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eBay and Stowdesk
Stowdesk reads eBay, and writes exactly one thing back to it. Connect the account once and the money side stops being something you type in.
What it reads
- Your orders. What sold, to whom and where it is going, so a pull ticket and a packing slip can be printed in shelf order — one box off the shelf, every line for that box, box back.
- What eBay actually charged. The fee, the postage label, a refund, and what was paid out. This is the difference between the fee you assumed and the fee you were charged, and it is where profit stops being an estimate.
- What you have listed. So the shelf and the marketplace can be compared, and the items where they disagree can be named.
The one thing it writes
The tracking number, and only for a parcel you posted yourself. If you buy the label through eBay then eBay already knows; this is for the envelope you stamped and dropped off, where otherwise you would type the number into eBay by hand afterwards. Your buyer gets it sooner and the postage is on the order the day the label was made instead of the day eBay bills for it.
Nothing else is written, and Stowdesk will not upload a number your buyer cannot actually track.
The permissions, by name
Three, and you can read them on eBay's own consent screen before you agree to anything: sell.fulfillment, sell.finances and sell.inventory.readonly.
The third says read-only in the name. The second has no write of any kind to ask for — eBay's Finances API is read-only by being all there is. The first is the wide one, and worth being plain about: eBay offers nothing narrower for uploading tracking, so the permission covers more than Stowdesk does with it. What it actually does with it is the paragraph above, and the list below is what it will not.
What it will not do
No listing is created, ended, revised or repriced. No quantity is changed. Nothing is bought, sold or relisted. No refund is issued and no dispute is answered. If a figure in Stowdesk is wrong, the fix is in Stowdesk; nothing you have on sale is touched by it.
Three opinions about one shelf
Your ledger, your listing tool and eBay each hold a view of what is for sale, and only one of them is the one buyers can see. When they disagree the useful answer is never a count but a list: what is listed that this ledger has never seen, what is sitting here that nobody can buy, what is named in two live listings at once, and what sold here but is still on sale there.
If a buyer asks to be forgotten
eBay notifies applications when somebody asks for their data to be erased. Stowdesk answers that notification and removes what it holds about that buyer, keeping the sale itself — the money is a financial record and has to stay, the person does not.
Selling somewhere else as well
Nothing stops you. The ledger holds the sale wherever it happened; you enter what that marketplace paid and every figure downstream is worked out the same way. What only eBay gives you is the automatic half.