Article
Inbound sales sync versus outbound inventory sync
These are two different data flows that are easy to conflate: one is a channel telling your system "this sold," the other is your system telling a channel "here's how much is left."
Inbound: sales coming in
When a customer buys something on a marketplace, that sale needs to reach your stock system so it can reduce the relevant SKU's stock. This can happen automatically via a channel's API, or manually via CSV/API import from another system (an order-processing tool, for example).
Outbound: stock going out
Separately, once your system knows the current stock figure for a SKU, it can push that quantity out to every channel that sells it - so listings reflect the real number rather than whatever they last showed.
Why the distinction matters
A channel can have outbound sync enabled (it's told what to show) without also being the source of inbound sales data for that stock (something else might be recording the sale first) - Packing Partner customers are a common example, where sales arrive via API/CSV from the existing order workflow, while outbound sync still runs to whichever marketplaces are separately connected.
How TrueSKU implements this
The two are deliberately separate: inbound sales can arrive via API, CSV, or a directly connected channel's own sales feed, and outbound stock sync to any connected channel runs off the resulting stock figure regardless of where the inbound data came from.
See TrueSKU with your own listings
21-day free trial, no card required.