Dear PowerSellers,
PowerSell has launched a new Stock Sync feature on 24th September 2020. We do hope that this feature will help you to overcome the difficulty of managing inventory on multiple sales channels.
However, we understand that in some cases, stock levels between PowerSell and your sales channels are not syncing properly. Do not worry! Let’s together with us go through this article below to see what is the reason and how to solve this problem.
Below is the list of common stock sync issues & instructions on how to resolve them.
1. Mismatch of Stock level
There are times you may notice that stock levels between PowerSell and your sales channels are not syncing as expected. Due to sync failure, the stock level of the linked products is not updated accordingly on Seller Center.
1.1 METHOD 1: First, hover your mouse cursor over the error or warning icon to check its content and then follow the instruction if clearly specified. The list of available hints is as follows.
1.2 METHOD 2: If the method above doesn’t work, please perform the following steps.
- Step 01: Click the Retry button, wait for a few seconds and then refresh the screen to check whether the issue is resolved. If the issue persists, please follow Step 02 below.
- Step 02: Unlink the SKU in error and link the SKU again, wait for a few seconds and then refresh the screen to check whether the issue is resolved. If the issue persists, please follow Step 03 below.
- Step 03: If the issue persists after performing the 2 steps above then oftentimes it’s related to technical constraints from platforms (Lazada, Shopee, etc) that prevent us to perform certain actions, including update stock level action, during certain period of time like during Mega campaigns, major platform upgrades, etc. In addition, platforms also release new API versions that are not always compatible with previously released API versions due to business rules recently issued. Unfortunately, they usually don’t give us all a heads up about upcoming changes so we are not able to respond to platforms’ changes promptly.
In this case, we advise you to go to the SellerCenter to update the stock level to resolve the mismatch immediately to mitigate the overselling issue. After that, please keep our Customer support agents informed of the issue so we can re-prioritise the work of our Technical team accordingly.
2. Overselling issue
2.1 What causes overselling issue?
The most common reason is a hot-selling product is published across platforms. It’s likely that several buyers from each platform will place an order nearly simultaneously. This is more likely to happen for fast-moving stock items or for stock items that join Flash Sale, Crazy Deal or Mega campaigns.
Another reason is due to sync failure, the stock level of the linked SKUs is not updated accordingly on Seller Center, which might result in a potential oversell of your products if not adjusted promptly.
2.2 How to mitigate the overselling issue?
Please understand that despite our effort to optimize the sync mechanism, overselling issue will be inevitable. If there’s any mismatch of stock level of Linked SKUs & Available stock (image below), please refer to section 1. Mismatch of Stock level of Linked SKUs & Available stock above to set its stock level to 0 to avoid potential oversell of your products.
Another best practice to prevent the issue shared across our seller community is make sure that you always set Safety stock for fast-moving stock items. We have received positive responses from sellers who have managed to improve cancellation performance by following the approach.
3. Sync Error:501
Most of these “Error E501” is due to the product’s SKU code having “double space”. To check and correct all SKUs that have a double space problem and avoid synchronous errors. You need to do the following steps:
Step 1: Go to the menu “All product listed”, then select “Export listing list” button
Step 2: Select the “All Listings”, then click “Export file” button
Step 3: You receive a file exported from Notifications, then click to download a file
Step 4: Open file, use lookup all SKU have double spaces, then remove double spaces for SKU
Step 5: Go to the Seller Center, open the menu “Manage Products”, then search for the SKU code have double space on file excel at Step 4. Click “Edit Details” and update the SKU code exclude “double spaces”
Step 6: Go to the “Sale Channels” on PowerSell, then click “Sync Products” button at the shop that updated the SKUs code in Step 5
Finally, you wait 10 minutes, the system will sync the stock successfully. Then, check the stock synchronization of the edited products
If you have any questions or issues, please feel free to contact us by email support@powersell.com.
Thank you & best regards.
PowerSell Team
