mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
We can now select a "custom date range" for displaying order history and access data for past 2 years through the seller hub orders page. Thank you eBay for listening after all these years!
@wastingtime101 wrote:Hey @anjie234 - I noticed this week that eBay added a banner when you pull up old orders. I guess they recognized the issues you mentioned and have no plans to fix them:
When this first launched I did some searches by item, username, etc and everything was fine. But now I'm seeing the same kinds of issues you are. I searched by a username a few days ago (great repeat customer) and all of their purchases were in jumbled order. The results were there, but I couldn't get them to sort chronologically.
The problem with the sorting by date on this report is a formatting problem only, not a transactional problem. However Ebay formatted these particular cells don't translate to Excel as a date. I'm not sure about other worksheet programs. I always, even in previous years, have had to insert a column and retype the date again so that Excel will see it as a date, then I hide the original column, just in case it is useful at some point.
@wastingtime101 wrote:Thanks - the post you quoted wasn't about a downloaded report, it was about data displayed on the Hub Orders page.
Whoops. Did you know you were named on Ina's site?
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2023/2/1675719860.html/1/0#1675802409
I don't typically do this, but a lot of the same questions keep popping up so I'm recapping everything and marking a solution to float this to the top.
- This was a phased rollout. Most, if not all, sellers should have access by now.
- This is about viewing info on the Orders page in Seller Hub.
- If you want more comprehensive sales history, transaction history for filing taxes, etc: go to the Reports page under the Payments section in Seller Hub. Those reports have been around with a long history since the transition to Managed Payments.
-----
The main benefits I see from this change:
- You can easily reference sales data from past 2 years with a quick search and not have to dig up various report spreadsheets. It's also an easy way to see past 2 yrs sales history on repeat customers all in one place.
- You can refund past 90 days which is rarely needed, but I have found occasion where it would have helped (like when I asked buyers to be patient during Covid shipping delays, or when a package was returned by post office as undeliverable past 90 days and I wanted to send the buyer a partial for item cost less shipping).
- You can download a report from the orders page that includes variation info and not be tied down to the 90 day window. The reports on the payments page do not include variation info.
-----
- This change applies to orders history. This is purely about accessing sales history - it's not about retaining listings or photos. If you click the hyperlink on an old/expired listing you'll get the standard page not found error. You cannot relist or sell similar from these older sales. Listing info is not being retained; this is about quickly accessing order info / sales history without having to download reports from the Payments section.
-----
Some info discovered as I ran several queries through the custom date range function extending beyond 90 days:
- There are some quirks with the filters. For example, change the filter to "paid and shipped". Then change the period to "custom". It will show you a prefilled date range at the top of the page, but results displayed will remain the past 90 days and will not match the custom date range at the top of the page. You have to manually set a new custom date range for the results to change from 90 days to custom.
- It strips buyer name, address, contact info after 90 days. You can still see buyer ID.
- It stores the order's "delivered" status and tracking number, but since tracking is expired from carrier websites where eBay pulls the data you cannot view tracking scans. This is kind of annoying for instances where one may have issued a partial refund for some reason because partial refund takes display precedence over a delivered status.
- I found the cutoff for when "send refund" disappears from the actions drop-down. It's there for one year. I obviously did not test to see if sending a refund would work a year later, but the option is there.
- It's hit or miss whether your listing image thumbnails will appear. Most appear to be present.
- At some point in late Dec / early Jan eBay added the below banner:
- When this first launched I did some searches by item, username, etc and everything was fine. But now I'm seeing problems with search and sort. I searched by a username (great repeat customer) and all of their purchases were in jumbled order. The results were there, but I couldn't get them to sort chronologically. Based on the above banner eBay added, these issues will not be fixed. I assume that's because the 2 year look back function won't be highly utilized in most sellers' day to day operations.
-----
- For orders older than 90 days, the following options appear in the Actions menu:
View order details
Purchase another label
Print packing slip and more
Print coupon
Mark not shipped
View payment details
Add/edit note
Contact buyer
Report buyer
Send refund (this appears only if order is from the last year)
Archive
Have you tried the report found on the Seller Hub. Under the Payment Tab, then Reports on the drop down menu. That is the report I use and I don't run into the issues you have with the exception of the one issue about the format of the dates.
This report has been available since MP started going site wide in the summer of 2020.
But this isn't Amazon in case you didn't notice. Nor is this site like Amazon in so many ways, nor is Amazon like Ebay. True Ebay took a long time to allow us more historical reports, but comparing these two sites isn't productive as they simply are NOT the same kind of sites.
BTW, you can go to your MP reports and get transaction report back to the beginning of your MP account.
