Out of stock option

[southern*sweet*tea]

This may seem like a stupid question, but I usually deal in one-offs and rarely have bulk listings.

If I turn on the OOS option, that only applies to the bulk listings, right? My single quantity listings won't be affected?  They'll just end normally when something sells, right? And the bulk listings will hide from view until I add more?

I hope this makes sense....

[go-bad-chicken]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

This may seem like a stupid question, but I usually deal in one-offs and rarely have bulk listings.

If I turn on the OOS option, that only applies to the bulk listings, right? My single quantity listings won't be affected?  They'll just end normally when something sells, right? And the bulk listings will hide from view until I add more?

I hope this makes sense....

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@southern*sweet*tea 

No the Out Of Stock option is an account specific setting. If you choose to use the OOS option it will apply to all of your listings. 

I hope that this helps.

[southern*sweet*tea]

Okay, so if I turn on OOS and have a single quantity listing sell, that item doesn't actually go to sold or end, it stays live, only unseen to buyers?   I mean, that's fine I guess. I can always end them. Kinda stinks, though.

[go-bad-chicken]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

Okay, so if I turn on OOS and have a single quantity listing sell, that item doesn't actually go to sold or end, it stays live, only unseen to buyers?   I mean, that's fine I guess. I can always end them. Kinda stinks, though.

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@southern*sweet*tea 

The item will appear in your "Orders" screen but yes you are correct the listing will stay live in your "Active Listings" screen but it will show up with a quantity of 0. That listing in not seen in search when the quantity is 0 but it is seen by buyers in their watch list if they added your item to their watch list when that item was available and had at least a quantity of 1 available at the time that they added it to their watch list. When the item has sold what that buyer see when they look at your item in their watch list is, "This item is currently unavailable". But you can manually end the item by going to your active listings page and then end that specifics item.

But there is a nice feature to the OOS option if you do not want your item to show up when buyers and sellers check sold listings. What you do is you do not manually end that listing on your active listings page and allow it to remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months. Through that time period the the item and the price that you sold it for will never show up when buyers or other sellers check eBay's sold listings. For some sellers like myself this works really well in the fact that it hides what I have sold and how much I have sold any given item for. For many other sellers this will be a feature that they are indifferent to or could care less about. But for for me I find this feature to be very advantageous.

[wastingtime101]

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

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remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months

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eBay changed it last year when Covid affected inventory flow, so OOS listings stay active with no quantity for 6 months instead of 3. It helped with Covid restock delays, but I also found it incredibly handy to have OOS seasonal items stay listed until I got more stock for the next year, which usually takes 4-6 months between the time I sell out to the time I get more.

There's an out of stock filter in the hub that the OP can use to quickly locate and end their one-off OOS listings in bulk.

The filter's biggest flaw when using it for inventory management is that OOS variations don't appear unless every variation in the listing is OOS.

[bigdeals.etc]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

Okay, so if I turn on OOS and have a single quantity listing sell, that item doesn't actually go to sold or end, it stays live, only unseen to buyers?   I mean, that's fine I guess. I can always end them. Kinda stinks, though.

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Yes you're correct. Simply put, your listing will not be searchable within ebay, but the URL to the actual listing is always working. Go people might still get directed to your listing thru Google, etc.

[bigdeals.etc]

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

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But there is a nice feature to the OOS option if you do not want your item to show up when buyers and sellers check sold listings. What you do is you do not manually end that listing on your active listings page and allow it to remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months. Through that time period the the item and the price that you sold it for will never show up when buyers or other sellers check eBay's sold listings. For some sellers like myself this works really well in the fact that it hides what I have sold and how much I have sold any given item for. For many other sellers this will be a feature that they are indifferent to or could care less about. But for for me I find this feature to be very advantageous.

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Wow! That's pretty darn sneaky. That would make it more difficult for me to follow some of my competition. Lookit the brain on you!

[inhawaii]

Looks like you got your question answered.

I just wanted to add ... when you have the OOS option turned on, when you go to "active listings" you can click on "out of stock" and it will give you a list of your listings that are currently out of stock. Very handy.

[go-bad-chicken]

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@bigdeals.etc wrote:

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

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But there is a nice feature to the OOS option if you do not want your item to show up when buyers and sellers check sold listings. What you do is you do not manually end that listing on your active listings page and allow it to remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months. Through that time period the the item and the price that you sold it for will never show up when buyers or other sellers check eBay's sold listings. For some sellers like myself this works really well in the fact that it hides what I have sold and how much I have sold any given item for. For many other sellers this will be a feature that they are indifferent to or could care less about. But for for me I find this feature to be very advantageous.

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Wow! That's pretty darn sneaky. That would make it more difficult for me to follow some of my competition. Lookit the brain on you!

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@bigdeals.etc 

😉 The good news for you any other seller is that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. You can make it just as hard for your competition to track your sales as well.

[bigdeals.etc]

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@inhawaii wrote:

Looks like you got your question answered.

I just wanted to add ... when you have the OOS option turned on, when you go to "active listings" you can click on "out of stock" and it will give you a list of your listings that are currently out of stock. Very handy.

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Huh?? Where? I'm seeing my active listings page but don't see the out of stock button. Does this work for variations too (i.e. I have a listing for black and white colors, but only OOS of black)?

[bigdeals.etc]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

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remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months

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eBay changed it last year when Covid affected inventory flow, so OOS listings stay active with no quantity for 6 months instead of 3. It helped with Covid restock delays, but I also found it incredibly handy to have OOS seasonal items stay listed until I got more stock for the next year, which usually takes 4-6 months between the time I sell out to the time I get more.

There's an out of stock filter in the hub that the OP can use to quickly locate and end their one-off OOS listings in bulk.

The filter's biggest flaw when using it for inventory management is that OOS variations don't appear unless every variation in the listing is OOS.

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@inhawaii  Never mind, I see it and missed this post here pretty much confirming this darn flaw. Now this function is basically useless to me (or rather redundant since "available qty 0" function pretty much does the same thing).

[go-bad-chicken]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@go-bad-chicken wrote:

---

remain there with a quantity of 0 for the period of 3 months

---

eBay changed it last year when Covid affected inventory flow, so OOS listings stay active with no quantity for 6 months instead of 3. It helped with Covid restock delays, but I also found it incredibly handy to have OOS seasonal items stay listed until I got more stock for the next year, which usually takes 4-6 months between the time I sell out to the time I get more.

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@wastingtime101 

You are correct, eBay did change the amount of time, from 3 months to 6 months; that an item can remain within a seller's active listings with a quantity of o. But for the purposes of hiding that listing from any given search of sold items the seller only needs to leave it active within their active listings for a period of 3 month from the day that it actually sold. As eBay only displays "Sold Listings" in its search results for a period of precisely 90 days, and after that they fall off. 

And I also ageee with you that the extended period of now 6 months of retaining an out of stock listing also has a great deal of advantages, as well.

[rosachs]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

This may seem like a stupid question, but I usually deal in one-offs and rarely have bulk listings.

If I turn on the OOS option, that only applies to the bulk listings, right? My single quantity listings won't be affected?  They'll just end normally when something sells, right? And the bulk listings will hide from view until I add more?

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All your listings will be affected - eBay makes no distinction.  Which means, if your one-of's are GTC listings that renew month after month, you will need to cancel the listing once it has sold or you will continue to be charged for that month after month renewal, using either 1 of your 250 non-Store free listings each month, or using 1 of your fee-free included listings that come with your Store contract.

-Bob.

[mybigsale]

You can turn out of stock option off or  on in your selling site preferences. If set to off - items are no longer in your inventory when quantity goes to 0. If set to on - items remain in inventory even if quantity is 0 (you can manually remove from inventory or change quantity if you have more items to sell).

The out of stock option is most beneficial to sellers that sell items that  have a source to replenish sold items .

I have come to like the out-of-stock option for my store even though I mainly sell quantity (1) items and will not be replenishing stock items after it sells.

Disadvantage:

0 quantity items in inventory count against your "free" monthly eBay listings ( so remove when no longer wanted)

Advantages:

-What is eBay doing with vacation settings and how fast will they take affect? Who cares. Quickly change quantity for all items to 0.  They are gone from eBay selling. Change back to 1 - they magically reappear. ( I only have a few multiple quantity items to keep track of - and I still do use eBays Vacation mode at times).

-Where is that item? Did it break? Set quantity to 0. Oh, there it is in fine condition. Set quantity back to 1.

-Customer not going to pay? Customer wants to cancel? Need to relist?  Set quantity back to 1.

-Several other advantages to having out of stock setting on (my opinion for my store).

One glitch (feature?) as mentioned elsewhere is that sold items do not always appear when searching eBay for sold items. Sold items do appear when you list all your orders.

[southern*sweet*tea]

Thank you all so much 😊