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What's New in Mail Extractor Plus 2.0
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Importing Alibris Orders
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Order Selection by Shipping Method (Expedited
or International)
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Importing Marketplace orders directly from
Amazon, not from emails any longer
- Importing Half.com orders from order files,
through FTP (only Power Sellers)
- Importing eBay orders from PayPal emails
(only eBay Store sellers)
- Local Inventory management, integration
with orders importing
- Uploading items to Amazon, Half.com (Power
Sellers), eBay Stores and Alibris in
one step
- Uploading modify files to Amazon, Half.com
(Power Sellers), eBay and Alibris in one step
- Enhanced searching, customizable search result
layout in the Backup window
- Flat Rate Box option added
- Enhanced automatic backup
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Importing custom combination of order types
Importing
Alibris Orders
The latest version can import your orders from Alibris. It seamlessly
connects to Alibris, and your orders are in ME in a few seconds. Change
the Status field of orders according to your ability to confirm (ship)
or cancel them, and them select "Confirm/Cancel Alibris Orders"
in the menu to transfer your selection to Alibris.
Order
selection by Shipping Method
The same way you can choose from a group of orders by selling venue,
you can now select orders by Expedited or International shipping method,
disregarding the site they are coming from.
Importing Marketplace orders directly
from Amazon
This version of the program can import your Amazon Marketplace orders
from Amazon Order Fulfillment Report (AOFR), instead of emails as previously.
You don't even have to generate or download the report - Mail Extractor
Plus will do it for you, and save it as LastFulfillmentReport.txt (in
C:\Program Files\Common Files\MEP). Since AOFR does not contain all the details that most of the sellers
would like to have, the program will get them from the local inventory.
The local inventory is accessible through Inventory Manager - a new
feature in the program. It is essential for sellers to maintain their
local inventory database in Mail Extractor. It is done simply by importing
Inventory Loader files that users upload to Amazon when adding new items.
In the future, your regular procedure will be to import the file in
the local inventory, and if you want, it will upload it automatically
to Amazon. You will initially import the latest Amazon Open Listings
Report (create it manually on Amazon and download to your computer),
to import your currently selling items. In this occassion the program
won't try to upload anything - it just imports. The next file you will
import in the local inventory is an Inventory Loader file (Add/Modify/Delete)
you created (most likely in Seller Engine). It will add new items to
the local database, and offer you to upload them to Amazon, so that
you don't have to upload it manually.
Importing
Half.com orders from order files, through FTP (only Power Sellers)
This option
is available only for Power Sellers. You need to have access to your
FTP account on Half. If you don't have it, write to loadingsupport@half.com
and and ask for it. It is about Half.com creating simple files with
your order details, and storing them in a dedicated folder on their
FTP server. Mail Extractor Plus accesses this folder, downloads and
stores new files in a local folder (C:\Program Files\Common Files\MEP\Half_FTP\order)
and imports your orders from the stored files. It keeps track of your
orders (eliminating duplicates) by downloading only the files that have
not yet been downloaded. So if you delete an order file in the local
folder, the program will re-download it the next times you import your
Half.com orders.
The
order files on Half.com are created on a regular basis, several times
a day, depending on the option you choose and ask for on Half.com:
•
Once per day delivered at 8 AM EST
• Once per day delivered at 10 AM EST
• Three times a day delivered at 5AM, 1PM and 10PM EST
• Once per hour
Before
your orders can be processed via FTP, you will need to speak to a member
of the Inventory Operations group. This pre-automation conference call
will allow you to ask technical questions, as well as provide the Inventory
Ops team member with needed information. Your Business Development acquisition
manager will provide you with the contact information.
To
learn more about automated processing, please download Automated
Order User Guide.
Just
as with Amazon Marketplace, the program here also gets additional details
(not found in the order files) from your local inventory database.
Importing
eBay orders from PayPal emails (only eBay Store sellers)
This option is only for eBay Store sellers, and
not for the Fixed Price option or any other. At this point, the program
enables eBay sellers to import their orders only from PayPal
notification emails (you must have PayPal account). This is what you
have to do in order to start processing your eBay orders in Mail Extractor
Plus:
• open a
Store on eBay
• contact an eBay representative and ask for access to Bulk Catalog
Lister (loadingsupport@half.com)
•
upload your items to eBay through Inventory Manager (explained in the
next topic)
Bulk
Catalog Lister is an eBay website where you can upload your items as
records in a file (at this point, you will not need a token
to upload files to eBay. That would be an option in one of the next
versions of ME+). You don't upload the file manually, Mail Extractor
Plus will internally do it for you, right after you import items in
the local inventory. After some time, eBay will create a result file.
The time varies depending on the number of items you uploaded in the
file. An average minimal time is approx. 5 min., and can be signicifantly
longer. eBay sends you an email after the file is generated, and then
you can click on the link in the email, which will take you to the Bulk
Catalog Lister website wherefrom you can download your result file.
Or you can occasionally refresh the Bulk Catalog Lister website, and
check for the result file you expect. The result file is important because
it contains eBay ItemID's of your items. ItemID is a unique number generated
by eBay and associated with your item. It is the only link to your items
on eBay, and is essential when Mail Extractor Plus looks for your item
details in the local inventory or when updating the Quantity field on
eBay. You need to import every result file into the local inventory
database. Then you are ready to import your eBay orders from PayPal
emails.
Local
Inventory management, integration with orders importing
The Inventory Manager is a window that provides interface for importing
and exporting files to and from your local database. In the lower part
of the window is a table, for your convenience, to browse and search
your database. The Quantity field is editable, you can change the value
anytime, if you need to. It is also automatically changed (reduced value)
after importing new orders in the main window of the program - the program
takes the SKU and Quantity value from orders and looks for the record
with the sam SKU in the table. If found, it decrements the Quantity
field value by Quantity from the order (for eBay orders, it looks for
eBay ItemsID, not SKU).
The
items are imported to the table from Amazon Open Listing Report file
and from Inventory Loader files (Add/Modify/Delete). When importing
items in the table, users must make sure to select the appropriate option
in the menu to tell the Inventory Manager to create (and upload) the
items to Amazon.co.uk/Half.com/eBay/Alibris.
The upper part of the window is only for eBay sellers, they need to fill
in the fields before importing new items in the database. The database
can also be exported in any time as Amazon Open Listings Report.
Uploading
items to Amazon, Half.com (Power Sellers), and eBay Stores in one step
When importing items in Inventory Manager database, the program can
upload the imported items to Amazon.co.uk/Half.com/eBay/Alibris in appropriate formats, one by one, in one batch. You will be prompted
to confirm the actions. In order to turn on this these options, you
need to select Import/Export -> Upload Options, and check the corresponding
check box(es) before importing new items. If you fail to do so in the
first place, you can do it after and then re-import new items.. In other
words, importing new items twice (or more) does not ruin anything, because
items with the same SKU are replaced with the new ones, if in file being
imported.
Uploading
modify files to Amazon, Half.com (Power Sellers), and eBay in one step
In this version of the program, modify files are not just created,
but also automatically uploaded to corresponding sites. After pressing
one of the modify buttons, you will be prompted to choose between automatic
upload and only creation of the upload file (which you can later manually
upload, as previously). The program uses your account login parameters
from the Account Settings window to access the corresponding sites.
The
modify files are created only for orders currently in the main window.
Enhanced
searching, customizable search result layout in the Backup window
Searching in the main window now checks not only for Order# but also for
ISBN, SKU, Item title, Shipping Address, and Buyer email at the same
time. If an order with the query string in any of the fields is found,
it gets selected in the main window. If you open the Order Fields tab
in the main window, you can see some of the order details.
Searching
in the Backup window works the same way. The only difference is that
a window is opened when a record is found. The window shows the record
in the "extraction" manner, using one of the three templates
used for extraction in the main window. It makes surveying the order
much easier, and lets you choose the layout. If you don't use any of
the offered templates for extraction in the main window, here's a situation
in which you can take advantage of it.
Flat
Rate Box option added
This is a new shipping method introduced by USPS. DAZzle designer supports
it, and since our program integrates with it through the XML Communicator,
you are now able to choose this option as your shipping method.
Enhanced
automatic backup
The program does not save its files in subfolders (1,2,3, and 4) of "C:\Program
Files\Common Files\MEP Backup" folder, as done previously. It now
creates copies of the files in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\MEP
Backup" and labels the files with the exact time of creation. There
can be maximum of four such copies for each of the program files (Settings,
Data, Inventory). When attepmting to create the fifth copy, the program
will replace the first one with it. This naming convention is a good
solution, because in case a file gets corrupted, and the program fails
to open, you can easily determine which copy is the latest one, and
rename it any copy in the main folder (C:\Program Files\Common Files\MEP).
Importing
custom combination of order types
You can choose which order types you want to import (Amazon, Half.com,
eBay, Alibris). You are not forced to do it all in one step, as previously.
This can make things easier for you if you prefer to work that way.
The default combination is specified with the corresponding checkboxes
in the Account Settings window (Order Imports tab). However,
every time when you go to get more orders, you are prompted to choose
a custom combination, which works only for the current session, and
is not stored. This is good in cases when one of the sites didn't work,
and so you later want to repeat importing only for that site.
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