New eBay Tool To Help Sellers Track Earnings & COGS Suffers Premature Launch Failure
UPDATE 8-7-24
While eBay has not directly commented on the situation, it would appear they have tacitly admitted this tool was not ready for release as they have now redirected the link, sending users to previously existing Transaction reports instead of the new Earnings report.
eBay's new tool meant to help sellers track earnings and cost of goods suffered an embarrassing premature launch failure today with an incorrect link emailed to users and incomplete data showing in reports.
Sellers took to the community to report a link in the notification email they received announcing "a simplified, consolidated view of your eBay earnings" led to the dreaded "it's not you, it's us" error message instead of the desired page in Seller Hub.
I click on the link........
sometimes you just have to laugh....
eBay community rep Devon responded, asking for the exact link that was leading to this error page, which was https://www.ebay.com/mes/order-earnings?external=1&sh=true&source=EMAIL& .
I also received the error message when using that link, but discovered I was able to access the page after stripping out the extra tracking and attribution data eBay had tacked onto the end - https://www.ebay.com/mes/order-earnings .
Unfortunately, that only solved half the problem as it quickly became apparent the feature is not ready for primetime - this account definitely had sales between July 1-31st but the report shows only zeros.
Other sellers confirmed they also were being shown 0 sales incorrectly.
Thanks for cleaning up the link! Agreed that it still doesn't work, but at least it's the actual page and not an error page. Shows no sales for us too, and we had quite a bit in that time period.
thanks for the info..........lol........... went looking for it and finally found it under the payments tab, labeled earnings.......looks like someone pulled the trigger too soon and plus used an incorrect link..
How many times has this happened? and how stupid (pardon me for name calling) does it make ebay look? I'm sure numerous employees worked hard to produce what may be a good product, but how many people are going to shrug it off as another ebay foul up and never pay any attention to it.... It's just a shame.........
I got the same results...the new "simplified, consolidated view of your eBay earnings" page shows that in the month of July it was nothing but crickets for me, for all of my accounts.
This account did roughly $3k and my main account did $62k.
So yeah not ready for prime time is an appropriate statement.
The new earnings feature was announced as part of the Summer 2024 Seller Update, with promises of adding the capability for sellers to add Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) to provide even more detailed insights "coming soon."
Liz Morton
You’ve been asking for a one-stop-shop to view your eBay earnings, and we heard you. You’ll soon have access to a comprehensive report that pulls together your earnings data from across eBay, designed to save you time and empower your business decisions.
All your earnings details, now in one place
You’ll find the new report under your Payments in My eBay and Seller Hub.When you land on the report, you’ll see a summary of your earnings, along with your gross amount, expenses, and refunds for the time period you select. From here, you can filter by date ranges, view your earnings trends, and download a report with your per-order earnings for your selected time period.
We’re working to bring you even more insights
We've heard your requests for even more detailed reporting. That's why we’re working to introduce a way for you to input your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).COGS is the cost associated with acquiring or producing an item, and it can include things like material costs, labor, or inbound shipping. When you enter your COGS, the new report will show not just what you earn from each sale, but also help you gain more insight into the overall profitability of your eBay business, helping you price smarter, manage inventory more effectively, and grow your business.
Some sellers however may not trust eBay with proprietary business information like COGS - especially if they've also sold on Amazon and are all too familiar with how marketplaces can use that data to their advantage and to the detriment of seller margins.
That concern is especially noteworthy as eBay has recently moved to compete directly against third party sellers on its own platform in the collectible card game space under the eBay-owned subsidiary TCGPlayer brand.
Once eBay finally gets the Seller Earnings report launched properly, would you trust them with important proprietary business data like your COGS? Let us know in the comments below!
