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How to run your yard on YardWyre, start to finish

The same order the work happens in at a salvage yard: a car arrives at the gate, its parts get booked and photographed, the batch goes up on eBay, and the sale comes back as a work order in your yard system. Every screen named below is one you can open right now.

Looking for the shorter version with screenshots? That is How it works. This page is the click-by-click one, for someone with the app already open.

Written guide — no video needed.

Before the first car — one-time setup

Done once, with us, and then not thought about again. Skipping any of the last three is the usual reason a first publish run produces nothing.

  1. We connect YardWyre to your database

    One PowerShell run on a machine that can reach your SQL Server does the whole thing: it creates a restricted login for us — read and write on Powerlink, read-only on Interchange, not sysadmin — sets up a dedicated YardWyre-API employee for orders to post under, joins a private network link, and creates the two photo folders C:\PLImages\Inventory and C:\PLImages\Vehicle.

    Your sysadmin password is used for that single run and is never transmitted or stored. Nothing is migrated and no second inventory is created.

    Your one job here: put your real part and vehicle photos into those two folders. That is where YardWyre reads the pictures it sends up with a listing.

  2. Sign in and connect your eBay store

    Sign in at yardwyre.com/app. Open Manage eBay Listings, scroll to the eBay Stores panel, and press ➕ Add Store. Then press Connect on the new row — eBay asks you to authorise YardWyre, and you land back on the same page.

    Finally press Set up eBay on that row. This creates and verifies the store's fulfillment, payment and return policies and its ship-from location, and brings the shipping policies your eBay account already has into Shipping Methods. To publish under your own policies instead of the ones setup creates, pick them as the store default in Shipping Methods → Store Policies; running setup again keeps whatever you picked.

    It needs your real ship-from address. Skip this step and every publish attempt fails, because the listing points at policy IDs that exist in our database but not on eBay.

    ScreenshotThe eBay Stores table with one connected store, showing the Connect and Set up eBay buttons on the row.

  3. Match your part types to eBay categories

    Open eBay Category Mapping and press ⚡ Auto-Match All Part Types. It works through every part type you stock and picks a real eBay category for each. Tick Show only the ones that need a category to see what it could not place, and set those by hand.

    An unmapped part type never lists. Every part of that type is skipped on every publish run with the reason "no category_id configured for this part type" — no error, just nothing.

  4. Set up your shipping tiers

    Open Shipping Methods. The shipping policies already on your eBay account are listed there from setup; press ⬇ Sync From eBay to bring in any you add on eBay later. Press ＋ Add Shipping Method for each further cost tier you want to be able to pick from when publishing — a small part, a heavy part, a freight-sized part. Setting these up is optional in the sense that nothing errors without them; every listing simply falls back to the flat rate that provisioning creates, which loses money on the first tailgate you sell.

Book the car in

Vehicle Intake, from a phone at the car rather than a terminal in the office.

  1. Get the VIN into the box

    Open Vehicle Intake. There are four ways in, and they all end at the same place:

    • A barcode gun. Just scan — the gun types the VIN and sends Enter, and the box decodes on Enter. Nothing to install.
    • The phone camera. Press 📷 Scan and hold the door-jamb plate in the frame. If the phone will not focus that close, use the Zoom slider to stand back a little, and 🔦 Light in a dark row.
    • A photo of the plate. Some plates have no readable barcode at all. Press 🔤 Photo of plate and photograph it — the characters are read from the picture. This is its own button, not just a fallback buried in the scanner.
    • Typing it. Type the VIN and press 🔎 Decode.
    ScreenshotVehicle Intake at phone width: the VIN field with 🔎 Decode, 📷 Scan and 🔤 Photo of plate, and the decode confirmation naming the car underneath.

  2. Check the year and the model before you save

    The decode fills in Year and Model for you. The model is the one field worth a second look, because Powerlink only accepts names it already knows and it stores them abbreviated to nine characters — GRANDCHER, PATHFINDR, SILVRDO15. Typing what is written on the tailgate fails the check-in.

    The Model box offers a list built from your own CARLINE table for that year, so pick from it. When the VIN names a family rather than a variant — a GLS-Class is one of several — the real choices appear as buttons underneath the field.

  3. Fill in what you know and check it in

    Colour, mileage, location and notes are all optional. If an administrator has given you a standing location, it is filled in and locked; tick Put this car somewhere else for the exception.

    Press Check this car in. The vehicle is created in Powerlink and a stock number comes back to write on the glass.

    If the number you were shown changes, a yellow banner tells you the one the system actually used. It stays on screen deliberately — you are about to walk to the car with it.

  4. Coming back to a car later

    Scan a VIN that is already on the books and YardWyre opens the existing car instead of creating a second one. If the VIN plate is behind a wing that has already gone, use Or open a car already in Powerlink by its stock number — type the number off the glass and press 📂 Open car.

Walk the car for parts

The slow part of intake is not typing. It is knowing which version of a part this particular car has.

  1. Open the wizard

    Once the car exists, a 🔧 Add parts from this car button appears on the intake page, naming the stock number. Press it. YardWyre works out which vehicle this is in the interchange's own vocabulary; where the name is close rather than exact it asks you which one it is rather than guessing.

  2. Tick what you plan to pull

    You get the list of part types the interchange says this car has. Tick everything worth pulling — there is a filter box and a Select all — and press Start →.

    ScreenshotThe parts wizard on its first step: the part-type list with several ticked and the Start → button.

  3. Pick the version this car actually has

    Now it steps through them one at a time, showing N of M as you go. For each part you get the real interchange choices for this exact vehicle, written as the full path rather than a bare left-or-right — for a mirror that reads like power > memory > black > automatic dimming > L., with its interchange number beside it.

    Where the engine code from the VIN settles the question, that option is marked matches the VIN and pre-selected. Where two options are genuinely possible, nothing is pre-selected — you choose.

    ScreenshotThe wizard mid-walk, showing several interchange variants as full paths with one flagged matches the VIN.

  4. Add it, or skip it

    Set a price, location and notes if you want them — location defaults to the car's. Press Add to Powerlink → and the part is created and appears in the running list at the bottom. If the car does not have that part, press Not on this car — skip and it moves on.

    If a part type has no interchange variants for this car, you are told so and can still add it — just without an interchange number.

Photograph the car and its parts

One pass round the car, not thirty trips through the phone's camera app.

  1. Press Add photos and choose how

    On the Photos panel of the intake page, press 📷 Add photos. You get three choices:

    • 📸 Keep shooting — many photos — the one for walking a car.
    • 📷 Take one photo — the phone's ordinary camera, one shot.
    • 🖼 Get from this device — pictures already on the phone.

  2. Keep shooting

    The camera opens and stays open. Every press of 📸 Take photo grabs the frame and the preview keeps running, with a counter in the corner and thumbnails building up below. Walk round the car, shoot the interior, shoot the damage — it is one continuous pass. 🔦 Light is there when the phone has a torch.

    When you are done press ✓ Done — keep these, then Upload to Powerlink. They all go up in a single request, resized on the phone first so a twenty-photo walk is not a thirty-megabyte upload over yard signal.

    ScreenshotThe burst camera open on a phone: live preview, the photo counter pill, thumbnails, and the 📸 Take photo button.

  3. Photos already on the car

    Scan a VIN that turns out to be a car you already hold and the pictures on file for it are shown right there. Standing at the car, "3 photos on file" does not tell you whether anyone ever shot the interior — the pictures do.

Scan a part already on the books

Part Intake: the tag on the shelf, the camera, and the next one.

  1. Find the part

    Open Part Intake. Scan the tag with a gun, press 📷 Scan to read it with the camera, or type the number and press 🔎 Find. The part comes up and is named on screen before you can photograph anything, so nobody shoots the wrong one.

  2. Shoot it

    Press 📸 Take photos and the same keep-shooting camera opens. Or press 🖼 Choose from this device for pictures already on the phone — an auction lot photo, say. Both routes end at Upload to Powerlink, and the pictures are attached to that part.

  3. Keep walking

    You do not wait for the upload. It moves into an Uploads queue that runs behind you, one at a time, while you scan the next tag. Clear finished tidies the list.

    If an administrator has given you a standing shelf, scanning a part also relocates it there. Tick Put this part somewhere else for the one that genuinely belongs elsewhere.

Check what you hold for a VIN

The question that comes before any decision at the gate. Nothing is created — this only answers.

Open Vehicle Lookup, scan or type a VIN, and press 🔎 Check stock. You get what the yard already holds for that exact car — with engines, transmissions and transfer cases matched through interchange data, so a 3.5 turbo is never counted as the 5.0. Each count opens into the parts themselves. Where the VIN cannot settle the engine variant on its own, you are given the options with the stock behind each one.

Use it before bidding, and use it before booking a car in that you already have three of.

ScreenshotVehicle Lookup after a check: the decoded vehicle and the 📦 Already in stock for this model panel with its counts.

If your account has been granted it, a 🔬 Factory spec sheet panel appears on the same page with the deeper decode. It is off by default and granted per person.

Price and publish to eBay

Nothing reaches eBay without you previewing it first.

  1. Narrow down to the parts you want

    Open eBay Listings. The filter row across the top takes a search (stock number, model, interchange number, make, year), a part type, which stores to look at, a shipping tier, a sort, a location range, a retail price range, and a photo-status filter — 📷 Part photo, 🚗 Car photo, ✗ No photo.

    Press 👁 Preview (no changes made). Nothing has been sent anywhere; this is the list of what would be published.

    ScreenshoteBay Listings after 👁 Preview: filters at the top, the action toolbar, and a table of candidate parts with several ticked.

  2. Set the price

    Tick the parts you want, then open 💲 Bulk Pricing Tools. You can:

    • Apply a margin over the Powerlink retail price — 10, 15, 20, 25% or your own figure — with Apply Margin to Selected.
    • Add or subtract a flat amount with Apply to Selected.
    • Set them all to one figure with Set for Selected.

    This only ever moves the eBay price. Your Powerlink retail price is not touched by the pricing tools on this page.

  3. Change a batch's settings in one action

    With parts still ticked, press ✏️ Edit Selected. In one go you can set the shipping option, return policy, payment policy, your eBay Store's own category, the eBay category, and a price change across the whole selection.

    Every control starts on — Leave unchanged —, and anything left there is not touched on any part. Press Apply to selected.

    ScreenshotThe bulk edit dialog with a real selection count in its title and a couple of fields set away from — Leave unchanged —.

  4. Check the ad, then publish

    The title is built from your interchange data. Two tick-boxes in the toolbar control what goes into it: Mileage in title (default), and Interchange detail in title — the detail that tells a part from its siblings, added only where the interchange gives one unambiguous answer for that part's own vehicle, so it is never a guess. Description in ad controls whether the generated ad body goes up; a description you have typed by hand on a part is always kept.

    Each row has a Preview link that opens the real rendered listing in a new tab. When it looks right, press 🚀 Publish Selected to eBay.

    Two things get a part skipped, quietly. A part type with no eBay category (see setup), and a part with no photos in Powerlink yet. Both are reported per part in the result, so read the run's output rather than assuming the count matched.

After a listing is live

Manage eBay Listings is where you go back to something already published.

  • End or re-run a listing

    Tick rows and press ⏹ Unpublish Selected to take them off eBay, or ▶ Republish Selected to put them back. 🗑 Delete Selected removes them entirely.

  • Select by state, not by hand

    After a publish run stops on an eBay account limit there can be dozens sitting unpublished. The Not live, Unpublished, With errors and Live buttons tick them for you.

  • Parts pulled from stock

    🔄 Sync Removed From Powerlink reconciles listings whose part is no longer in your Powerlink inventory, so you are not selling something that has gone.

  • Never list this one

    A part you never want on eBay goes on the Blocked Items page. It is a YardWyre-only flag — Powerlink is not touched — and you can send it back any time.

  • Your logo and standing notes

    Ad Template holds the logo and the notes appended to every ad description. Edit once and every future listing picks it up.

  • A reference photo per part type

    On the same page, 📷 Part Type Stock Photos adds a generic diagram as the last photo on every listing of that type. It never stands in for a missing real photo — a part with no pictures is still skipped.

Run a sale, promote a listing, check the market

The things you reach for when something has been sitting.

  1. Put a percentage off — Discounts

    Open Discounts, pick the store, and press ＋ New Sale. eBay applies the discount to the listing itself, so buyers see the sale price and the strike-through. Running sales are listed with their status and dates, and you can pause, resume or end one from the same table.

  2. Pay for placement — Promoted Listings

    Open Promoted Listings and press ＋ New Campaign. The buyer still pays full price; eBay takes a percentage of the sale for better search placement, and only when the part actually sells. Campaigns can be paused, resumed or ended here.

    If eBay does not consider your store eligible for Promoted Listings yet, this page says so in a panel instead of failing. That is eBay's decision about the account, not a fault in YardWyre.

  3. Price against what is actually being asked — Price Check

    Open Price Check, type a part in plain words or an interchange number — 2015 Honda Civic alternator — choose Used only, and press 🔍 Search eBay. You get the low, median, average and high computed across the whole result set, up to a thousand listings, then every competing listing with its price, shipping, seller and seller rating, sortable and pageable.

    This one is off by default and granted per person, because it spends a shared eBay API quota.

    ScreenshotPrice Check after a search: the Low / Median / Average / High cards, and the table of competing listings below.

When it sells

Nobody rekeys the sale. The work order is waiting.

  1. The order becomes a work order on its own

    YardWyre checks for new paid eBay orders in the background every few minutes and writes a real Powerlink work order with the buyer's shipping details. There is nothing to press. The eBay Orders page lists every order it has handled, with the work order number it created.

    If you want to force a check right now — you are standing there watching for it — press ↻ Check for New Orders.

    ScreenshotThe eBay Orders table: eBay order numbers on the left, the Powerlink work order number each one created on the right.

  2. Why eBay sales stay separate

    Those work orders post under the dedicated YardWyre-API employee, so your Powerlink Sales Report can tell eBay sales from walk-in and counter sales without anyone tagging anything.

    Sales of eBay listings that were not published through YardWyre are recorded but deliberately left alone — they are not ours to turn into work orders. Tick Show non-YardWyre orders if you want to see them and confirm why one did not create a work order.

  3. The rest of the counter

    Work Orders, Invoices, Delivery Tickets and Customers all read and write your live Powerlink data, from any machine rather than the one in the office.

  4. What it made

    Sales Report gives your eBay totals out of your own Powerlink work orders — total sales, order count and average order value, with a chart and a table grouped weekly, monthly or yearly, over the last 3 to 24 months or a date range you pick. Switch the source to All invoices to see everything rather than just eBay.

    ScreenshotSales Report: the Total Sales / Orders / Avg Order Value tiles, the monthly bar chart, and the table underneath.

Put it on a yard phone

The person doing the work should be the person entering it.

Open yardwyre.com/field on the phone and sign in. YardWyre offers to add itself to the home screen — accept, and it sits there like any other app. There is no app store and nothing to approve. On an iPhone the offer becomes a short instruction instead, because iOS has no install button to press.

The phone app is six tabs across the bottom: Scan for part intake, Book in for vehicle intake, Look up for stock, VIN stock for the vehicle lookup, Orders and Delivery.

The intake screens are the full thing — same scanner, same parts wizard, same keep-shooting camera as the desktop. Look up, Orders and Delivery are for reading while you are out there; editing a work order or voiding a ticket stays on the desktop, deliberately, because those are the actions that are expensive to get wrong with a thumb.

ScreenshotThe phone app installed to a home screen, showing the six-tab bar: Scan, Book in, Look up, VIN stock, Orders, Delivery.

Give your staff the right access

A yard hand booking parts in does not need to see your sales figures.

  1. Add the person

    Open Web Users and press + Add User. Each person gets their own login, and can be tied to their Powerlink employee record.

  2. Tick only what they need

    Access is a set of areas you tick on their account: Inventory (inventory and part lookup), AI Drafts, eBay (publish and manage listings), Ops (customers, work orders, invoices, delivery) and Admin (managing web users and permissions).

    On top of those, several screens are granted one person at a time and are off by default — vehicle intake, part intake, vehicle lookup, the deep VIN decode, price check, the sales and promoted-listing pages, and the activity report. Someone can be given intake without ever seeing eBay.

    ScreenshotThe Web Users table with several people on visibly different access, and the Access areas legend beneath it.

  3. See who did what

    The Activity page records every add, change and delete per person — which feature, what action, when, and whether it succeeded — folded into a group per feature and filterable by user and date. It is itself one of the per-person permissions, so only the people you choose can open it.

Want this running in your yard?

Tell us what you run and how you sell, and we will show you what would list from your own inventory. Already a customer and stuck on a step? There is a Report an Issue page inside the app — file it there and you can follow it through to resolved — or talk to us directly.

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