Integration: retailcloud with Shopify Online Store

December 23, 2024 12:16

1. Purpose of Integration

The integration between retailcloud and Shopify allows you to seamlessly connect your physical stores, managed in retailcloud, with your Shopify online store. This integration enables you to:

Sell items from your retailcloud linked physical stores on the Shopify online platform.
Ensure product data, inventory levels, and pricing are synchronized between both platforms in real time.

2. Benefits of Integration

By integrating retailcloud with Shopify, you can:

Expand your sales channels by utilizing Shopify's robust online store platform.
Synchronize products and inventory in real-time, reducing the risk of overselling or stock discrepancies.
Streamline operations with automatic syncing, eliminating the need for manual updates across both platforms.

3. Supported Platforms

This integration works with:

retailcloud Console – the central hub for managing your physical store data.
Shopify – the online store platform where your products will be listed.

This integration is fully compatible with your existing retailcloud setup, ensuring a smooth implementation with minimal disruption.

4. Where to Find the Shopify Integration in retailcloud Console

To access the Shopify integration settings in retailcloud, follow these steps:

Go to Console → Settings → Shopify (under Integrations).

Sample screen is shown below.

5. How Does an Item Become Available in Shopify?

To make an item available in Shopify, ensure the E-commerce toggle is enabled for the item in your retailcloud catalog:

Navigate to your catalog and enable the E-commerce toggle for the items you want to sync to Shopify.
E-commerce can also be enabled through item imports.

6. Fields That Can Be Synced from retailcloud to Shopify

The following retailcloud fields will sync with corresponding Shopify fields:

Upsync indicates fields are synced from retailcloud to Shopify

Downsync indicates fields are synced from Shopify to retailcloud.

retailcloud Core Field	Corresponding Shopify Field
Item ID	SKU
Name	Name
Extended Description	Description
Selling Price	Price
Ecommerce Name	Name
Ecommerce Enabled	Enabled
QOH	Quantity (no downsync)
UPC	Barcode
Cost Price	Cost per Item (no downsync)

7. Syncing Products and Inventory

7.1) What Does “Sync Products” Do?

The Sync Products feature:

Fetches all available items in Shopify and establishes a mapping with the E-commerce enabled items in retailcloud.
This creates or updates necessary mappings for the items.
Entitles the item to the location if the Shopify configuration is at a location level.

7.1.1) How Does Product Sync Happen?

Item Sync: When an item is created or updated in retailcloud Console with the E-commerce toggle enabled, it will sync to the integrated Shopify account instantly.
If the item is created or updated through an item import, the product will be synced to Shopify by the Item Sync Scheduler if enabled.
If the Item Sync Scheduler is enabled for the merchant, items that are updated in the past 45 minutes will be picked up.
- Sync happens every 15 minutes by default.
Important: Ensure the Item Sync Scheduler is enabled for the synchronization to occur. If it's not enabled, items created through import will not sync.
If the item is updated through a bulk update in the console, the sync will happen instantly.

7.2) What Does “Sync Inventory” Do?

The Sync Inventory feature synchronizes inventory levels from retailcloud to Shopify.

Inventory will be syncing to Shopify only for the e-commerce enabled items. For example, if One product in Shopify has 5 variants, then for successful QOH sync, all variants should be e-commerce enabled in retailcloud.

Inventory sync works based on the following configurations:

Enterprise Level Pairing: Syncs all inventory from the paired store.
Location Level Pairing: Inventory sync will be happening for the items that are entitled to the paired location.
In order to sync the inventory from all the locations, there is an additional configuration needs to be done

Note: Sync may experience delays if there are many items to sync or by getting rate limit issues in Shopify API calls. Allow at least 15 minutes for the process to complete successfully.

7.2.1) Inventory Sync Details

The synced inventory value is subject to the inventory level setting, which can be modified from the retailcloud Console. This setting determines what percentage of inventory should be sent to Shopify:
Inventory Sync Schedule picks up items with inventory movements (POS transactions, inventory transactions, etc.) or updates in the last 24 hours.
Manual inventory changes made in Shopify will not sync back to retailcloud. Additionally, retailcloud's scheduled sync will overwrite manually adjusted inventory values in Shopify.
For product/variant combinations, the inventory of both the base product and its variants will be sent separately to Shopify.
Master SKU Linking: If items are set up with Master SKU linking, all child SKUs will show the QOH of the master SKU in Shopify, and child SKUs will not be visible in retailcloud's IBR.
For products with variants, ensure that all variants have valid QOH values in retailcloud. Shopify syncs inventory separately for each variant, and products with zero or negative QOH will not display inventory in Shopify.

7.2.2) What Happens with Inventory Sync?

Inventory levels are synced based on QOH (Quantity on Hand) in retailcloud, which is displayed as Quantity in Shopify.
The synchronization is governed by the Inventory Sync Percentage setup in retailcloud Console.
The Inventory Sync Scheduler can be enabled to sync inventory every 15 minutes.

7.3) What Does “Remap Products” Do?

The Remap Products process deletes all mappings on the retailcloud side and reinitiates the Sync Products process.

7.3.1) Use cases for when to use Remap Products:

If there are inconsistencies in items or inventory levels between retailcloud and Shopify.
If you experience sync issues or if multiple items are missing from Shopify.
Remap products remove all the existing mappings. So there should be sufficient wait time given for the complete remap to complete. (15 minutes)
After completion of remap, users have to perform the Sync inventory option to update the inventory level or modify the product if any specific product has issues with sync.

8. What happens in retailcloud if an item is created in Shopify?

If a product is created in Shopify, then the item will be created in retailcloud.
If a product with variants is created in Shopify, then the item with variants is created in retailcloud.

Note: the setup fields should be configured properly for this to happen.

9. Items with Variants

Limitation: Shopify allows a maximum of 100 variants per product.
For proper sync of variants under a product in Shopify, all the corresponding items in retailcloud should have the same Product ID

10. Other Shopify Integration Features

10.1) Enable Automatic Sync

This feature ensures that your Shopify store is automatically synced, providing seamless operation between the two platforms.

10.2) Order Fulfillment from Alternate Location

This feature allows you to fulfill orders from a different location, and the location can be changed from the order status report.
The fulfillment location should have an online register for this to work.

10.3) Order Sync Start Date

This feature determines when order data will start syncing to retailcloud reports. Orders placed prior to this date will not be synced.

10.4) Post Orders Based on Status

You can select which order statuses will create a transaction in retailcloud.(Fulfilled, Unfulfilled).
If post orders based on status feature is enabled, then the transaction will be created in retailcloud only when the Shopify order has the selected fulfillment status.

10.5) Item Creation Status

Item Creation Status: This setting defines the default status of items when they are added to Shopify, either through item import or directly from the item catalog in the retailcloud console. By default, the status is set to Active, but you can choose Draft as an alternative.
This is effective in item creation and item updation time.
If item creation status is enabled and selected status is draft, then on creation or modification of an e-commerce enabled item in retailcloud, it will remain the Shopify product status as draft.
If the item creation status is enabled, and selected status is Active, then Shopify product status will be updated based on the e-commerce flag for that item in the retail cloud.

10.6) Product Level Sell-out Percentage

This setting allows you to define a sell-out percentage for products.
This will allow the merchant to override the inventory levels for specific products.

10.7) Transfer Bin Locations

Enable this option to transfer bin location identifiers from retailcloud to a designated metafield for that product in Shopify.

Document Created V1: 2024 December 19

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