How eBay two-way sync works

Once eBay is connected, PalmFlow keeps your inventory and eBay in step automatically. This page explains exactly what moves, and which direction.

Into PalmFlow

• Listings — your active eBay listings show up as items, so your PalmFlow inventory reflects what's actually live.
• Orders — when something sells, the order pulls in with the details needed to fulfill it, and the matching item is marked sold.
• Fees — eBay's final value fee and other charges are captured on each sale, feeding straight into your profit numbers.

Back out to eBay

• New listings — you can create and publish an eBay listing from PalmFlow itself. Pick List on eBay on any in-stock item and the composer reads your photos, drafts a title and description, matches an eBay category, and posts it. Review and edit everything before it goes live; once it publishes, the item moves to Listed on its own.
• Edits to listings you've already published — change the title, the price or the photos on an item that's live, and the eBay listing changes with it. See below.

Editing a live listing from PalmFlow

Open any item with an active eBay listing, hit Edit, and a line appears under the Save button: *Saving also updates your live eBay listing.* It's ticked by default. Save, and PalmFlow revises the listing on eBay before it writes anything of its own.

What travels: the title, the price, and the photos — all on Pro and up. (Photos coming *in* from a marketplace are free on every plan; it's only sending them back out that's part of the paid push.)

What doesn't, and why:

• Quantity. eBay owns how many are left — it decrements on its own sale and PalmFlow reads that back. Pushing a number into that loop is how tools oversell, so stock stays one-directional.
• The description. PalmFlow doesn't keep a copy of the description your listing went live with, so there's nothing to send that wouldn't overwrite a real description with a blank one. Edit it on eBay.
• Category, condition, and business policies. Set at publish time. Changing them on a live listing is an eBay-side job.

If eBay says no, nothing is saved on either side. eBay restricts some changes once a listing has sales or is close to ending, and an ended listing can't be revised at all. You'll see eBay's own reason, the edit stays in the form, and your item is untouched — so PalmFlow never ends up showing a price your listing doesn't have.

Untick the box and the save is local only. Worth knowing: for price and photos eBay is the source of truth, so a local-only change to those gets pulled back into line on the next sync. Title and everything else stay as you set them.

Which marketplaces take edits back out?

Only eBay, today. This is worth being precise about, because the direction sync runs is not the same on every channel:

• eBay — two-way. Listings and orders come in; new listings, and edits to the title, price and photos of live ones, go back out.
• Shopify — import only. Products and orders come in. Editing an item in PalmFlow does not change your Shopify product; make that change in Shopify.
• Discogs — import only. Listings and orders come in. PalmFlow cannot edit a Discogs listing or put a new record up for sale there. See How Discogs sync works.

PalmFlow tells you which is which where it matters, rather than expecting you to remember. Every integration card carries a Two-way or Import only badge, the item page tags the channel it's listed on, and the note under Save says plainly what that particular save will and won't change.

As more channels arrive, that badge is the thing worth reading. A new integration importing your listings does not imply it accepts edits back — the marketplaces differ in what their APIs allow, so PalmFlow labels each one rather than letting eBay's behavior stand in for all of them.

Why server-side sync beats an extension

PalmFlow talks to eBay through its official API from our servers. A lot of reseller tools lean on a Chrome extension instead. The practical difference:

• Sync runs even when your computer is off.
• A Chrome update or an eBay redesign doesn't break anything.
• There's no extension to install or keep signed in.

Keeping it accurate

• If a sale or listing looks off, open the item — its timeline shows every sync event, so you can see what happened and when.
• Cost basis isn't something eBay knows, so make sure each item has a cost recorded for profit to be correct. See Profit and cost basis.

Price history and markdown suggestions

Every price change an item has ever had is kept, along with where it came from — you, a marketplace sync, or a CSV import. The item page charts it, and the timeline spells out each change: what it was, what it became, and what drove it.

Listings that have been sitting get a suggested markdown, and the suggestion grows with age. These are drafts. Nothing reprices itself. No price on any marketplace changes unless you choose it, which is the whole difference between this and a black-box repricer.

Your eBay feedback and seller stats

PalmFlow syncs your seller reputation alongside your listings: feedback score, positive percentage, detailed seller ratings, and your Top Rated status.

A new negative or neutral feedback can raise a notification, so you hear about it in time to respond rather than on your next login. See Notifications.

Selling outside the US, and how currency works

PalmFlow uses the eBay site your account is actually registered on — US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the EU sites are supported. Your categories, business policies, and listing currency all follow from it.

Two things about money across currencies:

• Items hold their own currency. The inventory list converts for display; the item keeps what it was actually bought and sold in.
• Exchange rates are locked onto an order at the time of sale, using European Central Bank rates. A sale from March is still valued at March's rate when you open it in July — your reported profit doesn't drift because a currency moved afterward.

If you connected eBay before PalmFlow read your registered site, reconnect under Settings → Integrations to pick it up.

Selling on other channels

eBay, Shopify and Discogs are the live integrations today — see Connect your Shopify store and Connect your Discogs account. For other marketplaces you can log sales manually — the Sell flow includes a platform field, and reports break profit down by platform — so a multi-channel business still gets one accurate P&L while more integrations roll out.