1. Contents
  2. Reference
  3. Channels and tasks
  4. eBay
  5. Orders Download

Orders Download

The task fetches the orders from eBay into TRADElube, with line items, billing and delivery address and the buyer behind them. It is the task turning a sale on the marketplace into a record in your own set.

What gets transferred

For each order at eBay an order is created in TRADElube, and with it the records it hangs on: the line items, the two addresses and, where it does not exist yet, the customer. On this channel customers come in through this path only.

The orders of the past few days are looked at, counted by when they were last changed: at least the last four days, and more where the task has not run for longer. No execution reaches back further than thirty days, because eBay does not hand its orders out that far. An order already transferred and unchanged since is skipped in the process.

Nothing is ever deleted. An order canceled at eBay stays in TRADElube, its order status changes.

Per buyer TRADElube remembers a channel mapping onto that buyer's eBay user name. Where the same buyer orders a second time, the new order therefore hangs on the same customer, even where they have changed their address in the meantime.

How the transfer plan is built

One plan with six sections.

Section What sits in it
Selection Which orders get taken over at all, and how an existing customer is recognized
Common The order itself: Release, Origin Order Number, Order Time, Order Status and Shipping Method
Billing Address Company, first name, last name, street, Postal Code, City, Country, phone number and Email
Shipping Address The same fields without Email
Product Items Product Number, Product Name, Quantity, Total Gross Price and Total Tax
Shipping Items The shipping cost, as a line item of its own

Selection carries two rows, and both are unticked out of the box. Condition decides which orders get taken over at all. The order time is available as its source. Existing Customer decides whether an order is attached to a customer already present in TRADElube. It is preset with the search by email address. Without that row TRADElube creates a customer of its own for every eBay buyer, even where one is already kept under the same address.

Release decides whether an order goes into processing straight away. As a fixed value it releases every order immediately. The assignment by script beside it reaches the order time and can build a waiting period out of it. The reason for such a waiting period lies with the buyer: they get in touch within the first hour because they forgot an item or the address was wrong, and an order already released is more awkward to change than an open one.

Order Status and Shipping Method come from the channel's Order Status and Shipping Services mapping tabs, see eBay. Where the row is missing there, the order still arrives and carries nothing in that place.

The two address sections carry the same fields and are still kept apart, because eBay delivers two different sources: the billing address is the buyer's registration address, the delivery address the order's. Where both are the same, only one address is created in TRADElube, and both point at it. Where the registration address is missing, the delivery address takes its place.

These two sections are worth a second look, because this is where this plan's real work sits. eBay keeps no separate fields for company, first name and last name but one row, Name, in which everything stands together. The three assignments fetch their part out of it through prepared scripts splitting the name at particular places: in front of a hyphen stands the company, behind it the person's name, and that is split into first and last name at the first space. Where your buyers write their names differently, this is the place you step in.

The customer is created from the billing address as well. What stands there is taken over onto the customer, and the email address is at the same time the mark Existing Customer finds an existing customer by.

The shipping cost sits as a line item of its own in the order rather than in the price of the goods. TRADElube creates it as soon as eBay reports a shipping cost for a line item, and attaches it to the item it belongs to. The quantity of such an item is fixed at 1 and cannot be changed.

Special features and limits

The task runs only when you start it. That holds for every task of this channel, in full under eBay. So a new order does not appear in TRADElube by itself within minutes but after the execution you trigger.

The order status does not go back to eBay. The channel has no task for it, in full under eBay.

eBay's order number sits in TRADElube as Origin Order Number. TRADElube assigns your own order number beside it, so that the number ranges of several channels do not overlap.

A product does not have to exist in TRADElube. The line item carries product number and product name from the order, and the reference to the product is made where one with that number is present. So an order for an article you do not keep arrives rather than failing.

Further reading