How to list faster with business policies

Whenever you create a listing, you need to choose a set of business policies: the payment, shipping, and return details you specify for buyers. You can make the listing creation process, and the management of any existing listings, more efficient by creating policy templates that store your preferences for each of these areas.

Business policies are important because they let buyers know how they can pay you, how long it will take you to ship an item, the delivery services you offer (including shipping and packaging costs), and whether you accept returns.

Rather than setting your preferences in these areas on a listing-by-listing basis, you can streamline the process by creating templates. These templates can then be applied when creating new listings or even used to update multiple existing listings.

If your business policy preferences vary depending on what you're selling, you can create a range of different templates. This gives you the flexibility to apply different payment, postage, or return details depending on what you're listing.

How to create business policies

To start using business policies, you need to opt in (you can opt out at any time). To find the business policies dashboard:

• In Seller Hub:
  1. Go to the Manage active listings page.
  2. Select the Business Policies link in the Settings section in the left menu.
  
• In My eBay:
  1. Go to the Account section.
  2. Select the Business Policies link under the Selling subheading.
  
• Or use the quick link.

To create your policy templates:

1. From the Create policy dropdown, select a policy type.
2. Give the policy a descriptive name and add a brief description.
3. Add your policy details and select Save.

When you first visit the Manage business policies page, you will see business policies already created based on your active listings. You can change or delete these policies as needed and continue creating new ones. If you don't have any active listings and haven't listed within the last 90 days, create at least one policy of each type to complete a listing.

How to update business policies

You can edit, copy, reassign, or delete your policies whenever you choose. If you update a policy, any listings using that policy will automatically be updated with your changes.

There are a few restrictions on revising listings, so it may not be possible to update all your listings with the new policy. In this case, only listings that can be updated with the new information will be changed, and listings that can't be edited will remain unchanged.

If you want to delete a policy that is currently being used in any active or scheduled listings, you need to reassign new policies to these listings first.

Policies named "Copy of…"

If you change your shipping, payment or return policy, we'll update all compatible listings associated with that policy to use your new terms.

Any listings that are incompatible with your updated policy terms or are restricted from being revised will no longer have this updated policy applied to them. An automatically generated policy, beginning with "Copy of" will be applied to these incompatible listings. This "Copy of…" policy is a duplicate of your policy before your updates were made, so there will be no contractual changes between you and a buyer for these listings.

How to clean up policies

You can clean up your policies using a special option. Select Delete inactive policies on the Manage business policies page. If you have any policies that aren't being used in active listings, or haven't been used recently, eBay’ll remove them.

Shipping cost overrides

Shipping cost overrides help you save time by allowing you to use the same shipping policy in multiple listings, but apply a unique shipping cost to individual items. This can be useful if you are a seller who has different shipping costs in multiple policies that are otherwise the same.

When you use a shipping cost override in a listing, it affects only that listing. In your listing, select a shipping policy to apply your usual shipping preferences (for example, carrier and shipping speed), and then use a shipping cost override to edit the shipping cost for that particular listing.

Example: You tend to use economy shipping. For a smartphone, it costs $8.00, but for a guitar, it costs $65.00. You can use a shipping cost override to edit only the shipping cost for the guitar, keeping all other shipping details the same.

Things to know:

• Overrides only apply to flat cost shipping (not calculated cost shipping)
• Overrides apply only to individual listings
• If you select a different business policy for a listing after entering a shipping cost override, the override will be lost and you will need to apply it again

You can consolidate flat shipping policies to combine policies that are the same except for their flat shipping costs — by clicking the Combine shipping policies link on the Manage business policies page.

Listings using a consolidated policy will retain their costs as shipping cost overrides, if the costs differ from those in the policy. A policy using more than 500 000 listings will not be consolidated.

Business policies in the eBay app

Business policies users can now view and select existing policies from the eBay app when listing an item.

To access business policies for your listings in the app:

1. Tap Selling at the bottom of the app homepage.

2. Tap List an Item.

3. From the Listing Summary page:

• Tap the Pencil icon next to the Delivery to see your existing shipping policies
• Tap the Pencil icon next to the Preferences to see your existing payment or return policies

4. If you want to change the selected policy for this listing, tap on the policy you want then tap Done.

Up to 26 of your most frequently used policies are shown for each type of policy in the selection screen. You can use the search bar to find the policy you need. If the policy you'd like to use is not there, you can add it to the listing using a desktop browser.

Business policies on international eBay sites

Although opt-in to business policies is global, each marketplace requires its own set of business policies. For example, a business policies user on the ebay.com site can only use policies created on ebay.com. If that same seller wishes to list on ebay.de or ebay.ca, they must create policies on that specific site in order to use them, so that the policies reflect the regional shipping options of that marketplace.