This topic describes ongoing or day-to-day best practices for managing your eBay listings and inventory using the Sell Feed API and LMS feed types.
Checking task status
It is important to check your task's status periodically, so that you will know when a task's results are available. When your task has finished processing, you can download the results for each call. For example, if your data file contained ReviseInventoryStatus calls, you would get a Success acknowledgement or an error message for each call in your file.
Revising inventory status
The ReviseInventoryStatus call is only valid for use with fixed-price items. The ReviseItem call should be used with auction items.
Use the LMS_REVISE_INVENTORY_STATUS feed type within an XML data file (ReviseInventoryStatus) if you only want to change the price, quantity, or price and quantity, of the fixed-price items in your listings without including all of the other fields required when using the LMS_REVISE_FIXED_PRICE_ITEM feed type. With the LMS_REVISE_INVENTORY_STATUS feed type, you can adjust the price and quantity without including all of the other fields required of with the feed type LMS_REVISE_FIXED_PRICE_ITEM (or ReviseFixedPriceItem call).
Acknowledging sales
The Sell Feed API provides acknowledgment of sales using the LMS_ORDER_ACK feed type. You can use the LMS_ORDER_REPORT and LMS_ORDER_ACK feed types together. This solution provides a download call and an upload call, that allows you to retrieve all orders through LMS_ORDER_REPORT and then acknowledge that you received those orders through LMS_ORDER_ACK, from the same listing or from multiple listings. After you send an LMS_ORDER_ACK, only the unacknowledged orders and order line items will be returned with LMS_ORDER_REPORT.
Note: Although you can use the LMS_ORDER_REPORT feed type without using the LMS_ORDER_ACK feed type, this solution uses both feed types together.
If a buyer purchased multiple variations of an item from a multi-variation listing, the sale results in a single Order ID for the total purchase with a separate Line Item ID for each of the purchased item variations.
Note: If a buyer purchases multiple line items from the same seller (from the same listing or from multiple listings), they may be grouped into one order if the buyer places them into one cart .
LMS_ORDER_REPORT can retrieve the data for all orders created within the last 30 days. The seller can customize an order task to retrieve orders from a shorter window. For example, orders can be retrieved from the last 7 days or from a specific day within the 30-day window.
All order data will continue to be sent until you upload an LMS_ORDER_ACK that verifies that you have received and are processing/fulfilling the order. After you send an LMS_ORDER_ACK, only the unacknowledged orders will show up in the next instance of the LMS_ORDER_REPORT.
Note: Use the Sell Feed API order_task resource to create the order report (createOrderTask with the feedType LMS_ORDER_REPORT), and the task resource to download the created report (getResultFile).
Retrieving an Active Inventory Report
To download price and quantity information for all or a subset of your active listings, use the the createInventoryTask method with the feed type LMS_ACTIVE_INVENTORY_REPORT, along with the getResultFile method. The SKU details include ItemID and/or SKU, Price, Quantity, and SiteID.
Using recurring tasks
After you have listings on the eBay site, you can create schedules to periodically retrieve reports, specifically OrderReport and ActiveInventoryReport. See Creating Schedules for additional information.