Stock that has not arrived yet
Ordered, shipped and delivered are different states, and the first two represent money already spent. Recording items on order keeps the pipeline countable instead of living across a dozen confirmation emails.
For Online Arbitrage Sellers
Online Arbitrage Software for Landed Cost
In online arbitrage you commit money weeks before the goods arrive, so the hardest inventory question is not what is on the shelf but what is in transit and what it actually cost once everything settled.
✓ Inbound order tracking✓ Landed cost after rebates✓ Supplier reliability
THE SHAPE OF THE PROBLEM
Your inventory exists in three states, and only one of them is on a shelf.
Buying online means a purchase is placed, then confirmed, then shipped, then delivered — and at any moment a portion of your working capital is sitting in that pipeline. Some of it will be cancelled by the retailer, some will arrive short, and some will arrive as a substitution you did not order. A system that only knows about goods you have physically received is blind to the part of the business that is actually at risk.
Instica lets you create records before delivery, so committed capital is visible while it is still in transit. Combined with a landed cost that includes shipping and any rebate you actually received, that gives you the two numbers this model runs on: what is coming, and what it truly cost.
WHAT THE RECORD HOLDS
Three things worth getting right
Landed cost, after everything settles
Item price, shipping, tax, and any cashback or portal rebate that actually paid out. Rebates arrive weeks later and frequently do not arrive at all, so the honest cost is the one recorded after settlement, not at checkout.
Supplier and source reliability
Recording where each order came from turns cancellations, short shipments and substitutions into a pattern you can act on. Some sources cancel a tenth of what you order, and that is a cost as real as any fee.
THE WORKFLOW
From placed order to sellable stock
Online arbitrage runs on a delay between commitment and possession, and most of the avoidable losses in this model happen inside that gap.
- 01
Record the order when you place it
Create the records at purchase, not at delivery. Between those two events the money is gone and the goods are theoretical, and that is exactly the window worth being able to see.
- 02
Track partial and cancelled fulfilment
Retailers cancel lines, substitute variants and ship short without much warning. Reconciling what arrived against what was ordered is where the discrepancies get caught while a claim is still possible.
- 03
Settle the cost after rebates clear
Cashback and portal rebates take weeks and sometimes fail. Updating landed cost once they have actually paid is what keeps margin from being quietly overstated across your whole catalogue.
- 04
Inspect on arrival before listing
Returns-grade goods, damaged packaging and wrong variants all turn up. Checking against the order at unpack is cheaper than discovering it after a customer does.
CHANNEL BY CHANNEL
The connected channels, stated plainly
Instica connects to eBay, Shopify and Discogs. Online arbitrage is frequently run on platforms outside that list, so this is worth checking before you invest setup time.
- eBay
- Works well for general merchandise and overstock lines. eBay reports sales to Instica by webhook, so units come off the record as they sell without any action from you.
- Shopify
- Useful for sellers moving toward their own storefront rather than pure marketplace flipping. Instica pushes products and quantity out, but does not read Shopify orders back, so those sales are marked sold by you.
- Discogs
- Only relevant for sealed music releases. If your sales are concentrated on a marketplace Instica does not connect to, it will still hold cost and inventory but will not list or sync there.
WHERE IT GOES WRONG
Where online arbitrage sellers lose money
Counting cashback before it pays
A deal that only works with a rebate is a deal that fails when the rebate is denied, and denial rates are not small. Treating expected rebates as realised cost is the most common way this model produces phantom margin.
Losing track of what was ordered
Orders across many retailers, arriving over weeks, in boxes that do not identify themselves. Without records created at purchase, short shipments and cancellations go unnoticed until the claim window has closed.
Card float mistaken for profit
Buying on a card and selling before the statement is due feels like it is working right up to the month the sales slow. Knowing the value of committed, undelivered stock is what tells you how exposed you actually are.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Questions online arbitrage sellers ask
Can I create records for stock that has not arrived?
Yes, and for this model you should. Records created at the point of purchase are what make committed capital visible and give you something to reconcile the delivery against.
How should I record cashback and portal rebates?
Adjust the landed cost once the rebate has actually paid out. Recording it at checkout assumes an outcome that does not always happen, and the resulting margin figures will be wrong in the optimistic direction.
Does Instica connect to my main sales platform?
It connects to eBay, Shopify and Discogs only. If you sell primarily elsewhere, Instica can still act as your cost and inventory ledger, but listing and quantity updates will not reach that platform.
From the reselling course
Reading for stock you have paid for and not yet seen
Online arbitrage commits money weeks before anything arrives, so most of your inventory is a purchase order rather than a shelf. These guides start at the buy decision and end at the stock that never moved.
- 01Valuing Inventory Before You Buy It
Landed cost, not the invoice line, is the number a buy has to clear.
- 02Scaling Throughput Without Scaling Hours
Deliveries land in clusters. Listing has to absorb a cluster without leaving a backlog.
- 03Cleaning, Testing, and Preparing Items
Receiving properly: checking against the order before anything reaches a shelf.
- 04SKUs, Labeling, and Finding It Again
In transit, received and listed are three states, and the record has to hold all three.
- 05Cash Flow for Resellers
Money committed weeks ahead of the goods is the defining risk of this model.
- 06Dead Stock and Aged Inventory
A sourcing decision made six weeks ago can only be corrected on the shelf.
Free to read in any order — every guide in the course. Not sure which constraint binds first? Work through the three-minute diagnostic.
Start with 25 items. Stay for 25,000.
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