eBay API

Why eBay's Order API gives you the wrong earnings number

If your profit spreadsheet pulls earnings from eBay's Order API, your profit column is wrong. Not slightly — structurally. The Order API was never designed to tell you what you got paid, and using it for that quietly inflates every margin you think you have.

This is one of those mistakes that does no damage at 10 orders and real damage at 1,000, because the error compounds across every row. Let us walk through exactly where the Order API misleads you, and which API actually answers the question "how much did I make?"

What the Order API actually returns

The Order API is a fulfilment API. Its job is to tell you what was sold, to whom, and where to ship it. So when you read fields like total or the line-item price, you are getting the gross figure — the sticker price the buyer agreed to pay. That number is genuinely useful for fulfilment. It is the wrong number for accounting.

What the Order API does not contain:

• The final value fee eBay charged on the sale.
• The per-order fixed fee.
• Any ad fee if the sale came through Promoted Listings.
• Regulatory or international fees, currency conversion, and adjustments.
• Refunds, partial refunds, and fee credits that land later.

The "subtract a guessed fee" trap

The usual workaround is to take the gross figure and subtract an estimated fee — "call it 13%". That feels close enough. It is not, for three reasons:

1. Fee rates vary by category, store, and promotion. A single flat percentage is wrong for most of your catalogue.
2. Promoted Listings adds a separate ad fee that your flat estimate never sees. (More on that in what changes when eBay sends an order through Promoted Listings Advanced.)
3. Refunds and adjustments happen after the sale and never make it back into a gross-minus-guess calculation.

A profit column that subtracts a guessed fee is not an estimate — it is a number that is confidently wrong on every single row.

The Finances API: the number that actually hit your payout

eBay has an API built for exactly this question: the Finances API. Instead of gross prices, it reports transactions — what came in, what eBay took out, and the net that actually settled into your payout. The key field is the net amount after fees, which is the real money you can spend.

The difference in practice: the Order API tells you a buyer paid £24.99. The Finances API tells you that after the final value fee, the fixed fee, and an ad fee, £20.71 actually reached you. Subtract your AliExpress cost from that, and only that, and your margin is finally honest.

We go deeper on the broken-column problem in why your gross profit column is wrong — but the headline is simple: use the Finances API for earnings, and reserve the Order API for fulfilment, which is what it is for.

Why this is hard to do by hand

Knowing the right API does not make the work easy. To get a true net-earnings column you have to:

• Authenticate against the Finances API with the correct OAuth scope (the finances scope is separate — see setting up OAuth tokens for eBay sellers in 2026).
• Match each finance transaction back to the right eBay order and the right sheet row.
• Fold in refunds and adjustments that arrive days after the sale.
• Do all of it across multiple stores and currencies if you run more than one region.

That is a lot of plumbing to maintain just to get one column right.

How Fetch Order Tracking handles it

Fetch Order Tracking connects to eBay through the Finances API specifically so the earnings it writes into your Google Sheet are true net after fees — not the Order API's gross prices, and not a guessed percentage. Each order lands in your sheet alongside its AliExpress cost, so the profit you see on every row is the real one.

Because it pulls the actual settled amount, refunds and ad fees are reflected instead of silently missing. And because it runs across multiple stores and regions from one workspace, that honest profit column holds up whether you are doing 50 orders a month or several thousand. Stop reconciling against a number that was never meant to be your earnings figure. Try Fetch Order Tracking and let the right API fill the right column.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the eBay Order API the wrong source for my earnings number?

The Order API is built for fulfilment, so it reports the gross price the buyer agreed to pay and nothing about what eBay took out. It contains no final value fee, no fixed per-order fee, no Promoted Listings ad fee, and no later refunds or adjustments. Using it for accounting inflates every margin, which does no harm at ten orders but real damage at a thousand as the error compounds across rows.

Which eBay API gives the true net earnings after fees?

The Finances API. Instead of gross prices it reports transactions, the money that came in, what eBay deducted, and the net amount that actually settled into your payout. That net figure is the real money you can spend, and it is the only one worth subtracting your AliExpress cost from. Note that the Finances API needs its own separate OAuth scope, so granting only the order scope leaves you stuck with gross figures.

Does Fetch Order Tracking pull profit from the Finances API?

Yes. Fetch Order Tracking connects to eBay through the Finances API specifically so the earnings it writes into your Google Sheet are true net after fees rather than the Order API's gross prices or a guessed percentage. Each order lands beside its AliExpress cost, refunds and ad fees are reflected, and the honest profit column holds up across multiple stores and regions from one workspace.

Related guides

• Why your gross profit column is wrong (and what to use instead)
• Setting up OAuth tokens for eBay sellers in 2026
• What changes when eBay sends an order through Promoted Listings Advanced

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