The aim of this tutorial is to explain how you can easily update the quantity and price of many Ebay listing, including items with variations. This task will be completed with one simple upload to Ebay File Exchange. If you have been re stocking your item quantity or revising prices manually, this is guaranteed to save you a lot of time.
I have decided to split this tutorial in to two parts, this first blog post will cover the basics on:
- What is Ebay File Exchange
- Creating a template for Ebay File Exchange uploads
- Revising the price and quantity of multiple single item listings
- Uploading to Ebay File Exchange
A second blog post will advance on what you have learned in this blog post, the next blog will show how to update listing with variations, and even multiple variation listings all from the same file upload.
So lets get started.
1. What is Ebay File Exchange?
Ebay File exchange is an advanced web based tool provided by Ebay. File Exchange allows sellers greater control to manage high volumes of eBay listings. I find File Exchange is very useful for quickly updating the quantity of items in stock, and altering the prices of items on sale. Basically File Exchange allows you to automate some otherwise time consuming, repetitive tasks.
1.1 Example use of File Exchange
Where i work we have 100’s of items listed on Ebay as Good Till Canceled (GTC), these items are all listed as buy it now listings, with a fixed price for each item and a set quantity. As i’m sure you will be aware Ebay offers no way to automatically re stock the items you have to a certain level if the item is listed as GTC. However you can create a template that will re stock all your items up to a quantity you specify, then simply upload this to File Exchange and have all your items re stock in a matter of seconds.
Once your template is set-up, you can simply upload to Ebay each day, which will re stock all your Ebay listings to the quantity defined on your spreadsheet. This is also useful to alter the prices of listed items too. You can simply glance through your spreadsheet, alter any price you wish, knowing this will be reflected on your Ebay listings when the next upload is complete. I have personally found this a great method of updating stock and prices, and has already saved us a lot of time in the couple of weeks we have been running this system.
1.2 Enabling Ebay file Exchange
Assuming you have an eBay account verified for selling it will take a couple of clicks to enable access to Ebay File Exchange on your account.
- Go to http://bulksell.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeCenter
- Sign in if required on the next page
- Agree to the terms and conditions of use
- You are now ready to start using File Exchange
2. Creating a template for Ebay File Exchange uploads:
Firstly open a blank spreadsheet, if you do not have a spreadsheet application Calc will do perfectly for this and is free open source software. I used Excel, however the process will be the same.
You will need to include the following information in the top columns of row 1:
A – Action(SiteID=UK|Country=GB|Currency=GBP|Version=745)
B – ItemID
C – Relationship
D – RelationshipDetails
E – Title
F – Quantity
G – StartPrice
Your spreadsheet should now look like this:
Please note the Action(SiteID=UK|Country=GB|Currency=GBP|Version=745) will be different if you are not selling on Ebay UK. For example if your item is listed on Ebay US, using dollars as the currency it would be the following Action(SiteID=US|Country=US|Currency=USD|Version=745)
Also to save you from having problems later on be sure to format the ItemID Column as Number, with 0 decimal places. If you don’t do this your ItemID will not export to a CSV file correctly. You should not need to format any other columns.
Below is how the ItemID column should be formatted in Excel:
Your revise template is now setup, next we will add some listing to revise.
3. Revising the price and quantity of multiple single item listings
Add the following to row 2 in your spreadsheet
Action = Revise (we are revising an existing item to modify the quantity and / or price, so revise is the action we will use)
ItemID = 100916777364 (obviously this vary for every item you wish to revise, your item must already be listed on Ebay)
Relationship = (not required for a single item, leave the cell blank)
RelationshipDetails = (not required for a single item, leave the cell blank)
Title = Matt’s Test Ebay Item (Enter the title of your item here)
Quantity = 15 (This is how many of this item you wish to list as been in stock)
StartPrice = 20.40 (this is the price if your item)
Your spreadsheet should now look like this:
It’s now simply the case of keeping to this this format and adding your Item ID, Title, Quantity and Price in a new row for each item you wish to update with your File Exchange upload, below i have added 5 items for this example.
You now want to save your spreadsheet as a comma delimited CSV file
To make things easier for yourself keep your original spreadsheet, CSV files will not retain any formatting such as what type of data is in a cell. I have my master template, then save a new CSV file to upload if i have added any items, or made amendments to the master template.
3.1 Example Files
For reference if you would like a working example download the following:
Example Ebay File Exchange Excel XLS Template Download
The CSV file below was created by simply saving the XLS document as a CSV file, it is ready to upload to Ebay.
Example Ebay File Exchange Excel CSV Download
Uploading to Ebay File Exchange:
Access the Ebay file exchange upload at the following URL: http://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeUploadForm, from there it’s now a simple case of uploading your CSV file.
When the upload is completed you should be informed as to how many revisions were made and the success rate, however as i’ve found Ebay will often tell you the revisions were made when in fact if you download the more detailed view you will find everything failed. In the screenshot below we can see everything appears to have processed fine.
I downloaded the “Load Results Report” as we can see everything has been processed fine and the items were all updated ok.
So there we have it, you should now be able to revise multiple Ebay listings that contain a single items only. To revise Ebay listing with variations requires a bit more work, however once you understand the basics of what you are doing it is simple enough to adapt your upload to include listings with variations.
Is there an Easy way to get data in to my upload spreadsheet?
Yes, if you install Ebay Turbo Lister you can sync your listings to Turbo Lister, it’s then just a case of sorting your listings by listing type so all the listings with no variations are grouped together.
After doing that you can then highlight all the listings can copy them with CTRL + C, and paste the listings in to a new spreadsheet, organising the data so the columns are like your File Exchange Template.
Quick Tip – You can right click on the clumn headings in Turbo Lister and re arrange them.
Finally copy and paste this in to your File Exchange template, clean it up and you should have all your listings with no variation ready in no time at all.
In part 2 of this tutorial I will cover updating listing with variations using file exchange.
Read Part 2: Ebay File Exchange – Update Listings With Variations
