Live or Database? Which is best? What's the difference?

In inventory manager there are two ways to receive your amazon data. The first is downloading your database either manually or setting it to download automatically. The instructions on how to do this can be found here. Or you can receive the freshest data possbile by using live lookup.

The first option will we discuss is database downloading. Database downloading means you are downloading a stored file on your hard drive from our servers which contains all pricing data from Amazon. Database lookups are a little bit faster because the data is readily accessible on your hard drive. However, databases only update if it is setup to run automatically or through manual updating which is explained here.

If you run a database download automatically or manually you will notice at the top of the inventory manager the date you downloaded. Figure 1.1 is an example of a successfully downloaded database. As you can see the last download took place on August 30, 2011 at 12:07 AM.

Figure 1.1

Live Lookup

Live lookup is the freshest data you can receive on Inventory Manager. By using live lookup it automatically queries Amazon's servers for pricing data when you scan an item on the pre-scanning screen. Figure 1.2 shows what a live lookup looks like when scanning.

Figure 1.2

To set your data to live look up, you will need to go into the Settings. If you are in another section of Inventory Manager, you can hit the home button to take you back to the main screen and then click the settings button. Once there you will see a tab called Data. You want to make sure you check Disable downloading, search online. It's important to note that you will not see FBA prices when searching or using live data as depicted in Figure 1.2. Figure 1.3 shows what your screen should look like when enabling live data.

Figure 1.3