@alltrightbricks Hi Katie, sorry to hear you had the little messing up you're inventory :-( Wanted to point out there is also no longer the need to download and unzip the entire BS program when Alexis makes a new version, you can simply copy the files from his online version and paste the .exe file and Library's in the existing folder on your computer, this will avoid having multiple copies of BS on your harddrive. Doing so will also reuse the same icon on your desktop, and it will just keep using the existing BSX. As Alexis stated, keeping several copies of BS, either on your desktop or even on your harddrive or on several devices is sooner or later going to cause a mess.
I'm personally also copying older files (orders, logs and backups) to an external HDD, I only keep the last 2 or 3 weeks on my current computer just to avoid problems should the computer crash. I do the same with all my files now actually, I only work actively on copies on my HDD, soon they are 2 or 3 weeks old, I copy them to my external HDD and replace the pervious version, then I run a backup of all my drives on a second partition of that HDD and take a backup of my 'files drive' onto my computer's D-drive. It takes about 30 min every 2 or 3 weeks, but at least I feel safer then before: should anything happen to my external HDD, well I got everything on my laptop as 'backup' on my D drive, should my laptop crash, then I have everything of my external HDD and the loss of data would be maximum 3 weeks (still a lot, but bareable). Using the external HDD also allows to store data from several computers, I oftenly use another laptop for part outs with Brickstock, so that data is being stored on the external HDD as well.
Managing 'data' does require some attention, I had to learn that the hard way myself a couple of times (luckely enough I always managed to retrieve all my data from crashed drives), it just doesn't stop with 'Bricksync' I'm afraid, that's just your store (well and you know what a pain that can be), imagine your pictures, spreadsheets, word documents, mails, letters, bills, bank extracts, documents of your house, etc... 5-10-20-30 years of documents and files can be 'gone' in a few seconds... (I'm counting since 1992 myself, when I had my first computer & still have files from that era)
@stragus I noticed something weird when i use checkprices in bricksync. Everytime i use this command it says to many connections, giving up? any ideas whats causing this behaviour ?
@pwpeter That command needs to fetch BL price guide information, so it won't work during their maintenance. Also, if it's going to retrieve information for several thousand lots, I suspect the server might stop answering the heavy bombardment of queries...
@Stragus @figbits Alexis, the API access of which you speek is for deeper access then just catalog edits trough Bricksync, I don't have that one either. The only thing Mark needs to do afaik is to update his existing API key which he uses to sync, and check the 'edit Brick Owl catalog' checkbox (the one on bottom). This should be enough to be able to use the runfile command for textfiles or to use the command straight in Bricksync.
The only thing Mark needs to do afaik is to update his existing API key which he uses to sync, and check the 'edit Brick Owl catalog' checkbox (the one on bottom).
Just wanted to give credit where credit is due. I've experimented with your software a bit the past two days and I have to say it's brilliant. Since I'm a huge geek when it comes to pretty much everything I've decided that if it's worth using, it's worth overusing, so I've set up a Windows Server in the Azure cloud to run the Bricksync software for my stores. So far, there's only been a few hickups (caused by myself) but they were easily fixed.
I do have one change request though . Would it be possible to have the software check for feedback left on a given order and automatically issue a coupon to the buyer? I usually hand out a coupon when my buyers leave feedback as a way of thanking them. I tend to get behind on creating these so an automated system would be great. I'd also be more than happy to help if need be.
Regarding issuing coupons, that feature is currently missing from the BrickOwl API. Perhaps that was on purpose, as it's something some sellers may try to abuse? ( @Lawrence If you want to add this to your to-do list, we would also need the customer's "user name" to make this work, we currently only have the customer's full name when using /v1/order/view. I guess we would also need to be able to list received feedback.)
Automated coupons would also make it possible to do fancier calculations, like discount coupons of 1% per slice of $20 in all past orders, up to some maximum. Or a coupon with a fixed value worth 3% of any order paid by direct bank transfer, avoiding Paypal fees (I could use that one myself).
As coupons send an email, it is an intentional decision to not automate that. Being something stores must actively do helps prevent customers getting excessive coupon emails and potentially marking BO emails as spam in the extreme case.
The BrickOwl store can be closed temporarily if you want.
If you want to close the BrickLink store, I suggest you shut down BrickSync too. Their API behaves strangely for a closed store, like returning an empty inventory, and that can cause some problems.
@MeanGeek if you close both stores, then there is no reason to run BrickSync and would close it as well. When we say "close" we mean hit the button in the corner "X" to close it like you do all other screens that are open.
When you are ready to open up again. Open the stores then open BrickSync. The program will take care of the rest. If you added items to BL while your store is closed it will update its inventory in the program. Then use the "blmaster" commands to sync the inventories on to BO.
@BobBongo During the maintenance, their API shuts down and produces weird errors; BrickSync will just apply the changes later and/or automatically perform a deep synchronization.
That being said, there was that one time during a monthly maintenance where the BL API pretended to accept inventory edits, then later all changes were silently reverted out of nowhere. To be on the safe side, I suggest typing verify after BL comes out of maintenance.
@MeanGeek Doesn't that count of 4919 go down? It should, and it will print progress every 5 seconds. BrickOwl throttles API commands to about 2 per second, so that may take a while.
More importantly, what did you do that would require to recreate 4919 BrickOwl lots? Did you completely delete your inventory?
@Lawrence Tell me about it, I probably have a dozen workarounds for serious BL API issues!
I still had a few unexpected behaviors with BrickOwl's API... For example, the "total_quantity" of an order can be "null" instead of an integer (perhaps for a cancelled order with deleted lots?). Overall, very minor issues though, good job!
So, in BO I have 124,678 items and after I sync them it goes down to 88,020. I used my backup file and got all my items in BO. I then tried bricksync again from a fresh files. It seemed to work - every once in awhile it would check both BL and BO inventories. I tried the blmaster again and it did the same thing. but instead of 4919 it was 4627 - I'm not sure when and how the inventory gets changed.
@MeanGeek I'm not sure what you are doing exactly. BrickSync's tracked inventory is located at data/bricksync.inventory.bsx. That is your master inventory.
Except when using blmaster, you shouldn't be editing the BL/BO inventories directly. If BrickSync detects anything is off, it will correct any discrepancy to match its own tracked inventory (a sync operation).
So to update: I had one more thought last night, this morning I tried again... but before I sync the two, I deleted my inventory in BO and it seemed to work, but I'm a little nervous about trying the blmaster command. This sync took a few hours and it only got rid of 600 pieces out of 124,678 pieces so I'm happy. The only issue is that it cancelled all the customers carts - so heads up
Another update: Tried the blmaster command and it went smooth. My question and I'm sure its on here but can I have a sale in BO and not BL or visa versa? and I have to use that command when I add inventory and I do that thru BL.
@MeanGeek I don't have separate sales for different websites so not sure.
Secondly, it is a BO thing, not an bricksync thing... if you delete your inventory then there cant be items in carts because there are not items to be had. Thus the carts are deleted.
@MeanGeek But why would you delete the BrickOwl inventory? Please don't do that; BrickSync is able to figure out what has changed while the blmaster mode was on, the software will only apply the required changes. Customer carts won't be affected.
Sale percentages aren't handled/synchronized by the software, so you could run different sales on each marketplace if you want.
@stragus - not sure why I couldn't get it to work before... but its working smooth now.
"Sale percentages aren't handled/synchronized by the software, so you could run different sales on each marketplace if you want. " but I have to still use the blmaster command - when I do the sales?
The easiest way to sync inventories on both sites is to allow Bricksync to take care of it. You can add items to your inventory from a .bsx file created by Brickstock, using the merge command (merge filename.bsx) within Bricksync. There are other commands that allow you to change your inventory - check out the documentation at bricksync.net.
The blmaster command is only if you want to change your inventory via the BL interface. To do it this way, you need to set blmaster on within Bricksync, then change the inventory within BL, and once done return to Bricksync and set blmaster off. At this point Bricksync will check the BL inventory to see what's changed, then propagate those changes to BO. This is a more cumbersome way of maintaining your inventory because as I understand it, it involves a lot more API resources, but the option's there if you prefer it.
Whichever way you decide to do it, Bricksync should always be turned on.
A quick question, it never occurred to me previously. Is it possible to just simply update the master bsx file at the location you noted? And if so, will BS notice and then update BL/BO accordingly?
Sorry, forgot to mention - sales are run independently of Bricksync. You simply set the sale going at either BO/BL (or both) and Bricksync ignores it. On BO for example, go here (http://www.brickowl.com/mystore/inventory), select the categories you want to discount, then select 'sale amount' from the actions menu. Because the recorded base price of your items doesn't actually change, only the temporarily active price, Bricksync doesn't care about the sale.
@Hoddie The BSX file is only read when BrickSync is initializing, so you would have to shutdown the software, edit the data/bricksync.inventory.bsx file, then restart BrickSync.
You'll also have to type sync to synchronize the services, since BrickSync won't be aware that BL and BO aren't matching its tracked inventory.
I just started using Bricksync today. I only had a BO store until now, so I needed to use the owl2bsx program to get the inventory to Brickstock, then upload it to the new BL store before running Bricksync. Several lots didn't have BLID's and were omitted from the bsx file, then the upload to BL omitted several more lots (like 1x1 lamp with slot). Then when Bricksync did it's initial run, even more changes were made. Too much to keep track of, so it looks like I need to do a physical audit to make sure I get any unlisted lots relisted.
I do know to use the blmaster mode when making any changes and to only make those changes on BL because it will update BO automatically after I exit the blmaster mode.
Question time:
1) When using windows user profiles and switching to another user (without logging off of the user profile that's running the program), will the Bricksync program continue to run?
2) My usual method of handling empty lots has been to reuse the empty bin for the next new lot and to delete the empty lots from BO. My BL store is new, so I haven't had any empty lots there yet. Is there any need to change this habit?
btw: just got my first BL order while typing this. Let the fun begin!
I'll first answer question 1 and 2. 1.Try it out: type message in Bricksync, the message will display, then switch user, wait 15-20min, then log in again with the previous user, if Bricksync has new 'info lines' (most likely 2x 2lines if you wait 20min) then it means it is OK. Be aware the sync stops if you work on a laptop and it goes in sleep mode, you can trigger it to restart by typing message again 2. You can set BL so that your empty lot's are destroyed when they hit zero, handy if you re use the stocklocation for other items, you'll need to destroy the lot's on BO then. Should you decide to retain, then you can list on BL with import, by selecting 'new price' and 'new remark' and 'new stockroom' option, this will reactivate your existing lot with a new remark, a new price and 'active', soon you sync, if you destroyed the empty lot's on BO, they will be recreated, if you kept them, then they will be updated with the new details. So how you wanna work depends on your own preferences... Now I'll work on the rest of your message to give some tips.
Bricksync keeps a log in it's directory, it is basicly the log that you see when BS is running. In that logfile (1 per day) you can see what items had an error, it will tell you the BLID. If you want to get these back, the best way is to search the items and submit the BLID for that item, do 10-15-20, soon Lawrence has approved them, at your next sync the will be created. This is a process you need to keep doing on regular bases (as new items enter the database). If you like you can send me your log and I'll have a look at it and file some changes right away, due to a heavy workload I haven't been following up on recent BLID changes, now that the hard part is done at my dayjob, I can get back to doing so, and a weekend with bad weather comming up, so 'online' time ahead :-) Oh, and you don't need to do an actual physical audit of your stock, you can easely compare data... Rename your owltobsx file, then run owltobsx again. You'll have 2 files then, your actual owl inventory and your new 'synced' inventory. By opening 2 files in 2 tabs (2 screens are handy for such) you can compare and tick of what you have in both. The 'leftover' is what you are currently missing on BO, so you can work on that. But if you use the above method by filing request to add BLID's, then slowly the numbers at your daily start of BS (if you tend to do so), will start to grow closer to one another, so just a matter of keeping an eye on that ;-)
Too much to keep track of, so it looks like I need to do a physical audit to make sure I get any unlisted lots relisted.
You shouldn't need a physical audit. owl2bsx produces a log file, it lists all the lots that couldn't be translated to BLIDs. I'm surprised the upload to BL would reject lots, but it's possible they may have renamed some BLIDs since the last database update of owl2bsx.
Finally, the BrickSync initialization will log everything that has been removed (either by owl2bsx or the BL upload). Open the log file in bricksync/data/logs/, it's all there. No need for any kind of physical audit.
1) When using windows user profiles and switching to another user (without logging off of the user profile that's running the program), will the Bricksync program continue to run?
Ehh, that's a darn good question. Does anyone know what happens to running programs when switching users on Windows? Do they keep running in the background, or are they "suspended"? (it's all Linux here, I don't know much about Windows)
I'm now experiencing the same issue the MeanGeek had. I turned on blmaster mode, went to BL and added one new lot, then turned off blmaster mode. For quite a while now I've been getting this on bricksync...
INFO: Updating Brickowl Inventory, 4460 lots to create, 0 lots to update.
Just keeps repeating over and over. The number doesn't change.
Ok, my issue with the repeating message about 4460 lots to create...
When I went to bed last night it was still doing that. I woke up to find that it had completed, but now I have two lots on Brick Owl for every item in the inventory: new lots created with the correct qty and the old lots which are now empty. I hope my carts don't disappear when I delete the empty lots.
This was an unexpected behavior when all I did to cause this hours-long task was: blmaster on, create one new lot on BrickLink, blmaster off.
@lotsofbricks the only way to change the "external ID" of a lot on BrickOwl is to create a new lot (I have been bugging @Lawrence with this for a while...).
BrickSync recreated all the lots, and set the quantity of all old lots to zero, because it needed to change their external IDs. Don't delete and recreate your whole BL inventory (that changes all the lot IDs) and BrickSync will never have to do that again.
That's why it was unexpected, because I didn't delete and recreate the BL inventory. I only added a new lot while in blmaster mode. Today I tried adding and editing a couple of lots and everything worked fine as expected.
Ok. here's a new question: I'm about to list a part-out for the first time using Bricksync. Is this the best way... get set inventory from BL into Brickstock, make changes, save it, then use merge command to add the items from the newly saved bsx file?
@lotsofbricks I personally recommend you upload your new PO into BL first by using the features of Brickstock, choose the correct setting (see previous post), then once you BL inventory is updated, use the 'master' on and off command to sync. If you import, you keep control over your PO as there are 3 steps. Anywhere before final step you can interrupt and go back to make adjustments or even cancel the upload to adjust your Brickstock file, then start over the upload. Personally I find it safer that way, you just need to keep in control of your BL inventory on the import, BS takes care to sync on BO.
When you synced that 1 lot, was it the first time you used the BLmaster mode on/off? If so, when you first synced, lot's on BO matched, but didn't have any 'external ID', BLmaster is more powerfull then a normal sync, so when BS didn't see a match between the BL inventory (with internal ID) and your BO inventory (without external ID's), it is not unlikely it caused indeed what Stragus mentioned: the 'set to zero' of all existing lot's and recreation of new lot's (with external ID). One thing left to do: destroy all lot's without ID (you can 'sort' them), takes a bit of time offcourse...
Comments
Hi Katie, sorry to hear you had the little
Wanted to point out there is also no longer the need to download and unzip the entire BS program when Alexis makes a new version, you can simply copy the files from his online version and paste the .exe file and Library's in the existing folder on your computer, this will avoid having multiple copies of BS on your harddrive. Doing so will also reuse the same icon on your desktop, and it will just keep using the existing BSX. As Alexis stated, keeping several copies of BS, either on your desktop or even on your harddrive or on several devices is sooner or later going to cause a mess.
I'm personally also copying older files (orders, logs and backups) to an external HDD, I only keep the last 2 or 3 weeks on my current computer just to avoid problems should the computer crash. I do the same with all my files now actually, I only work actively on copies on my HDD, soon they are 2 or 3 weeks old, I copy them to my external HDD and replace the pervious version, then I run a backup of all my drives on a second partition of that HDD and take a backup of my 'files drive' onto my computer's D-drive. It takes about 30 min every 2 or 3 weeks, but at least I feel safer then before: should anything happen to my external HDD, well I got everything on my laptop as 'backup' on my D drive, should my laptop crash, then I have everything of my external HDD and the loss of data would be maximum 3 weeks (still a lot, but bareable).
Using the external HDD also allows to store data from several computers, I oftenly use another laptop for part outs with Brickstock, so that data is being stored on the external HDD as well.
Managing 'data' does require some attention, I had to learn that the hard way myself a couple of times (luckely enough I always managed to retrieve all my data from crashed drives), it just doesn't stop with 'Bricksync' I'm afraid, that's just your store (well and you know what a pain that can be), imagine your pictures, spreadsheets, word documents, mails, letters, bills, bank extracts, documents of your house, etc... 5-10-20-30 years of documents and files can be 'gone' in a few seconds... (I'm counting since 1992 myself, when I had my first computer & still have files from that era)
http://www.bricksync.net/owl2bsx/
(database from February 8th 2016)
Feel free to inspect the log or send me the file.
Trying to fix some of the 176 lots that I have on BL that I don't have on BO...
owlsubmitblid 836699 3626cpb1214
returns an error: Access Denied
--
Marc.
http://www.brickowl.com/api_docs#catalog
So you'll have to ask him to get access.
@figbits
Alexis, the API access of which you speek is for deeper access then just catalog edits trough Bricksync, I don't have that one either.
The only thing Mark needs to do afaik is to update his existing API key which he uses to sync, and check the 'edit Brick Owl catalog' checkbox (the one on bottom). This should be enough to be able to use the runfile command for textfiles or to use the command straight in Bricksync.
Mark, I have already submitted the ID for you ;-)
kind regards, Eric
--
Marc.
Great !
Cheers, Eric
Just wanted to give credit where credit is due. I've experimented with your software a bit the past two days and I have to say it's brilliant. Since I'm a huge geek when it comes to pretty much everything I've decided that if it's worth using, it's worth overusing, so I've set up a Windows Server in the Azure cloud to run the Bricksync software for my stores. So far, there's only been a few hickups (caused by myself) but they were easily fixed.
I do have one change request though
Thanks again!
Regarding issuing coupons, that feature is currently missing from the BrickOwl API. Perhaps that was on purpose, as it's something some sellers may try to abuse? ( @Lawrence If you want to add this to your to-do list, we would also need the customer's "user name" to make this work, we currently only have the customer's full name when using /v1/order/view. I guess we would also need to be able to list received feedback.)
Automated coupons would also make it possible to do fancier calculations, like discount coupons of 1% per slice of $20 in all past orders, up to some maximum. Or a coupon with a fixed value worth 3% of any order paid by direct bank transfer, avoiding Paypal fees (I could use that one myself).
If you want to close the BrickLink store, I suggest you shut down BrickSync too. Their API behaves strangely for a closed store, like returning an empty inventory, and that can cause some problems.
When you are ready to open up again. Open the stores then open BrickSync. The program will take care of the rest. If you added items to BL while your store is closed it will update its inventory in the program. Then use the "blmaster" commands to sync the inventories on to BO.
just a short question from my side
What to do while BL is in maintenance mode, shut down the BO store while this duration or will all syncros done after the downtime of BL?
kind regards from germany
Klaus
That being said, there was that one time during a monthly maintenance where the BL API pretended to accept inventory edits, then later all changes were silently reverted out of nowhere. To be on the safe side, I suggest typing verify after BL comes out of maintenance.
but now its running (which looks like a loop)
INFO: Updating Brickowl Inventory, 4919 lots to create, 0 lots to update. - over and over again.
More importantly, what did you do that would require to recreate 4919 BrickOwl lots? Did you completely delete your inventory?
@Lawrence Tell me about it, I probably have a dozen workarounds for serious BL API issues!
I still had a few unexpected behaviors with BrickOwl's API... For example, the "total_quantity" of an order can be "null" instead of an integer (perhaps for a cancelled order with deleted lots?). Overall, very minor issues though, good job!
but it will take some time.
Except when using blmaster, you shouldn't be editing the BL/BO inventories directly. If BrickSync detects anything is off, it will correct any discrepancy to match its own tracked inventory (a sync operation).
Secondly, it is a BO thing, not an bricksync thing... if you delete your inventory then there cant be items in carts because there are not items to be had. Thus the carts are deleted.
Sale percentages aren't handled/synchronized by the software, so you could run different sales on each marketplace if you want.
"Sale percentages aren't handled/synchronized by the software, so you could run different sales on each marketplace if you want. " but I have to still use the blmaster command - when I do the sales?
The easiest way to sync inventories on both sites is to allow Bricksync to take care of it. You can add items to your inventory from a .bsx file created by Brickstock, using the merge command (merge filename.bsx) within Bricksync. There are other commands that allow you to change your inventory - check out the documentation at bricksync.net.
The blmaster command is only if you want to change your inventory via the BL interface. To do it this way, you need to set blmaster on within Bricksync, then change the inventory within BL, and once done return to Bricksync and set blmaster off. At this point Bricksync will check the BL inventory to see what's changed, then propagate those changes to BO. This is a more cumbersome way of maintaining your inventory because as I understand it, it involves a lot more API resources, but the option's there if you prefer it.
Whichever way you decide to do it, Bricksync should always be turned on.
@Stragus
A quick question, it never occurred to me previously. Is it possible to just simply update the master bsx file at the location you noted? And if so, will BS notice and then update BL/BO accordingly?
Sorry, forgot to mention - sales are run independently of Bricksync. You simply set the sale going at either BO/BL (or both) and Bricksync ignores it. On BO for example, go here (http://www.brickowl.com/mystore/inventory), select the categories you want to discount, then select 'sale amount' from the actions menu. Because the recorded base price of your items doesn't actually change, only the temporarily active price, Bricksync doesn't care about the sale.
You'll also have to type sync to synchronize the services, since BrickSync won't be aware that BL and BO aren't matching its tracked inventory.
I do know to use the blmaster mode when making any changes and to only make those changes on BL because it will update BO automatically after I exit the blmaster mode.
Question time:
1) When using windows user profiles and switching to another user (without logging off of the user profile that's running the program), will the Bricksync program continue to run?
2) My usual method of handling empty lots has been to reuse the empty bin for the next new lot and to delete the empty lots from BO. My BL store is new, so I haven't had any empty lots there yet. Is there any need to change this habit?
btw: just got my first BL order while typing this. Let the fun begin!
1.Try it out: type message in Bricksync, the message will display, then switch user, wait 15-20min, then log in again with the previous user, if Bricksync has new 'info lines' (most likely 2x 2lines if you wait 20min) then it means it is OK. Be aware the sync stops if you work on a laptop and it goes in sleep mode, you can trigger it to restart by typing message again
2. You can set BL so that your empty lot's are destroyed when they hit zero, handy if you re use the stocklocation for other items, you'll need to destroy the lot's on BO then.
Should you decide to retain, then you can list on BL with import, by selecting 'new price' and 'new remark' and 'new stockroom' option, this will reactivate your existing lot with a new remark, a new price and 'active', soon you sync, if you destroyed the empty lot's on BO, they will be recreated, if you kept them, then they will be updated with the new details. So how you wanna work depends on your own preferences...
Now I'll work on the rest of your message to give some tips.
If you like you can send me your log and I'll have a look at it and file some changes right away, due to a heavy workload I haven't been following up on recent BLID changes, now that the hard part is done at my dayjob, I can get back to doing so, and a weekend with bad weather comming up, so 'online' time ahead :-)
Oh, and you don't need to do an actual physical audit of your stock, you can easely compare data...
Rename your owltobsx file, then run owltobsx again. You'll have 2 files then, your actual owl inventory and your new 'synced' inventory. By opening 2 files in 2 tabs (2 screens are handy for such) you can compare and tick of what you have in both. The 'leftover' is what you are currently missing on BO, so you can work on that.
But if you use the above method by filing request to add BLID's, then slowly the numbers at your daily start of BS (if you tend to do so), will start to grow closer to one another, so just a matter of keeping an eye on that ;-)
Finally, the BrickSync initialization will log everything that has been removed (either by owl2bsx or the BL upload). Open the log file in bricksync/data/logs/, it's all there. No need for any kind of physical audit. Ehh, that's a darn good question.
INFO: Updating Brickowl Inventory, 4460 lots to create, 0 lots to update.
Just keeps repeating over and over. The number doesn't change.
If switching users and not logging off, the program DOES continue to run.
Ok, my issue with the repeating message about 4460 lots to create...
When I went to bed last night it was still doing that. I woke up to find that it had completed, but now I have two lots on Brick Owl for every item in the inventory: new lots created with the correct qty and the old lots which are now empty. I hope my carts don't disappear when I delete the empty lots.
This was an unexpected behavior when all I did to cause this hours-long task was: blmaster on, create one new lot on BrickLink, blmaster off.
BrickSync recreated all the lots, and set the quantity of all old lots to zero, because it needed to change their external IDs. Don't delete and recreate your whole BL inventory (that changes all the lot IDs) and BrickSync will never have to do that again.
Ok. here's a new question: I'm about to list a part-out for the first time using Bricksync. Is this the best way... get set inventory from BL into Brickstock, make changes, save it, then use merge command to add the items from the newly saved bsx file?
I personally recommend you upload your new PO into BL first by using the features of Brickstock, choose the correct setting (see previous post), then once you BL inventory is updated, use the 'master' on and off command to sync. If you import, you keep control over your PO as there are 3 steps. Anywhere before final step you can interrupt and go back to make adjustments or even cancel the upload to adjust your Brickstock file, then start over the upload. Personally I find it safer that way, you just need to keep in control of your BL inventory on the import, BS takes care to sync on BO.
When you synced that 1 lot, was it the first time you used the BLmaster mode on/off?
If so, when you first synced, lot's on BO matched, but didn't have any 'external ID', BLmaster is more powerfull then a normal sync, so when BS didn't see a match between the BL inventory (with internal ID) and your BO inventory (without external ID's), it is not unlikely it caused indeed what Stragus mentioned: the 'set to zero' of all existing lot's and recreation of new lot's (with external ID). One thing left to do: destroy all lot's without ID (you can 'sort' them), takes a bit of time offcourse...