Can I update my inventory from a CSV file?

Yes, you can. WP-Lister for eBay currently supports these CSV import plugins:

http://www.woothemes.com/products/product-csv-import-suite/ (paid)
https://github.com/dgrundel/woo-product-importer (free)
https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/product-csv-importer-exporter/ (free)
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-all-import/ (free)

Updating an existing product from a CSV file will be very much like updating the product manually in WooCommerce:  Unlocked listings will be marked as changed while locked listings will have their price and inventory updated instantly, resulting a slower import process. 

Please keep in mind that your products should have unique SKUs – for variable products, each variation needs to have a SKU as well.

How to import eBay specific fields like listing title, start price or condition description from CSV?

WP-Lister uses  the following custom meta fields to store the information you see in the “eBay options” box on the edit product page:

_ebay_auction_type
_ebay_autopay
_ebay_bestoffer_enabled
_ebay_bo_autoaccept_price
_ebay_bo_minimum_price
_ebay_buynow_price
_ebay_category_1_id
_ebay_category_2_id
_ebay_condition_description
_ebay_condition_id
_ebay_epid
_ebay_gallery_image_url
_ebay_global_shipping
_ebay_hide_from_unlisted
_ebay_listing_duration
_ebay_payment_instructions
_ebay_reserve_price
_ebay_seller_payment_profile_id
_ebay_seller_return_profile_id
_ebay_seller_shipping_profile_id
_ebay_store_category_1_id
_ebay_store_category_2_id
_ebay_start_price
_ebay_subtitle
_ebay_title
_ebay_upc
_ebay_ean<br>_ebay_isbn<br>_ebay_mpn<br>_ebay_brand

Please refer to the documentation for your CSV import tool of choice for details on how to import custom post meta fields.

For example, if you use the  Product CSV Import Suite by WooThemes, according to their documentation you'll have to prefix custom meta fields with "meta:", so to import UPCs from a CSV file you would use the following column header:

meta:_ebay_upc

What about Item Specifics and Shipping Options? Can these be imported from CSV as well?

Unfortunately not. Item specifics and shipping options are not simple meta field containing only a single value. Instead, they are both tabular data with an unknown number of rows, which is why they are stored as serialized arrays in a single meta field. This data looks rather cryptic, like "a:2{i:0;a:3:{s:4...", which is not suitable for being imported from a CSV file (or edited in a spreadsheet app).

Instead of importing item specifics, we recommend importing normal WooCommerce product attributes, which are sent to eBay as item specifics automatically. Shipping options should rather be define in the listing profile, not on the product level.

Exporting Orders

When WP-Lister for eBay creates an order in WooCommerce, it stores the eBay Order ID in a custom meta field called  _ebay_order_id

If you export this column, you'll have the order ID information for each order which will allow you to filter all eBay sales in a spreadsheet application for example.

Exporting Products with the current Listing Status

Generally third party CSV Import/Export plugins will pull data from the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables. They will not read custom tables. Listing status information is stored in the table wp_ebay_auctions, not in the wp_posts and wp_postmeta tables which makes CSV plugins unable to attain eBay listing statuses. 

However there is one CSV plugin which supports selected fields from WP-Lister for eBay. The plugin is "Store Exporter Deluxe" by Visser Labs and can be found here: http://www.visser.com.au/plugins/store-exporter-deluxe/

Out of the box, the "Store Exporter Deluxe" CSV plugin will expose the _ebay_status fieldThis will allow you to export your products and sort by the _ebay_status field. This can be valuable if you would like to see what products are out of stock on eBay and need more quantity or need to be relisted.

We are currently working on a custom CSV import/export add-on for WP-Lister which will allow you to export your products with all the eBay specific details like listing status and item ID. Contact us if you want to beta test the add-on.

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