FOR EBAY SELLERS
Instica keeps one inventory record per item, publishes your eBay listing from it, and takes the sale back in when eBay reports it. What the item cost, what eBay took, and what actually landed all sit on the same row.
WHAT MOVES, AND WHICH WAY
Most inventory tools describe sync as a single feature, which hides the part that decides whether your counts can be trusted: whether the channel pushes news to you or you have to go and ask. eBay pushes. That is why the numbers below are seconds rather than a batch interval, and it is the reason eBay is the channel worth connecting first.
Ninety seconds, no API keys, no copy-pasted tokens. After that, three things move between eBay and the record, and it is worth knowing which direction each one travels.
WHAT EBAY TAKES OUT
A sale price is not a result. Three deductions sit between it and what you keep, and each one is routinely tracked against the wrong number.
eBay’s cut is calculated on the order total including shipping, not on the item price. Sellers who track cost against the item price alone systematically overstate margin on everything they ship — and the heavier the item, the larger the error.
How eBay fees break down →An ad rate is a percentage of the sale, charged when the sale happens through the ad. It behaves like an extra fee tier rather than a marketing spend you set aside, which is why a campaign can raise sell-through and lower profit at the same time.
Promoted listings and margin →Buyer-paid shipping arrives as revenue and leaves as a label. Both halves belong on the record, because the difference between them is real money and it is usually the difference between a good month and a flat one.
eBay fee calculator →LISTING MECHANICS
eBay has more structural requirements than any other channel Instica connects to, and they are the requirements most likely to cost you something silently. Keeping them on the record rather than in your head is most of what inventory software is for.
eBay requires specific fields per category, and a listing missing a required one does not go live. Instica holds those fields on the item and shows what is still missing before you try to publish, so the failure surfaces on the record rather than as a rejected submission.
The two do different things to a listing’s accumulated history, and choosing wrong resets standing you spent months earning. This is the single most common irreversible mistake in eBay inventory management, and it is worth knowing the difference before you need it.
Ending vs revising →Views fall off as a listing ages, and the fall is predictable enough to act on. That only helps if you know how long each item has been listed — which is a field on the record, not something you can reconstruct from the eBay interface later.
Why listings go quiet →ALONGSIDE EBAY
Instica connects to eBay, Shopify and Discogs. Neither of the other two behaves the way eBay does, and knowing that before you connect them is worth more than a longer list of logos. See every integration →
PRICING
Free
$0
25 listings · 1 channel
Operator · Recommended
$19/mo
500 listings · all channels
Studio · 14-day trial
$49/mo
5,000 listings · bulk tools
Annual billing. Monthly available. Full pricing →
FREQUENTLY ASKED
eBay sends a notification when an order is placed, so Instica marks the record sold without polling. Measured across production traffic over the last 90 days, the median time from sale to synced record is 9.4 seconds and the 95th percentile is 18 seconds.
No. It is the standard "Sign in with eBay" OAuth flow. Ninety seconds, no API keys, no copy-pasted tokens.
Yes. Active listings are read in and matched to a single inventory record each, which is the point at which cost becomes something you can fill in rather than something you have to reconstruct. The free plan holds 25 listings on one channel; Operator at $19 a month holds 500 across all connected channels.
It shortens the window rather than closing it. When eBay reports a sale, the quantity change is pushed to your other connected listings — but two buyers checking out seconds apart, or an API outage on one channel, can still leave you cancelling on someone. No marketplace API can offer more than that, whatever a competitor’s page says.
From the reselling course
eBay tells you what sold and what it charged. It does not tell you what the item cost, what the postage really came to, or whether the month made money. These six guides close that gap.
The fee structure in full, so pricing becomes arithmetic instead of a guess.
The cost-of-goods record that makes every other figure trustworthy.
The handful of numbers worth watching on a channel this size.
The defect and late-dispatch measures that can end an account, and how they are calculated.
Managed returns handled as a cost of trading rather than as an argument.
What has to be true of the numbers before the jump is survivable.
All free — the full course of 38 guides. Or start from your own constraint with the three-minute diagnostic.
Free for 25 items · No card · Cancel from your account page.
