How to manage inventory on BO?

bricksinbins

I'm trying to figure out how to best manage my store inventory on BO. So far I have been adding parts via the Sell tab in the browser. This works but the web interface seems a bit limiting when it comes to managing parts prices and I'd like to have some off-line solution.
I have looked at BrickStock a little bit but what I can understand it's really only meant to deal with BrickLink. I don't have any parts on BrickLink (yet). Kind of want to focus on BO to begin with.

So how do you guys do it? I guess if you all use BrickLink also then you just sync to BO but if I just want to deal with BO for now, what options are available?

Thanks,
Ken

Hoddie

I used to exclusively use BrickStock to work with BO for a long time. I used to 'part out' in BrickStock, set the prices I wanted, then used the upload/merge method to add what was in the file to my existing BO stock. Once in a while, every 2-3 months, I would download my entire BO inventory into BS, wipe the online inventory and upload the BS file having made any necessary changes.

The only problem I ever encountered was when BO didn't recognise some of the pieces/sets in the file. When this happened I used to move those lots into a temporary BS file, then edit the BO catalogue as necessary before attempting the upload again a few days later.

Some items you need to manage manually because BL (and thus BrickStock) deal with them differently to BO. This is especially true for things like the Friends accessory packs and mechanics tools (those that come grouped together in a little bag), but these were few in number and it was not a big issue.

Make sure you have a backup of your inventory before attempting the merge upload for the first time! I can't remember what I did but I managed to mess it up the first time around. Good luck

bricksinbins

But BrickStock can't communicate with BO directly, did you go via the conversion tools I have seen mentioned here?
How do you get up to date BO pricing info into BrickStock? Since BL and BO prices are not the same, downloading the BL database doesn't help there.
Is it even possible to get the whole BO catalog into BrickStock?

BrickStock has not been updated in about a year so will it work with newer parts and sets?
So many questions...

I understand BL is THE site for both sellers and buyers but personally I like BO so much better and it feels easier to get things going here.

Hoddie

BS is an offline tool for BL. It gets its parts catalogue and pricing info from BL. There's no way around that. I used to upload the BS file (.bsx) directly to BO using the import tools on the inventory section of admin. If a part/set is on BL, you can use BS to work with it (you may need to update BS's database manually).