Once items begin to sell on eBay, your orders will be generated in Brightpearl ready for processing.
This guide will take you step-by-step through getting and processing your eBay sales. You will learn:
- How to get new orders
- What settings are used for eBay orders
- What actions are triggered by new orders
- How to ship orders
- How to invoice orders
1. How to get new orders
New orders will be downloaded automatically every minute when eBay sends a sale notification. Brightpearl will also check for new orders every 15 minutes just to make sure. And if you urgently need to check for any new orders you can manually check for new orders:
- Go to Sales > Recent Sales/Quotes.
- Click the Download orders now button.
- Leave the program to run and click the Refresh link to check if it is complete and see your new orders.
This operation will ask eBay for details of any new sales and can take some time if there are many orders. To allow you to continue working the process will run in the background. You can refresh the operation at any time to see if it has completed and view your new orders.
New orders can be seen in Sales > Recent Sales/Quotes.
Note: Where a customer has used the shopping basket in eBay to purchase multiple items from you, each item will come through as a separate sales order in Brightpearl.
2. What settings are used for eBay orders
New eBay orders will automatically pick up various settings, such as tax codes and nominal codes. Here are the items you should be aware of:
| Sales Order Status | New eBay orders will be assigned the status as defined in your eBay configuration at Setup > Channels > Setup: eBay. |
| Customer | See below |
| Channel | Automatically selected as your eBay sales channel. |
| Line Items |
Items sold on eBay that are linked to Brightpearl products will be added as stock products but using the Brightpearl product name. Any items sold on eBay that do not exist in Brightpearl will be added to the order as a freetext line item using the eBay item name. |
| Shipping Charges | Shipping charges from eBay will be added to the order as a freetext line item using the eBay code as the description. It will not set the shipping method field. |
| Prices | The prices used are as advertised on eBay. This price comes from the price list set on your eBay Sales Channel. |
| Nominal codes | The nominal codes used for eBay sales follow the same rules as all other sales. Customer settings override product settings which override company default. The code used for shipping is as set in Setup > Company > Accounting: Nominal codes. |
| Tax Codes |
Tax is applicable where your eBay account is set as tax registered. VAT mode Sales Tax mode |
3. What actions are triggered by new orders
New orders will automatically:
- Create a new customer record
- Update the customer timeline
- Create a new sales order
- Allocate inventory to the order
Every order in Brightpearl requires a customer record, eBay orders are no different. When a new sale is made through eBay and downloaded to Brightpearl there are two scenarios:
- The order is from a new customer who has never purchased from you before and does not exist in Brightpearl.
- The order is from an existing customer who has purchased from you before and does exist in Brightpearl.
Existing customers are identified using their email address. If there is a match, their existing customer account will be used on the downloaded sales order. If the system cannot make a match they are considered a new customer and a new customer record is created and used for the sales order. However, new customers are not immediately identified by eBay; they will not provide their full details, only their eBay username, email and telephone number. New customer records are created with the first name as “eBay:” and the surname as the username. You will be provided with the customer’s name and address once they have paid.
When a new order is generated, it is recorded on the customer’s timeline, as orders generated any other way are. This timeline entry will show the date, time and staff member who created the order for audit purposes. This is fine when you manually choose to download orders, but when orders are automatically downloaded it will use the staff name as defined in your eBay configuration at Setup > Channels > Setup: eBay. In order to save confusion when looking back at a customer’s history, we recommend setting up a dummy staff member, such as “eBay Download”, to be set as the default for these automatically downloaded orders.
When a sale is made through eBay a new order will be generated in Brightpearl. These orders will take the sales order status as defined in your eBay Configuration.
If a customer has purchased multiple items using their shopping basket, each individual item will come through to Brightpearl as a separate order.
Allocate Inventory to the Order
It is important to keep on top of your available inventory to prevent overselling and ultimately disgruntled customers. For this reason Brightpearl will automatically allocate inventory to new orders downloaded from eBay, reducing your on-hand quantity. This will then immediately go back to eBay and update the quantity on your listing (unless switched off). If you are using our Magento integration, this change in stock level will also be synchronised with your Magento site, ensuring you're never selling more than you have available!
4. How to ship orders
eBay orders are processed in Brightpearl in the same way as orders generated through other methods. However, it is not possible to split eBay orders to a backorder. This is because the Brightpearl order must match the eBay order exactly. If you are using partial/advanced fulfilment it is possible to ship part of the order and leave the rest outstanding.
Once the orders (goods-out notes) are shipped in Brightpearl a notification will be sent to eBay to indicate the order has been shipped with details of any tracking reference you entered in Brightpearl.
Learn more about processing and shipping sales orders
5. How to invoice orders
In order to update your accounting you must invoice your eBay sales orders. You can do this in bulk from your sales listing (Sales > Recent Sales/Quotes); tick the checkbox next to each order and click the Invoice button.
