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Setting up Business Policies / Update to USPS Ground Advantage
I'm working on a separate post with tips for using the bulk edit tool for non-business policy users. In the meantime, if you're not a current business policy user, you may want to consider this change if you have a lot of listings to update to the new Ground Advantage service.
Once your policies are set up it takes no more than a couple of clicks to update a policy. Any seller with more than a few hundred listings should (in my opinion) seriously consider using business policies if they're not already. If you opt in and hate them, you can opt out with a single click.
Business policies help me keep my sanity. Opt-in, manage and edit them (or disable them to go back to how you used to set up your listings) on this page.
When you first opt in, you will see an overwhelming mess, but after you take some time to get things set up you'll find how quickly you can mass update shipping without having to go into individual listings or the bulk editor. Well worth it, in my opinion, and you can always opt out if you don't like biz policies. Here's my advice for getting things set up after opting in:
1. First get your payments and returns policies set up. That should be pretty quick and easy.
2. Ignore all of the auto-generated shipping policies to start. The most efficient way to handle is to start from scratch.
a. Create your first shipping policy. Use a name that makes the policy easy to identify exactly what's offered. I typically use a format that includes calc vs flat vs free, shipping service, whether or not direct international is offered, and handling time at the end. Ex: Calc: USPS Priority / USPS Ground / UPS Ground - no INTL - (3 days)
b. Continue that process, creating policies for your most used shipping offerings.
3. Now that your shipping policies are created, start assigning them to your listings. The fastest way is to go through the bulk editor, but you can also do this from the biz policy mgmt page. Go to your active listings page and select in bulk a number of listings you want to assign to a single shipping policy. Pull them into the bulk editor.
a. On the bulk edit page, select all listings then on edit drop down choose shipping policy and assign the new policy. Save changes.
b. Repeat this process with your remaining listings.
4. Go back to the biz policy management page. Off to the right you will see how many listings are assigned to each policy. Any auto-generated policy that now has 0 listings assigned can be deleted. Any auto-generated policy that shows a number of listings assigned should be addressed.
a. Click on the number off to the right. That will show you all active listings tied to that auto-generated policy. You can pull those listings into the bulk editor and assign one of your new clearly named policies. Then go back to the policy mgmt page and delete the now unused auto-generated policy.
b. Repeat this process with your remaining shipping policies.
c. If you use listing templates, you will have to make updates to the shipping policies on your templates.
5. At this point you should have a very clean policy set up.
Now that your policies are set up, you can very quickly make changes to shipping services and switch any policy offering First Class or Retail Ground to offering the new Ground Advantage.
All policies with First Class and Retail Ground need to be updated starting July 9th, with a window of 30 days to make the changes. Parcel Select is being automatically updated to Ground Advantage.
kh-urvashi
·1 year agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
ju_5366
·1 year agoFor whatever reason all of my shipping shows local pickup only. I have been on the phone with ebay 3 times and still I cant get it back to my shipping policy. They said it could take several hours but from what im reading it should take seconds. Any advice?
down-memory-lane-collectibles
·2 years agoHow do you opt out of business policies? I have found it is easier to just enter my own shipping options and cosyts rather than running down the ebay menu list of past listings.
Thanks for the help!
wastingtime101
OP2 years agoManage and edit them (or disable them to go back to how you used to set up your listings) on this page.
carlbach
·3 years agoI bit the bullet and created a bunch of business/shipping policies and went through everything in my store a category at a time to apply the correct policy. Some categories were a bit more convoluted than others but I got through it. However, when I add up the # of listings next to all the shipping policies, it's coming out to about 100 LESS than my total # of listings. Is there any easy way to find those listings that have NOT been assigned to a policy? I can go to LISTINGS and change a filter to those with shipping policies and select individual shipping policies, but I wish I could go to LISTINGS and select a filter that says NO policy assigned. Anyone struggle with this at all?
carose4242
·3 years agoThank you for this. It is very helpful. My listings have become a hot mess over the last few years because I entered the information without understanding yet, so I have various business policies and shipping policies set up and I haven't been able to get rid of them because they are assigned to various live listings. I have tried without success to fix up the mess. I'm actually scared to go try again. Will your suggestions work regardless of what kind of a mess my listings are in right now? In other words, can I take all my existing listings regardless of what shipping policies and business policies I have, and redo the shipping portion, without affecting the actual remainder of the listings such as pictures and descriptions?
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoYes, just follow the steps in the first post above @carose4242 . The remainder of your listing will be unaffected as you create and assign new shipping policies.
13crackers
·3 years agoThank you. I finally got the hang of it.
guranse
·3 years agoJust to verify, in addition to my First Class items I can change my Priority Mail items (that were over 16 oz. so no First Class option) to Ground Advantage? There is no cut off at 1 lb.?
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoCorrect @guranse - the limit is 70 lb.
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoRevising a business policy is pretty self-explanatory, but I'm including a screenshot anyway.
Manage business policies on this page.
Click "edit" next to the policy. On the next screen change Retail Ground or First Class Package to Ground Advantage and save your changes. All listings tied to that policy will be updated with current rates.
Ground Advantage is currently named Parcel Select / Ground Advantage, hopefully eBay will change that soon to straight up Ground Advantage.
iamalwaysright
·3 years agoThanks for all the work you put into this
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoGlad you guys find this helpful. I tried to keep it as high-level as possible. If people have questions about some of the biz policy nuances I can probably answer them. If anybody needs a screenshot or help along the way you can tag me and let me know which numbered step above has you stuck.
Stay tuned for the non-biz-policy tutorial with tips for updating Ground Advantage.
mtgraves7984
·3 years agoI sure appreciate it. I've been bookmarking practically all of your threads lately. Ay, yi, yi...
pjcdn2005
·3 years agoThank you for that! I was once opted into business policies and the mega number of policies that ebay had generated was way too overwhelming so I opted out. Your post makes it sound much more manageable.
wastingtime101
OP3 years agoThis one seller I helped opted in and the system generated something like 150 shipping policies. This was a seller that had a big variety in shipping services because they were a thrifter that sold anything and everything.
Following the outline posted above, we set up their policies and created about 20-30 to fit their variety. We started out creating 5 policies the first day. On their own they created the rest throughout and had it done within a week, dedicating a small window each day to work on it.
They said it massively streamlined things for them, allowed them to see which shipping polices were least utilized, and as of the last time I spoke with them they had reduced their number of shipping policies even more.
It's not the right set up for everyone, but it really can be a time-saver for sellers with a lot of listings.
iamalwaysright
·3 years agoYes I agree that many sellers would find it being super useful and efficient once they get over that relatively large learning curve to it.
I, like many others, thought to myself that I should've been implementing business policies long before I actually did.
For those of you who are still hesitant and dreading it, just suck it up and try it out. It's probably one of the few things ebay did right I would say. It's not perfect, but pretty darn close as to what it does for me.