Use this page to manually enter orders from external sources or venues that are not currently supported by AOB. This is especially useful for processing orders from Biblion.uk since they do not come through to AOB. It can also be used if you make a sale to a neighbor or friend. The process is very easy once you get the hang of it.
There are only four requirements. They are marked by a red asterisk (*):
- SKU Enter one per line or separate them with commas. A quantity of one will be assumed. If you have greater quantity, append a '#' and the quantity to the SKU. It will look like 'SKUNUMBER#2'
- Recipient Name Does not matter if you enter the first name or last name first.
- Order ID should not contain foreign characters other than dashes.
- Order Date should be of the YYYY-MM-DD format
Find the SKU (from Inventory) for the item that sold on an unsupported venue and input it in the field under 'Add items to this order'. Then click add SKUs.
Then fill in the rest of the data as follows:
- Enter Recipient name
- Buyer Name if it's different than the Recipient. (not required)
- Shipping Address (including the email address if you want them to receive a confirmation for shipping.)
- Order ID (you can make one up, but remember it is required info)
- Order Date. (YYYY-MM-DD)
- Select your Shipping Method from the dropdown menu.
- Shipping Paid (not required)
- Commissions and other fees (not required)
- Click the 'Add Order' button so the SKU(s) can be decremented from your inventory and the delete queued for upload to your active venues.
The order will now show on your Ship list just like any other order.
A few tips:
- External orders cannot be edited once they have been created. If you need to edit them you have to cancel them using the Move to History option and then re-enter the order.
- The SKU you enter must be in your AOB inventory.
- The Extract Address Info expects the following format:
Name
Address 1
Address 2
City, State ZIP
Country
- The core price of your item is the default price for your external orders. If you want an external order to have a different price you must change the core price of the item before you create the external order.
Comments
I have a question about recording sales from live sales -- in my case a flea. Samantha, When I do live sales (as if I was a brick-and-mortar bookstore), I do not capture the buyer's name -- or any other personal details.
So what would be the advantage of using this function over just marking the quantity as 0 versus 1? Is there a disadvantage to marking the quantity as 0?
Is there a way to use Add External Order without a buyer's information?
There is no advantage of creating an order for your flea market sales since you are not keeping the buyers contact info. There is also no reason why you can't just edit the qty of the AoB inventory item if it's an item sold on your flea market and just be done with it. I believe that previous conversations began being pointed in this direction because you seemed to want to keep track of the orders.
i definitely do want to keep track of things. i was in communication with Rebecca via the general support. My question there was how I could pull a report of sales that I add manually -- and know the date of sale. Her suggestion was that I put quantity as 0 and enter the sale date under Location or Source (rather than the custom field I had created for sale date). My assumption is that i would use what ever system a brick-and-mortar store might use -- assuming they sell online and in person. Do you agree with her recommendation. Would that allow me to keep track of sales AND report on them?
This is really a bigger answer than you'd think at first. To explain...
1. if you add External Orders to help you keep you track of the sales then you open that up to AoB billing you for the item price on each of those orders. Though, really, it'd be the better way of keeping track of your sales since they'd be included in your sales stats and you can download files of sales history and find them included there too.
2. You can avoid the AoB fees by not entering the info as orders, and you can use the source or location, though I'd suggest one of the private fields instead just to keep the source and location available for their actual intended information if ever you need it. However, this method would make it tedious to keep track of the sales since there is no actual sale recorded. There would be nothing added to the sales stats and you could not download a sales history that would include them. You would instead have to download your inventory and then sort it based on the private field that you've used for the order info once you have the file open on your desktop.
Hope this helps you decide with a little more solid information.
Samantha, sorry for even more questions but I really want to be sure I understand.
1. I'd love to manage orders they way I'm supposed to in AOB. I have no objection to using External Orders as long as there was a workaround to gathering name and other information from my live customers. I think they might find it odd if I asked for their information. Do you know what other live sellers do?
2. I appreciate your suggestion, but am receiving conflicting info from AOB. In a discussion about reporting with an AoB staff member, I mentioned I was adding sold date in a private field. Here is her response:
Hi IIene,
Okay I see your problem here and if you are willing to change a slight thing in the process you could make a downloadable file. If you are willing to put that date in either the source or location field of the listing, you would then be able to generate a file. So instead of changing the qty and custom field , you would be changing the quantity and the source or location field. Here is a link to the discussion https://zoobilee.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/59597
Can you speak with her and help guide me. I am not looking to avoid AoB fees. I'm just looking for the best way to record live (non-online) sales in a way that is good for the customer and allows me to keep track of sales.
Unfortunately I do not know what other sellers do but what I would do if I were entering the order data is enter the sku and then only worry about the fields that have an asterisk as they're the only one's required. I would use a pseudo-name where it asks for Recipient Name, and likely just use 'Fleamarket Customer' for each order I entered. You can make up an order id too, so maybe something like FC (for flea market customer) and then 001 (FC-001) and then just keep it sequential.
I advised as I did about the AoB fees on those orders because we have seen often that sellers are not terribly excited to pay fees on orders they do not feel should be part of the equation. You can use the orders or not, based solely on how you feel about it. And you have my sincere apologies that you feel you're receiving conflicting information, but the truth of it is there is no right or wrong way to handle this. Rebecka advised that you use Source/Location and I advised a Private Field. My OCD leads me to only use Source/Location for the data it's labeling and a Private Field is actually meant to give you a place to store data that is outside the parameters of what is considered listing data. Rebecka doesn't seem to have my same OCDs.
Since you're not worried about the fees for the orders the easiest way to track orders is to use the External Order page and actually create an order. It'll keep it in your sales stats, automatically delete from the quantity of the sku for you and show up on your sales history downloads. Whereas if you used the the fields as suggested in that support request thread you'd have extra work to track the orders because there would be no actual order.
Samantha, thank you very much for this explanation and for providing more context. I realize now, I could have been clearer in my initial question. Regardless, I'm in favor of using the system the way it is supposed to be use. Especially since I do want to track Sale history. I'm on board with using fields as they are meant to be used. Thank you again! Ilene