I’m using GarageSale 7 for about 9 months and find it overall a good program.
However, with only about 60 items listed, I already struggle using it.
I consider GarageSale being well-named : currently suitable for garage sales, but still lacking a few features to turn it into a true “industrial grade” selling software.
So, here are my suggestions (at early Septembre 2018) to improve the software.
Some ideas should be relatively easy to implement. Other ones more difficult.
1. Get the listing description from a <div> wrapper on a remote site, using cURL or equivalent
As having a remote shop (not on eBay), I always have to copy the content of some <div> element
into Garage Sale’s listing description. Not only is this very labour intensive, but the remote descriptions are often completed with additional informations. For instance, when selling spare parts it is frequent to list the parts quickly and to inject more details into the database when having more time.
So what I would appeciate for GarageSale’s listing description is the possibility to open a window that let me fill these fields:
Additionnally should be a button “Update from remote URL”, which when clicked would reload again the wrapper’s content.
2. A global flat view for inventory and for auctions
Flat views are available when clicking nodes in the auctions section or in the inventory section.
Why not expand the concept to INVENTORY and AUCTIONS keywords in top of the left-panel trees, which when clicked could display a flat view of all items.
(Meanwhile a trick for users is to create a root node to emulate this idea.)
3. Predefined filtered flat views
It would be useful to have some predefined flat views, like “All listings that were not published yet” and “All published items”, so that it is easier to repeat the same task on several items in batch editing sessions.
For instance, when one wants to work on all items that were not published yet.
There is still place for new icons near to the listing / inventory / orders / reports ones.
Possibly, per-eBay site flat views would be useful as well.
4. Better linking between listing and inventory
Currently, this is really a pain.
When one item is clicked (highlighted) in the inventory and one switches to the listings, this item should be automatically selected in the listing and vice versa.
I assume that most sellers only have one listing per inventory item.
Furthermore, when there is only one unit of an item in the inventory, the quantity should automatically drop to 0 when the item is sold.
Many of us are selling collectibles or spare parts, which are most of the time unique.
In such case, the link between the inventory and the listing is obvious.
5. Country flags or per-country trees for listings
Coloured blue / green icons in the left tree and in the central pane, could be replaced by country flags telling on which eBay site (US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, a.s.o.) an item is listed.
The blue, green or dashed border could be kept of course.
Alternatively, the auctions could be split into per country groups (eBay.com’s auctions, eBay.fr’s auction, a.s.o.) with one tree per country, which would possibly be even better as the same currency and shipping settings could be shared amongst the tree.
The possibility to replicate the same folder tree for several countries would be useful.
6. A third display mode for inventory and listings : flat view with thumbnails
There are currently two modes when displaying items in the central pane : thumbnails or list.
I’m using very long item names, at the end of which I put the sku that I use as identifier to distinguish unique items that can sometimes look similar. Hence, the thumbnail view is not much used by me, since I cannot see the sku in the titles.
Unfortunately, in the list mode, I cannot see for which items a picture is missing.
A third mode “expanded list”, displaying thumbnails in a column would be useful.
7. Better picture management
Instead of listing the pictures about each other in a very tiny box, please double the size of the thumbnails and make the gallery take the full width, displaying the pictures from left to right.
Put the inventory description field below this gallery, and auto-drop it off if empty.
Add a (+) button to expand the description field vertically, or make it auto-expand depending on its content.
I never use the description field at the inventory level. Then it is useless for me and this space should be better used to display the picture gallery.
Make pictures of the gallery auto-zoom when hovered, instead of having to double-click to open them in a window.
8. Visual indicator when title length is above 80 characters in inventory
It is frustrating when you have inventory titles over 80 characters, convert them to listings and then having the upload to eBay being refused because of title exceeding 80 chars.
So, the check of the title length should be performed as soon as possible, that is at the inventory level.
However, this check should not be too strict. That is, titles in the inventory should still be able to store let’s say 100 characters (or more), especially so that CSV import remains possible and because the user may have to do some copy paste to shorten the titles and also to leave enough freedom at the inventory level.
I would suggest using fixed-width characters and a small vertical bar to show the suggested 80 chars limit or alternatively a count (like 76/80) to show how many character are still available to not exceed eBay’s rule.
9. Warning dialog box when importing from CSV and item title is over 80 characters
If item title is over 80 chars, the software should ask if on still want to import the items or cancel the import.
This check should be performed before any new item is inserted from the CSV in the database.
10. More basic statistics
There is some very basic statistic about the number of online listings in “GarageSale > About GarageSale”.
More basic stats would be useful. They should be easy to implement if the user had some checkbox to confirm that he’s selling only unique collectibles or spare parts (i.e. quantity = 1)
- number of published items for each eBay site
- total value of published items
- total value of items, including non published ones
- mean price of items
- median price of items
It would also be nice if the user could follow these statitistics over time (e.g. once a month), maybe in some kind of dashboard.
11. Inventory cost and price using different currencies
The items were not necessarily purchased in the same currency that they will be sold.
Having the possibility to use different currencies for cost and price, and a basic way to set exchange rates would be useful.
12. Possibility to list on another eBay site.
One sometimes wants to publish on another eBay site.
Tying to add same account but for another country always seems linking eBay.com (text is in English).
Maybe I’m missing something.
13. Allowing SQL queries
Probably a dream as GarageSale is using a LevelDB which is a noSQL-type database.
I’m not sure wheher you did this choice of a noSQL-like database, since the data are a priori structured.
If GarageSale was using sqlite instead, it would be very nice as this would allow SQL queries.
