posted on March 16, 2006 06:34:11 AM new
I think I understand how to create new listings but the REAL reason I want to use SMIE is to be able to relist unsold items in bulk and being able to change format and add and remove galleryies without editing each individual item.
I read the PDF guide on relisting, I found the items in "Closed", checked them, indicated "relist" but the bulk relister is the same crummy one that SMME has..isn't there a better way in SMIE?
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posted on March 16, 2006 10:26:59 AM new
Neglus: I spend a couple of days trying to work with SMIE and finally gave up. I wish we had a new system that gave us the best of both of them.
It seemed to me that to do what you want to do, you have to import all of your closed listings to inventory. Then treat them like new launchs.
It was all a bit to confusing for me and there were a couple of features that I needed that SMIE didn't have (ie., the abilty to search descriptions).
However, I really liked the bulk editing of inventory and the ability to copy inventory items.
Good luck and glad to see you around again. You and your family have been in my thoughts and prayers.
Beth
www.vintageads4u.com
posted on March 16, 2006 10:55:25 AM new
Thanks for your help Beth. I relisted about everything I had for the FP sale day yesterday and then imported everything. I have about 12,000 individual items! ARGH! I am not sure whether the import I did back in 10-04 when they first rolled out SMIE showing active listings is accurate or has been updated with the new import. There aren't any dates that I can see on any of these items..what a mess!
I was SO hopeful that I could move unsold items to my store next Wednesday with a couple of clicks to change format and add gallery but it looks like that won't be possible!
SMME works fine for listing inventory and I am switching back. Bugs me because everytime I asked for a change to SMME to facilitate bulk relists to change format and add gallery I was told it was in SMIE if only I would try it! What a wasted morning this was!
Thanks also for the kind thoughts.
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The reason it is easier to toggle between listing your items to eBay as auction items Vs storefront listings is that you have all of these in your inventory setup for both venues already.
When the items close, they are removed from their 'at market' status and go back to 'quantity available.'
You would just go to these items in inventory, select them in a group and click to submit them to eBay as auction items instead (if they were storefront items the first time around.)
SMIE is not a means of using the closed listing relist process to change the venue or other details in bulk, this is only done in inventory directly.
posted on March 16, 2006 12:09:56 PM new
Christopher - how would I find these 1,000 items in inventory to work in bulk? At any rate, it looks like SMIE is not for me.
Which leaves me with my original problem - how CAN I move 1,000 unique items from FP to ebay store items efficiently?? OTHER companies have this ability, why can't Vendio???
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The problem is that your wanting to take advantage of the tools after the fact. You launched or relisted the items outside of Vendio, and only now are you wanting to manage them from here.
Unfortunately that means that while you can import all of these items into inventory now, none will be setup for anything other than what they are already setup for (meaning they are all store items and there is no auction data or vise versa) - so your still going to need to edit them first.
The one good thing though is that in the SMIE tools you can bulk edit your listings in inventory in groups of 50, for the fields that will be the same between the items.
As far as how to address this issue in the SMME program, no other workarounds are available at this time.
posted on March 16, 2006 12:34:05 PM new
I did not launch or relist the items outside of vendio! I originally listed using SMME and relisted (painfully one by one x 1,000 to change the format from auction to FP) using SMME! What makes you think I didn't use Vendio? Now I have to relist again one by one X 1,000 to change format from FP to ebay store and attach the gallery pic.
Am I missing something about SMIE?? How do you FIND your unsold inventory in groups in order to take advantage of any bulk edit features? Going to the "Closed" portion as set out in the instructions yielded the same USELESS bulk editing form we have for SMME
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I relisted about everything I had for the FP sale day yesterday and then imported everything.
I assumed that since you had to import the items, that they didnt already exist in your Vendio account. You wouldn't need to trigger an import to bring those items into your account, but chances are you were simply talking about starting the import process after switching to the SMIE program, not that you *had* to trigger an import just to get these 1000 items into the Sales Manager.
Sorry for the incorrect assumption.
As for the best way to manage this process in the SMIE tools?
When your going to list a group of items to eBay as storefront items, move them into a folder in inventory so you can keep them together.
When the items close and you decide that you want to resubmit the items from this group that didnt sell - go to the folder in inventory you moved these items into, and launch them to eBay as auction items instead.
Going to the "Closed" portion as set out in the instructions yielded the same USELESS bulk editing form we have for SMME
The above is correct, there is nothing different in the CLOSED section for SMIE than there is in the SMME. Our apologies if we gave the impression that managing items from the closed section was where the new SMIE tools would come into play, as it is not.
Regards,
Christopher
[ edited by ChristopherCS on Mar 16, 2006 01:04 PM ]
posted on March 16, 2006 01:22:43 PM new
Ok - so in order to take advantage of SMIE I needed to put the items in a folder when I relisted them yesterday. I guess that wouldn't be possible because in order to make the bulk relister at all usable I have to go through several steps that would not be available in SMIE: I first go to the date I am relisting in PostSale->Unsold and use the bulk relister to schedule the relist in the future and launch. I then go to "Pending" (this won't work with SMIE) and cancel the scheduled listing and then edit one by one and schedule or launch. All of that to simply change the format between auction, FP or store and to attach or unattach a gallery depending on the venie. Does it HAVE to be so hard????
I used the SMIE "import" tool as instructed (that is where the word "import" came from) to make the switch from SMME to SMIE. Incidentally, I already had tons of listings in inventory from an earlier attempt to work with SMIE. Are those old items that show "active" truly active ? Do they drop out when an item (probably ones that old would be store items) sells or are they preserved in the same status as they were when they were first "imported"? Since I won't be using SMIE , is there a way to delete all of those imported items? I can't see them but they must take a chunk of storage.
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If your not going to use the SMIE tools, don't worry about the 'imported' items in inventory, they are just text files that don't actually take up any space in your SMME account.
It is true that if you dont setup the items to begin with to address this process, doing so after the fact won't be easy.
The ONLY way to make the process easy is to get the items into inventory BEFORE you submit them to eBay in either format.
That way they are all in one location and when closed you can simply go to this same location to submit them again and simply opt for the other style listing.
Again, attempting this process from any point past step one isn't going to be easy, its going to be a workaround. You won't see any advantage of using the SMIE tools unless you setup your items in inventory and launch them from inventory.
posted on March 17, 2006 05:34:12 AM new
The instructions say that switching back and forth between editions is not recommended. If I use SMIE to list new items and start off right by placing all items in date folders (I relist by dates), coud I switch back and forth to relist my old inventory in SMME until all of them are finally put in my ebay store (they stay there until sold)and go forward with SMIE without serious problems? I have about 2500 items that would need to be relisted using SMME and that should be done by the end of May.
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The problem with switching back and forth between the versions is that your quantity 'at market' may not track properly each time you make the switch.
You could still take advantage of the tools, but you wouldnt be able to rely 100% on what SMIE is indicating for items being at market or not.
When you first switch to the SMIE program, you can import everything from your existing account. This means that everything that you have in your SMME inventory would then become available to list/relist from within the SMIE inventory module instead. (basically if you can, switch and don't switch back, otherwise you may want to wait until your ready at the end of May)
