Up until the end of 2013 if you wanted to use multiple sales channels then typically you would have had to use a multi-channel software to do so. However we were not happy with how expensive this can become using the existing solutions and for the businesses that really needed this software, it was out of their reach.

The 3rd Generation is a completely new way of creating & using multi-channel software.

It’s a generation free from massive overheads, you add what you need and nothing you don’t, allowing your business to grow & innovate using a proven open source platform, Magento.

UnderstandingE is our way of creating a better future, a future of choice for business owners across the globe.

We will show you everything you need to know to run a multi-channel business using Magento to process your orders, listings, stock control & much much more.

Click here to get started today.

No, you don’t have to have a Magento website, but if you do want one later, we’ll show you how.

We’re using Magento for a several key reasons, these are:

• It’s open source & available for free to download & use (Magento Community Edition)
• It has an inventory system that can manage complex inventory, flat products, variations, multi variations and even kits too.
• There are thousands of extensions that already exist for Magento
• One of those extensions is called M2E Pro, this extension allows you to sell onto eBay, Amazon, Play.com & Rakuten. More on this shortly.

There are 3 versions of Magento available.

Magento Go is a hosted solution by Magento, this is great for small businesses and yes M2E Pro will work with this version of Magento. However the reason we suggest not using this version is simple, choice. Magento Go only has a handful of supported extensions and seriously limits your ability to innovate.

Magento Enterprise is aimed at high volume, high traffic websites and costs over £10,000, while brilliant for the businesses that warrant this, for the rest of us mere-mortals that is out of our price range.

And we have Magento Community Edition which is free to download and use, plus has frequent updates and has the vast majority of features & functions that Magento Enterprise has.

With this edition you have the option to add in any of the supported extension from Magento Connect (the library of extensions) and have absolute flexibility for all aspects of your multi-channel software.

M2E Pro is an extension to Magento.

If you’ve not come across this word “extension” before, think of it as simply extra code that “extends” Magento further. And in this case, M2E Pro “extends” Magento to allow you to list and sell on the common marketplaces like eBay & Amazon.

Yes.

M2E Pro allows you to add & use multiple eBay and/or Amazon accounts as you have.

A note here is that we have dedicated a fair portion of the advanced guides to being able to manage multiple accounts.

Yes.

The business we first set this up with had 61,152 products and approximately 2,400 variation listings for the Clothes, Shoes & Accessories categories on eBay & Amazon UK.

If we can do the most complicated category on eBay, then any of the categories are easy in comparison.

Yes, you are able to have a single inventory base and manage the vast majority of activities on eBay, Amazon, Play & Rakuten, and for multiple accounts for each too.

As you have a single inventory system, you’re able to keep your stock levels correct across all your sales channels, including a Magento website of you want one. M2E Pro also has advanced stock control options very similar to those found in enterprise grade software packages that cost hundreds of pounds each month.

In short, pretty much all of them.

M2E Pro supports:

• All major eBay sites including eBay motors (that’s 23 sites!)
• Amazon UK, Germany, Spain, France, Canada & the United States.

M2E Pro for eBay is provided for free.

This is because eBay have been subsidising the extension for the past few years. This is set to continue for the next 3 years (from Autumn 2013) for at least eBay. And we don’t expect that the Amazon & other marketplaces will become chargeable anytime soon (Oct 2013).

We will need to review what we should do as a community when this happens (but we’re not expecting this until 2014).

Remember that vision at the beginning? That “pick & choose” part, if overnight (which won’t happen, they’ll give us plenty of warning) M2E Pro is to start charging for say Amazon (which has already been free since July 2012) and the amount is unreasonable and/or restrictive, there are several alternatives available and we’ll explore them together at the time.

We should however note that what M2E Pro has built has taken tens of thousands of developer hours, it would not be unfair to expect them to charge in the future. We’re just making it very clear that the 3rd Generation is about choice, if it’s a good choice to stay with M2E Pro (which it probably will be), then that is the path we shall follow.

Obviously from Matt & Dave’s multi-channel backgrounds, “eBay” are fully aware of what UnderstandingE is and our vision & goal for the future is.

Remember we are interacting with many parts of eBay as a business, yourself as an eBay seller, eBay buyers, because if you work smarter, the end customers receive a better experience, eBay owns Magento and Magento is a core part of the 3rd Generation, PayPal another important part of the eBay business, as we set up your Magento website (if you want one that is) and receive payments from buyers, PayPal is the obvious choice for ease.

The only costs you cannot avoid is the price of a domain name & web-hosting.

We need web-hosting as a place to install Magento, even if you don’t intend to have a Magento website, you will still need web-hosting &  a domain name.

We strongly suggest that you pick dedicated Magento hosting from a company that are experts. As Magento will be powering your entire ERP system for you and lesser hosting is just not adequate & skimping here is foolish.

However if you wish to attribute a value to get you started at, domain names are around £10/$15 per year and for web-hosting, using SimpleServers in the UK (which are our suggested solution), you can start right now for FREE because of the agreement we have made with them. Your first month is free for a shared hosting package and the cheapest package that will run this adequately for a small business is just £16 per month.

Note: Technically you don’t even need a domain name, but remembering “mycoolwebsite.com” is a lot easier than remembering & typing in an IP address like “″ to your browser.

Basic pricing updates are part of M2E Pro, but “repricing” for Amazon requires specialist software because of the frequency of updates needed.

We are working with a company who specialises in repricing for Amazon and have had excellent results over the past 4 years with Matt’s clients. We expect this to be ready by Q1 2014.

Yes.

Orders from Amazon FBA can be collected using M2E Pro and entered in your Magento orders page.

These orders can also be assigned to a specific customer group and also be marked as “closed” (shipped) automatically so that a sales record is kept & such orders don’t interfere with normal open orders.

The shipment process for sending products to Amazon FBA will remain in your Amazon FBA account &  the ability to list FBA items (without shipment to amazon) will be available in the first quarter of 2014.

Yes and there are several ways of doing this.

You could update your stock levels manually, import from excel, import via a tool called Magmi which is a versatile import tool for Magento, use the Magento catalog API, write an extension just for your supplier feed, use an extension that already exists to do this or you could also script Magmi.

There are plenty of options here, if you have a question regarding supplier feeds, just ask in the dedicated coding forums here.

Most likely yes.

There are several options that would be viable solutions for an external (or internal) fulfiment company to use.

Giving them restricted access to your sales order processing screen is the simplest option, exporting your orders to CSV/Excel is another, for more automated options, Magento has a well documented Orders API that would allow your fulfilment company to collect & update orders and there are extensions already available that allow scheduled exports of order data, which could be transferred to local or remote locations automatically.

Yes.

Magento comes with an extensive user access control system.

Example:
Let’s say you have a member of your team whose sole job is to work on inventory, you can restrict their access just to the inventory & related sections just for their account, thus making it easier for them to use the system on a daily basis.

Yes.

M2E Pro offer support via an email ticket system.

Most likely yes.

We’re working with an open source product called Magento that has thousands of extensions available, but if the feature or functionality you need is not available you can have it built for your own business.

What we would suggest is to ask in the Magento Extensions forums first and see if us or anyone else has a similar requirement & have found a viable answer.

Yes.

We have a dedicated page for partners here