eBay Clover integration that keeps the register and the marketplace in step

eBay does not tell us when something sells. There is no announcement to listen for, so we check eBay every couple of minutes for both stock and orders, and that check is what tells us a listing has moved. The window is short, but it exists, and it is worth knowing about rather than discovering it the first time a customer buys the last one online while it is going through the till.

The practical answer to that is dull and it works: keep a little headroom on the items you sell fastest, especially anything you only have one or two of. A couple of minutes of exposure on a slow-moving line costs nothing. On the one remaining unit of something popular it is the whole risk, and a buffer of one is cheaper than cancelling an eBay order after the fact.

Clover keeps its catalogue for the register and eBay keeps its listings, and neither has any idea what the other has sold. QuickSync keeps the count in one place and pushes each change out to the other side, so a sale at the counter lowers the eBay listing and an eBay order lowers what the register will let you sell. Orders from eBay land in QuickSync alongside everything else you connect.

Clover will hold a SKU of 100 characters, which is more room than most catalogues use. eBay takes 50, so 50 is the number that governs this pair. A SKU that Clover accepts happily can reach eBay truncated, and once truncated it stops matching the item it came from. Nothing errors when that happens, so the symptom is a count that will not move rather than a warning.

The other limit sits on Clover, which has no field for a tracking number. We cannot write one back, so if you post an order that started at the Clover till, the tracking stays in QuickSync rather than appearing on the Clover record. Most counter sales leave with the customer and never need one. It only matters if you take orders in person for posting later, or if your staff work out of Clover.