eBay

eBay is a marketplace. TRADElube lists your products there as offers and fetches the orders back. In the channel type selection the channel sits in the group Marketplaces and carries the suffix beta, marking a channel still under trial, see Channels.

On this channel the categories run the other way round from an online shop. It is not you who dictates the tree but eBay: an offer belongs in one of the categories the marketplace keeps, and TRADElube fetches that tree before the first product goes up.

Prerequisites

What	Where it comes from
An eBay seller account	The account your offers are to appear under
That account's consent	You grant it once through Request Consent, see below
Images reachable from the internet	eBay fetches them from the address TRADElube hands over

On this channel you enter no login details at all. Unlike a shop you run yourself there is neither a password nor an app you would have to create: access runs through the application we registered with eBay, and you grant it access to your seller account. So the Login Details section holds two buttons and not a single field.

Setting up the connection

In the Login Details section click Request Consent. TRADElube asks whether you want to leave the page, because the next step happens at eBay.
At eBay you sign in with your seller account and grant the access.
Back in TRADElube the section carries the line Consent valid until along with a date.
In the Configuration section set the root category on both sides, see below.
Fill the mappings, then start the tasks.

Whether the connection really stands is answered by Connect. The button is disabled as long as no consent has been granted and only becomes clickable afterwards. It asks eBay and answers with Connection successful or with the text eBay returned.

The consent expires, and the date for it stands in the section. Once it has passed no task works any more, and you grant the consent again through the same button. You set nothing up afresh in the process: mappings, configuration and transfer plans stay as they are.

Configuration

The section carries the two ends of the same category tree, and without them the channel transfers nothing.

Root Category refers to the TRADElube side. Below this category Categories Download puts the eBay tree, and conversely Products Upload only takes along the products whose category sits underneath it. A product hanging nowhere below this category goes up without a category, and without a category eBay does not accept an offer. So the field belongs filled, and a category of its own for it is the clearest choice: the eBay tree is large, and it is not meant to overgrow your own.

External Root Categories refers to the eBay side. Here you pick from the marketplace's tree the branches you sell in. What you do not pick here TRADElube does not fetch either. The reason for that selection lies in the size: eBay keeps tens of thousands of categories, and a complete copy would be a tree in which your own categories can no longer be found.

Configuration section of the eBay channel with the chosen root category and below it the tree of external root categories

Mappings

The channel holds five tabs, one per list that exists on both sides. The column External shows the entry at eBay, the column Internal the one in TRADElube.

Tab	What gets mapped
Order Status	An order's state at eBay onto your order status
Payment Options	The payment method eBay keeps on the offer onto your payment method
Shipping Services	eBay's shipping service onto your shipping method
Properties	Your properties onto the item specifics eBay expects per category
Conditions	eBay's conditions onto the values of one of your selection properties

Order status tab of the eBay channel with the five prefilled rows, on the left eBay's state and on the right the order status in TRADElube

The five tabs differ in where their external side comes from. Payment Options and Shipping Services TRADElube fetches from eBay through Reload. As long as no consent has been granted, those two drop-downs stay empty.

The Order Status tab comes prefilled. The five states eBay can give an order sit in it, and beside each stands the order status from your own set whose level fits it best. Where a row is missing, the order still arrives and carries nothing in that place.

In the Properties tab you enter the external side by hand, and there is a reason for that: which item specifics eBay expects hangs on the category, and a list across all categories does not exist. The name you enter is the one your property appears under as a specific on the offer. Which specifics a category knows and which of them are mandatory you look up at eBay.

The Conditions tab is the one you steer the item condition per product with. Above the Internal column you pick one of your selection properties. In the rows below you map its values onto eBay's conditions. From then on the value on the product decides whether an offer appears as New or as Used, see Products Upload. Without this tab every product goes up in the same condition.

Available tasks

Three tasks, one into eBay and two out of it. Download means from eBay into TRADElube, upload the other way round.

Task	Direction	Transfers	Notes
Categories Download	Import	The eBay category tree as your categories	Runs first, because there is no offer without a category
Products Upload	Export	Products as offers, with images, price, shipping data and item specifics	The only task writing anything into eBay
Orders Download	Import	Orders with line items, addresses and buyers	The buyers are created as customers along the way

Which of these tasks exist in your client is decided by your needs: what gets created is what you actually use. How a task runs is under Tasks.

This channel's tasks do not run by themselves. The field Performance sits at Manually, and no interval is on offer there. On the other channels you pick one, from a few minutes up to Nightly. So you start an eBay task through Execute when you want to list offers or fetch orders.

Special features and limits

The channel does not know variants. Per product one offer is created, and a product with three sizes becomes one offer with one price. Whoever wants to sell the sizes separately keeps them as products of their own.

The channel does not transfer stock. There is no task for it, and a newly created offer gets the quantity 1. So keeping stock stays at eBay, and what is sold there is sold there.

Images travel with the product rather than as a task of their own. TRADElube hands eBay the address an image sits at in TRADElube, and eBay fetches it from there. That presupposes your TRADElube installation is reachable from the internet.

The channel does not report the order status back. There is no task for it, so an order processed in TRADElube stays unchanged at eBay.

The channel does not transfer customers of its own accord. They are created in TRADElube with the order that triggered them, and do not travel to eBay as a stock of their own.

The channel does not know manufacturers. There is no task for it, and the offer holds no field a manufacturer's name would go into either.

Categories run one way only, namely from eBay to you. A category of your own that does not exist at eBay cannot be created there: a marketplace's tree belongs to the marketplace.

Common questions

My products do not go up. First check in the Configuration section whether Root Category is filled and whether your products hang below that category. Without that link no product counts as destined for eBay.

The drop-downs in the mappings are empty. Then the connection does not stand yet. Payment options, shipping services and the category tree come from eBay, and without granted consent there is nothing to fetch there.

The category tree has grown too large. Then too many branches are picked under External Root Categories. What you take out there gets disabled on the next execution of Categories Download.

Two eBay accounts on one client. That is provided for, as two channels of the same type with their own consent, their own mappings and their own tasks, see Channels.