auction | ✅ | 🚫 |
Enabling the Integration
Enable the eBay integration from your Integrations Dashboard:
Click "Authorize eBay" and sign in to your eBay account to connect:
You'll be asked to authorize WholeCell's access to your eBay account:
Once you click "I agree" you'll be taken back to WholeCell where you can now configure your eBay integration behavior:
Configuring the Integration
Organization Type
When eBay orders are automatically imported, WholeCell can use one of three options for the customer name on the order. The first is the customer's eBay username (Username). The second is the customer's name from the shipping address that is sent from eBay (Shipping Name). The last option is to use an automatically generated customer in WholeCell named "eBay" (Channel Name).
This choice depends on how you want to be able to search and filter your sales orders within WholeCell. If you want to be able to search for a customer's username or real name to find their order, choose Username or Shipping Name here. Otherwise, if you want to keep your orders a bit cleaner and you're OK finding orders by the eBay transaction number, you can choose Channel Name and all of your orders will appear to be from a customer named "eBay".
Order Import
Enabling Order Import will automatically import any open orders from your eBay account. This may take a few minutes to complete. After the first import, WholeCell will begin automatically importing any new eBay orders.
Order Statuses
You need to map eBay's order statuses to your WholeCell order statuses for orders to be imported. If you need to create new order statuses in WholeCell for this, follow the instructions in this article to do so: Managing Sales Order Statuses.
Sales order statuses in WholeCell are controlled by the actions that you take in eBay. Changing the order status in WholeCell won't affect the status in eBay.
Stock Level Sync
Enabling Stock Level Sync will automatically update the quantities of your eBay listings based on the available quantities of associated Product Variations or SKUs in WholeCell.
The eBay integration also has the feature of allowing you to manually sync listing quantities to the channel.
Inventory Statuses
With Stock Level Sync enabled, choose the inventory statuses that should count towards your total calculated quantity* of available inventory to update your eBay listings with.
Warehouses
With Stock Level Sync enabled, choose which warehouse(s)' inventory should count towards your total calculated quantity* of available inventory to update your eBay listings with.
* Calculated Quantity = Available Quantity - Outstanding Quantity
Importing Your eBay Listings
Once the integration is turned on and your account is connected, you can sync your eBay listings to WholeCell from the Listings tab.
**Note that multi-variation listings must have a SKU on eBay and WholeCell. If your multi-variation listings do not have SKUs set, they will import to WholeCell but WholeCell will not be able to update the listing quantities successfully.
In order for an eBay multi-variation listing to show "Connected", all of the variations for that listing must be connected -- matching SKUs for each variation should exist in eBay and WholeCell. If you click on a listing, you should see which ones are connected and which ones are not. The order import and quantity sync functionality will work for the ones that show as "Connected".
(To add SKUs in WholeCell, see the Setting Your Product Variations and SKUs article.)
Click "Sync Listings" and any active listings from your eBay account should appear in the table shown below:
As you sell on eBay and fulfill orders in WholeCell, you will see your listing quantities adjust. Note that they will sync when they have changed in quantity since the last update. Calculated Quantity is updated when:
more of a product is added to inventory
any "open" orders are created with that product as an order item
Click on the listing title to connect your listings to a SKU, Product Variation, or a specific item in WholeCell.
Mapping Your eBay Listings
Once you've imported your eBay listings, clicking on any listing title will take you to a page where you can see if the listing is mapped correctly. For one-off listings meant to sell a single specific item, you can map them to a specific item in WholeCell by selecting 'Individual Inventory'. For stock listings that you want to update automatically as your available quantity changes in WholeCell, either select 'Match via SKU' or 'Select specific Product Variations' and map the listing to SKU or Product Variation(s) in WholeCell.
Individual Inventory:
Go to the 'Settings' tab and choose "Individual Inventory" and then save.
Go to the 'Connected Products' tab and then click on the '⚠ Inventory Item not set' link to connect an individual product to the listing using either the ESN or WholeCell ID, then save.
Product Variations:
Go to the 'Settings' tab and choose "Select specific Product Variations" and then save.
Click on the 'Connected Products' tab and click on the "⚠ Product not set!" link to sync your product quantities to the listing.
As soon as you start typing the manufacturer and model of the product, a list of matching products will appear. Select one from the list. Select the grade and condition for that variation and hit Save.
SKU:
Go to the 'Settings' tab and choose to "Match via SKU" and then save.
Go to the 'Connected Products' tab, type the WholeCell SKU, and then save.
Managing Listings
Updating Variation Listings
When you update variation listings in eBay with new SKUs, the variation with the old SKU will show as 'Ended' in WholeCell. Make sure that that new SKU is also in WholeCell, so that it can connect with the listing and update the quantities. If the listing with the updated SKU is not showing in WholeCell yet, import it by clicking on the 'Sync Listings' button.
When you create a new variation listing on eBay, click the 'Sync Now' button to bring the new one in.
Clicking the 'Sync Listings' button on the main Listings tab will also import new variation listings.
eBay's Out-of-Stock Feature
If the Out-of-Stock feature is enabled in eBay, your listing will not end even if you run out of inventory. If the feature is not enabled in eBay, the listing will end immediately when you run out of stock and WholeCell will display 'Ended' on the listing table. Due to this, it will not be able to update the quantity when you add inventory for that listing.
Listing Opportunities
WholeCell's Listing Opportunities tab shows you which SKUs you have sellable inventory for but are not yet listed on eBay. Check this article out: Listing Opportunities
Syncing Orders and Shipments
As you receive orders on eBay they will be automatically created in WholeCell. When you add shipment tracking information to those orders in WholeCell, the tracking number will automatically sync back to eBay.
Using ShipStation to ship eBay orders
If you're using ShipStation to create shipping labels for your eBay orders, you'll want to connect ShipStation to WholeCell so that your eBay orders flow as follows:
eBay → WholeCell → ShipStation
Then, when you create shipping labels for your orders, the tracking numbers will flow:
ShipStation → WholeCell → eBay
**If you have not created the sales channel's name in WholeCell yet, you can do that here. WholeCell will not be able to sync orders to ShipStation if your sales channels don't exactly match (case sensitive) the channel names that the integration uses -- like "eBay", in this case. Changing these channel names will prevent the sync from working. After creating the channel name, put a check in the box here if you want to sync orders with ShipStation:
Important Notes or Reminders
When you enable 'Order Import' and receive orders with unknown SKUs, you won't be able to map different SKUs for the order item (e.g. mapping a WholeCell SKU to the channel's listing's SKU settings page in WholeCell). Even if you map the WholeCell SKU for that listing in WholeCell, the order item will still show "Unknown SKU". The only way to make those SKUs be recognized is to add them to the WholeCell product catalog. To proceed, you can either do a 'Direct Commit', or delete the order item and just commit whatever item you want to fulfill the channel order.
Troubleshooting eBay Issues
The listing quantities are not being updated
Has the listing been imported to WholeCell?
Is the listing connected?
Does the listing show active or ended?
Is the 'Enable Inventory Sync' box checked?
Is the warehouse set on the inventory items you want to sync?
If an order comes in and shows "Unknown SKU", check:
Are there matching SKUs in both eBay and WholeCell?
Have all of your listings been imported to WholeCell?
If your orders are not coming into WholeCell, check:
Is the 'Enable Order Import' box checked?
Multi-variation listing quantities are not synced
Does each of the multi-variation listings have matching SKUs in eBay and WholeCell? Are they all showing 'Connected'?
Inventory is not automatically committed for individual listings
Is the 'Enable auto commit for individual listings' box checked?
The outstanding count on the listing is incorrect
Check which sales order statuses are supposed to count toward open orders
Check if the 'Canceled' order status is set to count toward open orders
"Error: The quantity must be a valid number greater than 0." -- This usually indicates that you need to enable the "Listings stay active when you're out of stock" option in eBay.
eBay>Account Settings>Selling Preferences
Are your listings being set to out-of-stock even though WholeCell is actively syncing non-zero quantities? Check to see if you have other eCommerce software connected to the channel.
If you can't find the listing on the eBay settings page in WholeCell, make sure to search using the listing ID and not the SKU.
If the SKU has been changed in eBay, that change will not be automatically imported into WholeCell. As a result, when you search for the new SKU in WholeCell’s channel settings page, it will not appear. You must manually add the new SKU to the SKU connection box on the listing’s settings page in WholeCell. If you need assistance with this, please contact support.