As a dropshipping seller, you will probably relate: you have hundreds of products on your e-commerce platform, like Shopify and WooCommerce, and each product has an inventory-count of thousands.

When selling on your e-commerce only you don’t experience any problems with the inventory. But the troubles begin when you want to export your products to additional selling channels.

In fact, some of them have limits that make the import almost impossible:

Etsy, for example, accepts a maximum of 999 quantity on each variation;
eBay, on the other hand, has selling limits that restrict the total amount of listings you can have every month (based on both total quantity and revenues, i.e. price).

Therefore, when exporting your products in bulk with Nembol, you get an error from these channels and your listings are blocked.

Sure, you could manually change the inventory-count on all your listings, but then the inventory sync wouldn’t work anymore. And you need it if you want to automatically communicate to the warehouse that you have sold items (by the way, Nembol also imports orders into Shopify).

Furthermore, you don’t get to decide the overall inventory, because it’s centrally determined by the dropshipping warehouse.

Nembol uploads your products with a partial inventory

Nembol’s “Inventory control” function allows you to set a maximum inventory-count for each SKU, so that you can decide how much quantity you want to be pushed to a specific channel. Then, Nembol automatically restocks the items as you sell them.

Continue reading and learn how it works.

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How to set an inventory-maximum for a given channel

Control your inventory

With the “inventory control” feature, you can set a quantity-limit on each SKU for eBay and/or Etsy.

This means that, when you export your listings to those two channels, Nembol will push only a partial inventory for each of your SKUs.

The function works like a quantity-ceiling: your products will show only a limited portion of your total inventory. This way, you can successfully publish all your products to eBay and Etsy and sync your inventory.

Then, as you sell, Nembol automatically restocks your products on eBay.

choose an inventory quantity maximum for every sKU to sell on ebay and etsy with a partial inventory-count

Automatically restock products

Now that you have all your products listed on multiple channels, you start selling. With the Quantity Sync turned ON, it doesn’t matter where you sell: Nembol keeps your inventory synced across all your channels.

What happens when you sell a product on -say – eBay, where you have an inventory-limit?

The answer is really simple: Nembol shares the sale on all other channels, reducing the quantity accordingly. Then:

If the resulting available quantity is larger than what you have left on eBay, Nembol will automatically restock the product (or the variation) on eBay until it matches the limit.
If the current availability becomes smaller than the limit, Nembol will simply ignores the setting and leaves eBay untouched.

Read some examples for eBay and Etsy below.

Publish on eBay without being stopped by selling limits

eBay selling limitations prevent you from listing your products

eBay selling limits are a problem especially for 2 kind of users:

Dropshippers with gazillions of inventory-quantity;
Sellers who just opened a new account on eBay.

The latter case is really frequent among Nembol users. Many of them have been selling for years on Etsy, or Shopify, or WooCommerce, and they have a huge catalog with a large inventory.

But when they open a new account on eBay, they have to confront the strict limitations on quantities to which new users are subjected. This also applies to experienced eBay sellers who simply open a second account.

Raise your selling limits

The first thing we suggest doing is to periodically ask eBay to raise your selling limit. You can verify if you’re eligible for a raise on this page.

Raise your limits every month, to progressively increase the quantity you can sell on eBay.

How to export products to eBay with a reduced inventory count

To set a quantity-ceiling in your eBay in Nembol, go to the Sync Settings, click on “Inventory control” and activate it for eBay, then type in the number corresponding to the upper limit.

By doing so, every time you export listings to eBay, Nembol will publish each SKU with that given inventory-maximum.

When you sell in any other channel, eBay’s inventory will remain untouched (until your overall inventory becomes lower than the limit). Other channels’ quantity will be updated.
Every time you sell on eBay, the inventory will be reduced on the other connected channels, but eBay’s quantity will remain equal to the one you’ve chosen (until your overall inventory becomes lower than your limit).

set a maximum to your inventory quantity to publish and sync products that have a much larger inventory-count on other channels, like shopify or woocommerce

What limit should you choose?

It depends, mainly on your current limit. This decision requires some math.

Example: if you can currently list up to 2000 products, and you have 100 listings with 2 variants each (200 SKUs in total), you have to set the limit to:

2000 / (200) = 10

Inventory control and out-of-stock

If you want to have the limit set to 1, make sure you have the out-of-stock option active.
Otherwise, the listing will be ended by eBay before Nembol can restock it. This combination of settings can help you prevent stock-outs and keep selling even with a reduced inventory count.

Publish on Etsy with 999 inventory-limit

Etsy is limited to 999

Etsy has a 999 inventory-limit one each SKU. This applies to everyone.

When listing with Nembol, you can use the Quantity Bulk Edit function to reduce the inventory of multiple products to 999. This solution is sufficient when you want to migrate the listings, but it doesn’t allow Nembol to correctly sync quantities across multiple channels.

Set an inventory limit in Nembol

If you want to successfully sync products across Etsy and other channels (where you have an inventory-quantity larger than 999), set for Etsy a limit anywhere lower than 999. Or just 999.

In your Sync settings, activate the “Invetory control” function for Etsy, and type in the number corresponding to the limit. For this channel, you can simply choose 999.

By doing so, when you export from Nembol to Etsy, Nembol will apply an inventory-ceiling of 999.

When you sell in any other channel, Etsy’s inventory will remain untouched (until your overall inventory becomes lower than 999). Other channels’ quantity will be updated.
Every time you sell on Etsy, the inventory will be reduced on the other connected channels, but Etsy’s quantity will remain 999 (until your overall inventory becomes lower than 999).

set an inventory-quantity maximum of 999 for etsy to sync products with channels that have a larger quantity

999-limit by default

Because the 999-limit applies to everyone, and there is no way to list a quantity above that, we set by default a limit of 999 in all new users’.

Further tips and advices

The limit is on each SKU

When you set up a limit for a channel, Nembol will apply it on each SKU. Meaning that each of your variations will have that upper limit.

Example: you set up a limit of 999 in Etsy -> each variation will have a quantity-ceiling of 999

Previously exported listings

This function will also change the products you listed with Nembol before activating it. However, the change will not apply immediately, but progressively every time an edit (of any kind, also a sale) occurs.

To speed up the process, you may open your products on Nembol, check they have the total quantity, and save.