Overview
Connecting your Akeneo PIM to eBay (incl eBay Motors) via Akeneo Activation allows you to manage your product listings and offers efficiently. Understanding the distinction between a product export and an offer export is crucial for successfully publishing and maintaining your listings on the marketplace. This guide outlines the correct workflow for managing your eBay presence.
Key Requirement: Linking Product and Offer Data
Before publishing or updating any offers on eBay, you must ensure that your offer data (such as price and stock levels) is correctly associated with your product information inside of Akeneo Activation. This pairing is a fundamental prerequisite, as eBay requires complete product data to create a listing and associated offer information to make it available for sale.
Publishing New Offers
To publish a brand-new offer on eBay for the first time, you must use the product export job.
This initial export sends the complete product information from your PIM, along with the associated offer data, to create the listing on the eBay marketplace. A product export is necessary because eBay requires all core product attributes (e.g., title, description, images, category-specific details) to build the product page. Simply sending offer data without the corresponding product information will result in an error.
Workflow for New Offers:
- Ensure product and offer data are linked in Activation.
- Products in Activation must have a quantity greater than 0 before creating a new offer on eBay.
- Configure your product catalog for the eBay channel.
- Run the product export to publish the new listings.
Updating Existing Offers
Once your product listing exists on eBay, you can update its offer information—such as price and stock quantity—using the more lightweight offer export job. This process is faster and more efficient as it only sends the data points that have changed, rather than the entire product dataset.
Use the offer export for routine updates, including:
Price adjustments
Inventory level changes
It is important to remember that if you need to update core product information (like the product title or description), you will need to run a full product export again. The offer export is strictly for updating offer-specific attributes.
Managing Offers on eBay
You can manage offers for eBay directly within Akeneo Activation. This feature supports importing and synchronizing commercial data—such as prices, stock levels, and channel-specific fees—via manual, API, or FTP workflows.
CSV Template Requirements
The offer import template for eBay requires specific fields distinct from other marketplaces.
The order of columns in your CSV file is flexible; Akeneo Activation will process the data correctly as long as the required headers are present.
| Column Name | Examples | Required | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| offer_sku | offer_sku_1_1 | ✅ | This can be the SKU. This can be determined by the customer |
| product_identifier | product_1SKU | ✅ | This needs to be the SKU |
| stock_condition | ✅ | Possible Values: - UsedLikeNew - UsedVeryGoodState - New - Refurbished - Refurbished - Refurbished |
|
| base_price_amount | 10.0 | ✅ | This is the most current price (it could be a promotional price) |
| base_price_currency | EUR | ✅ | |
original_retail_price |
8.0 | ❌ ✅ | The struck price of your offer. (this can be equal to the base_price_amount) |
minimum_advertised_price |
2 | ❌ | |
originally_sold_for_retail_price_on |
15 | ❌ | |
| stock_quantity | 10 | ✅ |
Publishing a Promotional Price for an Offer on eBay
This section provides a temporary method for displaying a discounted price as the main selling price for an eBay offer while still showing the original price. This is necessary because Akeneo Activation's current Offer Import mechanism does not explicitly support sending dedicated promotional offer attributes to eBay.
To achieve a promotional display (e.g., "~~$19.00~~ Now $15.79"), sellers must map both the discounted price and the original price.
Best Practices
To successfully update an eBay offer with a promotional price, you must provide the discounted price and the original price via the Offer Import File.
Step 1: Prepare the Offer Import File
- Use the primary price attribute in your Offer Import File to send the discounted amount, as eBay requires a price for any offer update.
| Data Point | Action | Value (Example) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
base_price_amount |
Set to Discounted Price | 15.79 |
This becomes the main selling price on eBay. |
original_retail_price |
Set to Orginal Price | 19.00 |
|
stock |
Always Supply | Current Stock | eBay does not support partial updates; stock must be included for the update to succeed. |
⚠️ Crucial Validation Check
The mapped original_retail_price (e.g., $19.00) must be higher than the base_price_amount (e.g., $15.79) sent in the Offer Import File for the promotional display to work on eBay.
Step 2: Export the Offer
After preparing the Offer Import File and updating the Product Information Mappings, import the file. The offer will update on eBay, displaying the discounted price as the current selling price and the mapped value as the original retail price.
Important Technical Notes
No Partial Updates: Due to eBay's API limitations, the following two attributes must always be included in your Offer Import template for a successful update: base_price_amount and stock.
Future Improvement: We recognize this multi-step process is a workaround and are actively working to enhance our offer system to support dedicated promotional pricing fields universally across all channels.