Glossary
28 terms you will meet running an eBay business — from GTC and item specifics to oversells and Item Not Received — with a plain definition and, where it matters, how SellerHint treats it.
Reusable shipping, payment and return settings held on your eBay account and attached to listings, instead of configuring each listing separately.
In SellerHint Policies are read from the connected store and selected per listing. They are created and edited on eBay.
The identifier eBay assigns to a listing. It is unique to that listing on that marketplace.
In SellerHint Remote actions use the exact eBay item identity within the correct store context, so an action can never reach a similarly titled listing in another store.
Good Til Cancelled: a fixed-price listing format that renews automatically instead of ending on a set date. It keeps running until you end it or eBay stops it.
In SellerHint GTC Guard monitors these listings and records relist rules. It reports and warns; it does not perform an automatic end-and-relist on eBay on your behalf.
The structured attributes of a listing — brand, size, colour, material and so on. eBay requires certain ones per category, recommends others, and changes those requirements over time.
In SellerHint Item specifics are edited in the context of the product’s category, with required fields distinguished from optional ones and custom fields available.
A live item for sale on eBay. It has its own eBay item number, and eBay controls whether it runs, ends or relists.
In SellerHint A listing is distinct from a product record. Editing a product in SellerHint does not change a listing until you deliberately send supported changes.
Unfinished listing work saved for later, before the item is ready to be listed.
In SellerHint Drafts are stored locally and kept out of the main catalog. SellerHint runs a local readiness check for the essentials — SKU, title, quantity, price, store and category — but a draft is not submitted to eBay.
Reusable content applied around a product description, usually a header and footer, so every listing shares a consistent appearance.
In SellerHint A template keeps a protected area into which each product’s own description is inserted, so the template and the product content never overwrite each other.
Your own information about an item: title, images, description, cost, notes and anything else you keep about it. It exists whether or not the item is listed anywhere.
In SellerHint The catalog holds product records. One record can carry different values for each connected store, and can hold seller-only fields that never reach a buyer.
A code you assign to identify a product in your own system. eBay calls this the Custom Label in some places. Sellers choose the format; there is no universal standard.
In SellerHint SKU is not treated as a unique identifier. Duplicate SKUs are valid, because real inventory contains them — the same code gets reused across suppliers, stores and variations.
A single listing containing several versions of the same product — different sizes or colours — each with its own SKU, price and quantity. The individual versions are often called child SKUs.
In SellerHint Variations carry their own SKUs, prices, quantities, identifiers, costs and images. Variation and child-SKU differences are the most common source of import conflicts, so they are reported rather than resolved automatically.
The store nominated as the authoritative source of quantity when the same product is listed in several places.
In SellerHint You choose one connected store as the master. Selecting a master does not merge any other data between stores.
The quantity at which an item should be flagged as running low, so it can be restocked before it sells out.
In SellerHint Thresholds are set per SKU, by you, and only for the SKUs you choose to track. Tracked products appear on the dashboard the moment they reach or fall below your limit.
Selling more of an item than you actually hold, usually because the same stock was listed in more than one place and one sale did not reduce the other listing in time.
In SellerHint Inventory Sync reduces the drift that causes this. No tool can prevent every oversell, because a sale can happen between one check and the next.
Keeping the available quantity aligned across listings without changing anything else about them.
In SellerHint Inventory Sync is deliberately narrow. A general listing synchroniser can overwrite a title, price or description that was correct; quantity-only synchronisation is designed to leave unrelated fields alone.
Whether an order has been prepared and dispatched. It is separate from payment status, shipment status and delivery status, though the four are often collapsed into one label.
In SellerHint Order, payment, fulfilment, shipment and delivery are kept as separate values, because collapsing them is where fulfilment mistakes start.
A case a buyer opens when an order has not arrived. eBay sets a deadline for the seller to respond and decides the outcome if it is not resolved.
In SellerHint INR cases appear in Case Center with their tracking and delivery information. You can message the buyer, and issue refunds where eBay permits. Escalation and closing a case happen on eBay.
A document listing the contents of a shipment, included in the parcel so the buyer can check what arrived. It is not an invoice and usually omits prices.
In SellerHint Invoices and packing slips can be exported as PDFs for one order or for a batch of selected orders.
A buyer’s request to send an item back. eBay defines the accepted reasons, the deadlines, and who pays return postage in each situation.
In SellerHint Return requests appear in Case Center. You can message the buyer, accept an eligible return, issue a full refund or offer a partial one, subject to a live check of what eBay currently permits.
The percentage of the sale price paid to eBay when an item sells through Promoted Listings. A higher rate competes for more visibility.
How many times a listing was shown to shoppers. High impressions with few sales points at price or presentation; low impressions points at visibility.
In SellerHint The dashboard surfaces the listings receiving the fewest impressions in the selected timeframe, with views and watcher counts where eBay supplies them.
A private discount sent to people who have shown interest in a listing, such as watchers, rather than a public price change.
In SellerHint Eligible listings are shown together, with a discount, quantity and optional message, and the batch is confirmed before any offers are sent.
eBay’s advertising programme. In the standard, cost-per-sale form you set an ad rate and pay a share of the sale price only when a promoted listing sells.
In SellerHint Promoted Listings Standard campaigns can be created, reviewed and reported on per store, including which listings are in a campaign and at what ad rate.
Writing your edits to your own storage without publishing them anywhere.
In SellerHint Saving and sending are separate actions. A local save changes nothing on eBay, which is what makes it safe to edit freely.
Storing your working data on your own machine rather than on a server, so it is available and under your control without waiting on a service.
In SellerHint SellerHint for Mac is local-first. It is not offline: authorisation, refreshing marketplace data and sending changes all need a connection. SellerHint Web is the opposite — data lives in your Web account.
One authorised eBay seller account connected to SellerHint. Deliberately not called a "marketplace", which elsewhere means a regional eBay site such as eBay UK.
In SellerHint The free tier covers one marketplace account; Pro covers up to five. Each is kept strictly separate from the others.
An operation across many items where some succeed and some do not — common when a marketplace rejects individual changes.
In SellerHint Results are reported per item rather than as one outcome, so a failure in one store never hides a success in another.
Bringing listings that already exist on a marketplace into a management tool, matching them against records you already hold.
In SellerHint Import loads active listings for one store and reports exact matches, possible matches, conflicts and non-matches. Linking and importing are always your explicit decision; nothing is merged destructively.
The rule that information belonging to one connected store is never automatically shared with another.
In SellerHint Listing values, images, policies, warnings, orders, messages, campaigns, sync status and marketplace identifiers all stay attached to their store. Inventory Sync is the one deliberate cross-store workflow, and it is limited to quantity.
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