Inventory Sync'ing

[g2ktcf]

As many of you know, I have been working on my wife's new site for a while. I finally got it up and running in Sept. Sales are not through the roof but they are improving. However, we sell more on Etsy since she is an artist. The problem that it is creating for me is keeping inventory values current. Every order represents a painstaking inventory adjustment either on Etsy (for site sales) or for the site (for Etsy sales).

While I do not know how to upload inventory into Etsy, I have EP for ZC. I know that I can download by SKU from Etsy and I use that same SKU as my item number in ZC. But all of this is horribly manual. I was hoping that some other method is out there. Am I looking for a unicorn?

I have had to do refunds on four different orders in the past two weeks as we always seem to make an oops while adjusting all those numbers. There are over 100 different items so this is not easy.

Thanks!
Chris

[mc12345678]

As many of you know, I have been working on my wife's new site for a while. I finally got it up and running in Sept. Sales are not through the roof but they are improving. However, we sell more on Etsy since she is an artist. The problem that it is creating for me is keeping inventory values current. Every order represents a painstaking inventory adjustment either on Etsy (for site sales) or for the site (for Etsy sales).

While I do not know how to upload inventory into Etsy, I have EP for ZC. I know that I can download by SKU from Etsy and I use that same SKU as my item number in ZC. But all of this is horribly manual. I was hoping that some other method is out there. Am I looking for a unicorn?

I have had to do refunds on four different orders in the past two weeks as we always seem to make an oops while adjusting all those numbers. There are over 100 different items so this is not easy.

Thanks!
Chris

EP4 offers the ability to use a cron job to import/export as applicable. If Etsy can be "configured" to communicate the stock in a way that it can be "automated" (formatted) then a cron job could be used to import that information/change, but as said above, reversing that process "simultaneously" of sending the stock quantity(ies) to Etsy may be an issue/problem...

[torvista]

Assuming both those locations are equal ie. none is a "master".

You need something that reads both sites inventory, compares them, equates them and uploads to each site, automatically.

This is where I bang on about Pentaho: search for "pentaho community edition download"
It takes some learning but it is a tool to manipulate any data from any filetype, in any way, from and TO any database/or create new files. etc...in single steps that you define one at a time.
Once the whole process has been defined "a transformation" you can run it from a "job" either by cron or on demand or based on changes/events in the two sites.
Lots of work but no coding.
I use it for extracting inventory from a legacy db and massaging it into a format for ZC stock and price updates.

[g2ktcf]

Great Info Guys! Appreciate the input. I just had to refund another one this morning

[torvista]

I note that Zapier and Integromat may well be worth investigating too as managed solutions to create actions based on events.

[swguy]

You might be able to use Sellbrite to do this.

[g2ktcf]

This site is still somewhat at the infancy stage so our cost structure cannot support any paid solution. I just did a huge amount of work to cut my hosting costs by $20/month lol! Trying to spend those funds on advertising and driving buyers to our site (and it is working!)

Etsy has an API that works off JSON packets. I am thinking this would be a fun project to play with. The issue is variations in Etsy and stock by attributes in ZC. I see this as a simple chron job to reach out to Etsy, get the current inventory and compare that to a stored copy of the last uploaded values. That would give me the item sales on Esty. Then adjust the ZC inventory by that amount. I could then upload the exact ZC inventory back to Etsy. How to adjust for sales during the process could be an issue though.

...just sort of thinking out loud.