Selling on Ebay: Order Processing and Accounting with Marketworks

November 25th, 2005

Marketworks is an online software solution for the online retailer.  The software solutions allows more efficient methods for marketing your products through ebay, yahoo stores and auctions, froogle, and Overstock auctions.  This software will also integrate an online storefront that you can customize as needed. 

They have all the tracking for inventory allocation so that you do not oversell.  As well as all the accounting needed for reporting sales tax totals and year end tax information.

What makes Marketworks really strong is the ability to account for the inventory on hand and not to oversell.  This has been one of their strong features.  Originally called Auctionworks, they primarily focused on Ebay auctions; they have branched into many other selling sites while making great improvements on the interface in the last year. 

This service does not come free, but if you plan to sell on a larger scale you will appreciate the service that Marketworks offers.  Customers will get the email notifications which intern will increase satisfaction with the transaction.

If you are running lots of Ebay auctions Marketworks can pay for itself.  The software will auto re-list auctions for free the 2^nd time if the auction doesn’t sell the first time.  The software also will process the non-paying bidders helping to recoup those lost fees.  Not only is automated emails sent out at the close of auction, it also sends out reminders to your customers.  That alone will makes more completed  sales transactions.  If you were to do all of this manually it would take a very long time.  Ebay does not make this user friendly as they would rather not give credits.  Doing these tasks manually in Ebay is very time consuming. 

Marketworks fees are charged on a monthly basis.  It is a pay as you go service.  The minimum fee of $29.95 is charged if you don’t meet this dollar amount with the commission fees.  You get 100 MB of image hosting space.  You might have to pay more per month if you exceed 100 MB. 

The commission fees for Ebay, Overstock.com Auctions, Yahoo! Auctions are 2% of the final value fee excluding shipping and handling and sales tax for each successful transaction.  There is a $.20 minimum and a $3.00 maximum fee per item.

If you have a sales complete on their storefront system: 3% of the final value fee less shipping and handling and sales tax.  There is a minimum of $.20 and maximum of $6.00 amount per item.

Marketworks will automatically launch your auctions at the times that you want them to launch.  This is an automated process, auctions will stop launching once inventory is out of stock, or all are pending completed sales.  The direct link with the inventory and the auctions, are a valuable tool, as some of the competitors, either don’t have scheduled launching of auctions, or they lack on the management of inventory.  

It can be a bit overwhelming to start with, but after you get set up the amount of time you will save when running your online store will be well worth it.

By Nicole Wilson
Best Syndication Staff Writer

Ebay Selling Books at Amazon

Keywords and misspellings:  market works, auctionworks marketworks auction launching software ebay accounting software inventory taxes totals