Has anyone enabled Inventory Sync yet? How well does it work?

[DCB]

I'm very excited that ShipStation has created the new Inventory Sync tool, that it works with so many stores and now works with bundles. I'm currently using another tool to manage inventory, but would much rather ShipStation handle it.

Having said that, whenever I've been an early adopter of new tech, the solutions aren't always 100%. Does anyone else have experience turning the feature on yet? How well has it worked for you?

[Gosre]

Also wondering this myself!

[klthompson417]

I'm in the middle of this nightmare now. RUN! Do not use this unless you only have a few SKUs. It takes forever to sync, misses the sales you make and then starts all over. It's terrible. Do not recommend. Zero stars.

[klthompson417]

To update, I ended up stopping the connection to my shop because it zero'ed out my inventory and I lost sales. I had already let it run for 4 hours and it was only at 7500 skus (I have over 400 listings each with 70 variations so about 28k skus total by Shipstation math. Those 70 variations are the same for each listing so realistically only 70 skus.) After 4 hours, it wasn't even half way completed which means it would have taken days to fully sync. I made sales at the start of the sync, prior to it somehow changing my stock to zero which obviously didn't sync so the numbers were skewed almost immediately.

I'll stick with my current inventory app. While it may be a little quirky and the view is messy, it works. It has no problem syncing my numbers within minutes for two shops. It doesn't let me oversell and it certainly doesn't change my stock to sold out when it's updating. Shame on Shipstation for rolling out a product that is clearly not ready for use.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @klthompson417!

Hi there, thank you for bringing this to our attention! We’re truly sorry you encountered inventory sync issues and understand how frustrating that can be. Larger SKU quantities can sometimes cause the initial sync to take longer than expected. While this isn’t ideal, we’re actively working on a fix to improve sync speed and prevent this from happening in the future.

We also want to better understand your other concern about Inventory Sync listing SKUs with a quantity of zero. From our logs, we couldn’t identify any zero counts syncing out, and since we don’t have visibility into your store’s inventory counts, we’d love to hear more details to help us pinpoint the issue. Thank you for your patience as we work to improve!

Happy Shipping!

-Cara

[DCB]

I decided to take the plunge and try it out alongside @klthompson417 because I have far fewer SKUs (about 500).

Initial impressions: It works flawlessly with Amazon and Shopify.

I did have some implementation pains with Etsy and eBay. It reactivated some listings that haven't been in stock for years. But these two marketplaces didn't receive stock levels from ShipStation. Because Etsy and eBay listings can be inactive AND have stock levels, it just turned those listings back on with their previous stock levels from years ago. Manipulating the stock levels in ShipStation Inventory Sync up and then back to 0 got the marketplaces to communicate with ShipStation.

Honestly, this could be more of a problem with Etsy/eBay than ShipStation. Inventory Syncing with my previous system was always more difficult with these two marketplaces.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @DCB!

Thank you for sharing your feedback! The development team is actively reviewing this thread, and we genuinely appreciate your input and support!

Happy Shipping!

-Cara

[DCB]

TLDR: Don't upload inventory to a ShipStation warehouse with a stock level of zero.

I think I've solved my Inventory Sync issues. ShipStation Inventory works differently than other inventory software I've used before.

Within "Inventory" it's not totally clear that the green box represents "All Warehouses" and the drop down below it shows all the individual warehouses. "All Warehouses" will show all your products whether they're in stock or not. Individual warehouses will only show what is physically present in that warehouse. If you have 0 of a SKU, it doesn't show up as "zero," it just doesn't show up.

When I uploaded my inventory, I included all products — including those with 0 stock — to my individual warehouse.

My guess is this triggered listing activity on eBay and Etsy and moved those previously inactive listings to "active."

And because inactive listings can have stock on eBay and Etsy, the newly activated listings reinstated the old stock quantity they had years ago when I deactivated them.

Within ShipStation, I adjusted the stock quantity up, waited for a response from the marketplaces and then returned them to zero, and that seemed to shock the systems back into communication.

[DCB · Accepted solution]

Do yourself a favor: DO NOT USE INVENTORY SYNC. I should've listened to @klthompson417. I gave it more chances than I should've. I oversold products, sold products I haven't had in stock in years, and Amazon has removed many listings as a result.

I turned off Inventory Sync today, and I won't come back.

This tool is nowhere close to being ready for customers to use. It's crazy that they're charging a tack-on fee for a tool that should never have left beta-testing.

[CaraAdmin]

Hello @DCB!

Thank you for sharing your feedback! It’s incredibly valuable for us to understand how our systems work for our merchants so we can continue improving. Our team is actively investigating the issue and will reach out to you with a solution as soon as possible.

Happy Shipping and Holidays!

-Cara