Hey,

I was wondering if you guys could help me out with a few questions I have about this subject.

Me and two friends of mine are starting a computer and computer parts sales business, and we wanted to create a system for inventory, figuring out our profit margins, etc. All the stuff we would be putting in the database is here:
upload.minorcrisis.net

Basically, the goal would be that when parts came in, we could inventory them, tag them, and assign them all numbers in the database, which would include relevant information like the cost of the item, size and weight of the item, etc. When an item is sold, and ebay sent us the confirmation email, the goal would be to use php to parse the email, generate an order number with the date and time, and input the buyer's ebay id, name, address, auction #, item description, and total payment amount. It would then calculate the amount paypal will take, and subtract that. it would also generate the ebay selling and listing fees and factor them in.

Then, we would be able to access all these database entries on a simple page, with the ability to check off once we've shipped them and have them removed from the page. That way, we could ship items from each others' auctions as soon as payment is recieved. When we go to ship the items, we would just grab the item, input the number on its tag into the order in the database, and it would calculate the cost of shipping via usps based on the dimensions and weight, as well as the cost of the packing materials (10 cents/sq foot of bubble wrap, 5 cents/envelope).

Finally, the database would calculate the net profit on the item - and aggregate average profits for different products.

Now, obviously, this isn't going to be the easiest thing to do. I'm just wondering, how long do you think this would take an experienced programmer and how much would it cost?

Also, do you think we'll be able to figure out how to do this ourselves? (Three relatively smart high school juniors with rudimentary html skill and some php skill)

Thanks in advance,
Ken Michaud
nexiscomputers.com

I'd recommend looking at www.hotscripts.com and seeing if there's something available there. They have many e-commerce packages (some free, some not) that will probably do what you need. At a minimum you should be able to find something that you can use as a base to build on.

As they say, why reinvent the wheel? Most of the pay e-commerce and DB packages I found there are under $100, which I think is a small price to pay for a total package. I believe some of the companies will work with you to customize their software for your needs; at least they will provide sufficient support so you can do it yourself.

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My partner and I have been working on a new shopping cart system (as if the world needs another one, eh), for over a year. We've been incorporating most of the functions you've mentioned, regarding figuring out the UPS shipping charges using the UPS API, interfacing with PayPal, etc. I'm a pretty experienced programmer, and I'll tell you that I agree with Crystallattice - get yourself a shopping cart program that interfaces with eBay or Amazon, as well as various shipping companies, and payment gateways. I don't think we'll have our cart finished till the middle of this year.

Some good shopping cart programs that *might* work out include SunCart and Zen-Cart. Check out HotScripts.com, as well.

http://developer.ebay.com/

When I was in school, my Senior Design Project had to do with a cell phone app that checked eBay for some fo the information that you mentioned. Look into the eBay Developers API. It's not that bad... we used PHP and some XML parse (Sax for PHP... or something) to parse the XML that eBay sends. It was actually a pretty fun project, so I would recommend looking into it.

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