How Etsy Sync Works
What syncs in each direction, on what schedule, and how fees are recorded
Sync runs on a schedule — you rarely need to touch it
Once your shop is connected and set up, Ardent Seller pulls orders, listings, and fees from Etsy on fixed schedules and pushes stock quantities back to Etsy whenever your inventory changes. A daily reconciliation double-checks that both sides agree. This page explains each of those moving parts; the schedules apply after your initial sync finishes, and pause while a connection is paused or disconnected.
What syncs, and in which direction
| Data | Direction | When |
|---|---|---|
| Orders and sales | Etsy to Ardent Seller | Automatically every 15 minutes — each order becomes a sale transaction |
| Fees and payment ledger | Etsy to Ardent Seller | After each sales sync |
| Listings and photos | Etsy to Ardent Seller | Automatically every 6 hours |
| Inventory quantity | Ardent Seller to Etsy | When a mapped item’s stock changes — production, off-Etsy sales, transfers, stocktakes |
Orders become regular sale transactions at your connection's default location — with shipping, coupons, gift and personalization details, and currency — so they move stock and feed your reports like any other sale (see How Stock Moves). The inventory push sends your on-hand quantity minus your Safety Buffer — a per-connection reserve that protects you from overselling — and can automatically deactivate a listing when stock reaches zero. Listing sync also records daily views and favorites for your listings.
What does not sync
- SKUs never push to Etsy. SKU flows one way: from your Etsy listing into Ardent Seller. Changing an item's SKU in Ardent Seller does not change the listing on Etsy.
- Sales tax collected by Etsy is not recorded. Etsy collects and remits that tax itself, so it never touches your money — Ardent Seller treats it as a pass-through and keeps it out of your income and expenses.
- Prices and listing details don't push automatically. Listing edits and publishing new listings from Ardent Seller are actions you take deliberately, with per-field control — day-to-day sync only pushes quantity.
Fee tracking and Schedule C categories
| Fee | What Etsy charges | IRS Schedule C |
|---|---|---|
| Etsy listing fee | $0.20 per listing | Commissions and fees (Line 10) |
| Etsy transaction fee | 6.5% of item price plus shipping | Commissions and fees (Line 10) |
| Etsy payment processing fee | 3% plus $0.25 for US domestic orders | Commissions and fees (Line 10) |
| Etsy regulatory operating fee | 0.415% of the sale total — non-US shops only | Commissions and fees (Line 10) |
| Refund fee | Charged when Etsy processes a refund | Commissions and fees (Line 10) |
| Etsy Ads fee | Your onsite ad spend | Advertising (Line 8) |
| Etsy Offsite Ads fee | 15% of attributed sales (12% for shops over $10k a year) | Advertising (Line 8) |
| Shipping label | Labels purchased through Etsy | Other expenses (Line 27a) |
| Subscription | Etsy subscription charges | Other expenses (Line 27a) |
| Sales tax (collected by Etsy) | Collected and remitted by Etsy | Not recorded — pass-through |
Two fees deserve a note: the regulatory operating fee only applies to shops outside the US (the UK, EU, and similar) — US sellers typically never see it — and the Offsite Ads fee is only charged on sales Etsy attributes to its offsite advertising, not on every order.
Fees are worked out per sale from Etsy's published fee schedule and confirmed against your imported payment ledger. By default they're recorded through the connection's transaction method fee percentages; you can switch the connection to itemized mode, which records a companion expense transaction for each order's fees instead.
Manual sync controls
You don't need to run syncs by hand, but you can. Open your connection from Settings → Integrations (open Integrations) to find:
- "Sync All" — runs every sync type now (available while the connection is active).
- "Sync Options" — a dropdown to run one type: "Sync Listings", "Sync Sales", "Sync Ledger", or "Push Inventory".
- "Backfill History" — opens the "Backfill Historical Data" dialog to import older sales and fees: last 3, 30, 60, or 90 days, 6 months, a year, or a custom range.
- "Pause Sync" and "Resume Sync" — stop and restart all scheduled syncing without disconnecting.
Manual syncs run in the background and may take a few minutes; the last-sync cards on the connection page show when each type last ran ("Just now", "5m ago", or "Never synced").
When you reach your transaction limit
Imported sales count toward your plan's monthly transaction limit. If a sales sync would exceed it, the extra sales are queued, not lost — you'll see a warning like: "3 sale(s) queued because your transaction limit was reached. Queued sales will be imported automatically when capacity is available, or you can upgrade your plan."
Historical backfills cap themselves at 75% of your monthly limit to leave room for manual transactions. See Billing & Plans for how limits work on each plan.
Daily reconciliation
Every day at 02:00 UTC, Ardent Seller compares what it expects each linked listing's quantity to be against the actual quantity on Etsy, and records any differences in the sync log with a reason — a canceled order Etsy didn't restock, units sitting on unpaid orders, sales queued by your transaction limit, or plain timing skew between the two systems.
Reconciliation is self-healing for transient drift: small gaps caused by sync timing clear on their own within a day and never need action. It also recovers sales the regular sync missed by queueing them automatically. For the mismatches that do need you — like restoring quantity on Etsy after a cancellation — see Etsy Sync Troubleshooting.
Reading the sync log
The connection's Sync Log tab records sync operations that found new data or encountered errors — routine checks with no new data are not logged, and entries are removed over time based on your audit trail retention setting. Each entry shows an operation type ("Sale Sync", "Inventory Push", "Listing Sync", "Photo Sync", "Ledger Sync", "Reconciliation", "Backfill", and so on) and a status:
- Success — everything processed.
- Partial — "Some items succeeded, some failed"; the processed column shows the ok, failed, and skipped counts.
- Failed — the operation didn't complete; repeated failures pause syncing temporarily.
- Skipped — "Skipped due to rate limit, fair use, etc." — usually no action needed.
The term 'Etsy' is a trademark of Etsy, Inc. This application uses the Etsy API but is not endorsed or certified by Etsy, Inc.
Related articles
Connect Your Etsy Shop
Connect your Etsy shop to Ardent Seller — prerequisites, the OAuth approval flow, the Set Up Connection wizard, linking listings to inventory items, and how disconnect and reconnect work.
Etsy Sync Troubleshooting
Fix common Etsy sync problems in Ardent Seller — expired connections, repeated sync failures, missing or delayed sales, quantity mismatches, fair-use suspensions, and skipped syncs.
Billing & Plans
Every Ardent Seller plan compared — prices, transaction limits, users, locations, and storage — plus how Pay As You Go credits, annual billing, signup bonuses, and plan changes work.