Which system owns the truth
Every integration starts with one question per field: which system owns it. Stock, price, product data, customer and order each need one owner and a clear direction of travel. We write that down, choose between middleware, native connectors and custom work, then build with retries, logging and alerts so a failed sync is visible before a customer notices.
Which systems we connect
Shopify sits next to the systems that run the rest of the business: ERP for articles, prices and finance, WMS for stock and shipping, and often a PIM and a POS. Examples from our own work:
Exact, connected through xCore for John Beerens, for B2C and B2B on one Shopify store.
SRS, through a connector we built ourselves.
ERP and WMS connectors for OGÉR, linking the webshop, Shopify POS and the stores.
ERP and WMS connectors for Mystic, with order routing across three continents.
Other ERPs, such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP Business One or NetSuite, follow the same method. The route depends on the API of the ERP and on the middleware you may already have. Product data usually comes from a PIM; see PIM integration.
What syncs, and in which direction
Every data flow gets one owner and one direction. A typical setup:
Articles, variants and article numbers: from ERP or PIM to Shopify.
Stock per location: from ERP or WMS to Shopify, as close to real time as the systems allow.
Prices and B2B price lists: from ERP to Shopify, so a price is never maintained twice.
Orders, payments and discounts: from Shopify to ERP and WMS.
Fulfilment and track-and-trace: from WMS back to Shopify, so customers get the right email.
Returns, refunds and invoices: back to ERP, so finance closes the month without manual work.
We write this down per field before anything is built, so the question which number is right never comes up.
Connector, middleware or custom
There are three routes, and the right one differs per integration:
A standard connector, such as xCore for Exact: fastest to set up, as long as it covers your fields and processes.
An integration platform (middleware): useful when several systems and stores exchange data, as with the middleware we built for North Actionsports Group.
A custom connector: when no connector fits, the integration decides revenue, or you pay per order for something you could own.
We choose based on how central the flow is, how often it changes and what a failure costs, not on what we happen to know best. Custom apps and connectors are covered in more detail on Shopify integrations.
Errors, monitoring and maintenance
An integration that fails silently is worse than none. Everything we build gets:
Retries for temporary errors, so a short outage does not lose an order.
Logging per message, so you can see what was sent, when and with which result.
Alerts to a named owner when something fails, before a customer notices.
A way to reprocess failed messages without a developer.
Documentation of every flow, field and owner.
Maintenance after launch, including the quarterly API versions of Shopify.
