Ebay / Amazon automation...

[Davek0974]

As we are now doing pretty well on ebay and amazon, the admin overhead needs looking at - we currently process orders manually using the emails sent to us etc

Can anyone recommend an automation app ? seems like there are a few to choose from.

Thanks

 

[GraemeL]

You will need to have a think about what you mean by 'automation' before you can narrow down the options. For example, do you want:-
Automatic selection of courier according to item size/qty etc
Links with couriers to produce shipping labels
Stock records and updating stock on ebay/Amazon
Production of invoices
Accounting for invoices
the list goes on
Graeme

 

[Davek0974]

Hmm,
it seems all we need is to download the order details as a batch, then later in the day upload to mark as dispatched and add tracking refs. that's about all we want.

 

[Page]

Linn is great but now pricey and so not so great

For your requirements it sounds like overkill

What I tend to do is google things like productABC review @ issues @ problems etc

 

[dubOnline]

Handy article here to help you automate importing amazon transactions to xero
http://cloudaccountant.today/how-to-import-your-amazon-transactions-into-xero/

 

[GraemeL]

channel grabber

 

[Pish_Pash]

Dave - there are very few lightweight/lightly priced order management packages - they all (perhaps erroneously) assume that if you sell on multi channel, then you want all the features and have deep pockets. Last time I checked, there were a couple of packages that might be worth you looking into...

http://www.1stoporders.co.uk/

http://expandly.com/

...but think very carefully about who you hitch your trailer up to....because it's a right royal pain to move away from your chosen package

 

[IanDade]

Not sure what your products are, but you could consider a fulfilment house. Any good fulfilment house will be able to link to both eBay and Amazon and download orders, mark your orders as despatched and sync your stock on both channels.

If you do not want to use fulfilment and you use Royal Mail to ship your parcels consider Click & Drop by Royal Mail https://parcel.royalmail.com/ and again you can link your eBay and Amazon sites to this and download orders to produce labels in both.

 

[kulture]

I would recommend Zenstores.

 

[antropy]

Can anyone recommend an automation app?

Could you be more specific about exactly what things you'd like to automate?

 

[Davek0974]

Could you be more specific about exactly what things you'd like to automate?

Thanks for the suggestions, good stuff as always.

It seems all we need is to be able download our orders, listing name, address, order contents, then later in the day upload a similar list containing the dispatch tracking code and the order-dispatched confirmation.

Probably more but that seems to be the core need.

 

[Raw Rob]

Linn is great but now pricey and so not so great

Looks like Linn are now offering a free "Community" option for up to 3 channels and 50 SKU's - is this enough @Davek0974 ?

 

[Raw Rob]

I use Mintsoft as provided by the fulfilment company I use, the basic package is £125 per month: http://www.mintsoft.co.uk/multi-channel-seller-pricing/

 

[Davek0974]

Looks like Linn are now offering a free "Community" option for up to 3 channels and 50 SKU's - is this enough @Davek0974 ?

No, would need many more than that i'm afraid

 

[Pish_Pash]

No, would need many more than that i'm afraid

then you're gonna have to pony up ...cheapest I've found is http://www.1stoporders.co.uk/ ...but I fear you may get frustrated with it's limited capabilities (vs. the likes of Linnworks)...moving order systems is about as painful as it gets for an ecommerce business, so as I say, choose very carefully.

 

[Davek0974]

Looking a little deeper, it seems with some custom software which we can write in-house, Amazon processing is pretty straightforward - we can download the days orders as CSV, process them on our usual system, then upload the shipping confirmations directly from our dispatch room as each order is processed - perfect.

Ebay OTOH is a little more difficult - I can see where we can download all current orders as CSV - brilliant, BUT I can't see any where we can upload dispatch confirmations??

I gather it CAN be done but does anyone know how it's done??

If we can sort that then i can write the software to convert data to our format and likewise back to Ebay/Amazon formats pretty easily and we will be set

 

[Raw Rob]

I guess you will need to use the API https://go.developer.ebay.com/api-documentation

 

[Pish_Pash]

Yes, you have to use the EbayAPI - in comparison to Amazon the Ebay API not that hard to code ..... & to send a notification of dispatch to ebay is one of the easier things to code. If you've the people who can code you up the custom software you speak of, then those same people ought to be able to get the API working with Ebay quite quickly.

here's the API you need (it has sample xml for you to see what's required)...

https://developer.ebay.com/devzone/xml/docs/reference/ebay/CompleteSale.html

 

[Davek0974]

Thanks, that does look like what we need.

 

[Page]

Yeah and everytime they change something you have to mess about and ...

Pros and cons to each

If you lovely the hands on and hassle at times great and you can control it all

But there are reasons why I use outside products

And that includes excel and thunderbird

 

[Davek0974]

Amazon automation is working, both download and confirmation uploads, seems ok at present, saves a lot of time/admin.

Ebay will be trickier as they do not provide as much built-in functionality as Amazon.