Selling on eBay and Etsy at once, without selling anything twice

You have six bandanas. They are listed on eBay and on Etsy, and on Saturday you sold two at the market. How many should each listing offer now? Four. Most sellers find out it is still six when a buyer pays for one that is not there.

Three ways sellers handle it

Lower the other shops by hand. After every sale, go and change the quantity everywhere else. It works for a handful of one-off pieces, and it fails on the busy night you sell three things and forget one. On eBay, canceling an order because you ran out counts against your seller standing.

Split the stock. Three on eBay, three on Etsy. Nothing oversells, but the day eBay’s three sell out while Etsy’s three sit, an eBay buyer cannot buy a bandana that is on your shelf.

Let a tool watch the marketplaces. Sync tools notice a sale on one marketplace and lower the others. That closes the gap between marketplaces, but a tool that only hears from marketplaces cannot see the bandana you sold at the market unless you remember to tell it.

A listing offers what you can sell

Intakes starts from your stock instead of from your listings. Turn on stock sync for a connected eBay or Etsy account, and every listing you have matched to an item offers:

• the stock that is on the shelf and available. Goods still waiting to be prepared do not count until they are made available;
• less what draft sales already name, like the sale you are typing in at the market stall;
• less marketplace orders that have arrived and are waiting for you.

Something sold by the yard or the pound offers whole options only. Two and a half yards of fabric offer two of a “1 yard” option and none of a “3 yard” one.

About once a minute, Intakes compares that figure with what each listing shows, and writes the quantity only where the two disagree. A sale anywhere lowers the figure, whether it happened on eBay, on Etsy, at the market or by message. A restock, a return put back on the shelf or a canceled order raises it. Every listing follows either way.

Before you turn it on, it shows you every quantity it would change, from what to what, and the ones it cannot change and why. Nothing is written until you have seen the list.

Every shop offers all of it

Intakes never splits the stock. With six bandanas, eBay offers six and Etsy offers six, and whichever sells first lowers the other on the next comparison.

Splitting feels safer, but it trades one problem for another: it stops the oversell by leaving goods on the shelf that no buyer is allowed to buy. Offering everything everywhere, and lowering it the moment it sells, is what keeps the most stock in front of buyers.

The sale Intakes has not heard about yet

When a buyer pays on Etsy, Etsy lowers its own count right away, a minute or so before the order reaches Intakes. For that minute, Etsy shows three while your stock still says four. A simple sync would “fix” Etsy back to four and offer the unit that just sold.

So stock sync follows two rules:

1. A listing is raised only when your own stock went up, or when Intakes has never set it before. A marketplace showing fewer than your stock is treated as a sale on its way, not as a mistake to correct.
2. Every listing is read again right before it is changed, and never set higher than the marketplace now shows unless your stock rose.

When those rules are wrong, they are wrong by one: a listing shows one fewer for a minute, until the order arrives and the figures agree. That is the cheap mistake. Offering a sold unit again is the expensive one.

The honest answers

Can it still oversell?

Yes, in one case. If two buyers on two marketplaces buy the last one in the same minute, both sales happen before either marketplace has been told about the other. Nothing that compares and corrects can close that window; only setting stock aside for each shop could, and that is splitting again. It is rare, and when it happens Intakes says so: the second sale cannot be reserved, and Intakes names what it is short of, so you know which buyer to contact.

What happens when an item reaches zero?

It depends on the marketplace, and Intakes tells you before you turn sync on. eBay ends a listing at zero unless you turn on eBay’s Out-of-stock control, which hides the listing instead and brings it back when stock returns. Etsy marks a listing sold out at zero, and putting it back up is a renewal at Etsy’s listing fee, so Intakes leaves that decision to you.

What if I change a quantity on the marketplace myself?

If you raise it, Intakes sets it back to your stock on the next comparison, because your stock is what it follows. If you lower it, Intakes leaves it alone until your stock goes up. To manage one listing’s quantities yourself, leave it out of stock sync.

I make things to order. Will it mark everything sold out?

Only if you let it. Something made after it is ordered has no stock until you make it. Every listing’s page has Leave out of stock sync, and from then on that listing’s quantities are yours to set, on the marketplace or from the listing’s page in Intakes.

What about a listing where a checkout option makes a different item?

A sweater listing that asks “add a leash hole?” sells two different items through one variation: the plain sweater and the leash-hole sweater (why those are two items). The marketplace keeps one quantity for that variation, and Intakes keeps one for each item, so no single figure is true of both. Intakes leaves those quantities alone and says why on the listing’s page.

What does it not do?

It does not create listings or copy them between marketplaces. You list on each shop as you do now and say once which of your items each listing sells. It changes how many are for sale and nothing else: titles and prices change only when you edit them yourself. Listings nobody has matched to an item are not touched; the Listed vs Stock page counts them and takes you to where you match them.

Stock sync is on the product page. How a checkout option becomes its own item is the variant concept.