Our integration with Shopify is very robust and has been working for RetailEdge customers since 2016.  The Shopify integration moves your RetailEdge inventory items up to Shopify and keeps your quantities and pricing synced.  It also imports Shopify sales into RetailEdge, so you can keep all your sales information in one place and be able to measure how your online sales compare with your in-store sales.

However, there are limitations to the integration. Here is a partial list of some you should be aware of.

Total Number of Variants (Shopify Limitation) #

Only one hundred variants are allowed per product in Shopify. This is significantly less what RetailEdge will support (100 x 100 x 100).  So, if your RetailEdge data has more than one hundred variants with an item you will need to split the item into multiple items or reduce the number you select to push up to Shopify from RetailEdge.

No multi-location fulfillment support #

RetailEdge sends your inventory up to one connected Shopify location.  Shopify does support multiple locations and has some complex rules for product fulfillment.   However, when pulling down sales from Shopify, we pull the sales into one RetailEdge location and make inventory adjustments based on the sales in that location.    Splitting sales based on Shopify’s fulfillment rules is fraught with potential sales tax, state shipping rules, in-store pickup (BOPIS), and inventory adjustment issues.

Most of our customers with multiple locations using Shopify will have Shopify setup with one location and pull sales down into the RetailEdge location with the largest product quantities (i.e., a warehouse).  For the limited number of times a particular item needs to be shipped from another location, RetailEdge customers will call the store and have them ship from that location and they will create a RetailEdge transfer order to adjust the location quantities.

You can only pull down fully paid unmodified Shopify orders. #

RetailEdge only pulls down fully paid, unmodified orders.   This means if you have an order that a customer placed, with incorrect items that need to be exchanged/modified, you will need to

1. pull the order down as it was originally placed,
2. modify and credit the customer as necessary on Shopify, and
3. then create the matching adjustment in RetailEdge.

This procedure also helps to provide a better paper trail of order  modifications.

Variant Items on Shopify Must Be RetailEdge Matrix Items #

If you want an item to have variants on Shopify, items must be setup as matrix items in RetailEdge.  It is important that you think about how you want items displayed on Shopify when creating your inventory in RetailEdge.   Variant items will be consolidated as one page, with drop downs for each variant dimension (e.g., size, color, etc.) However, some businesses feel that presenting each item separately can provide a better user experience (think of a page with the same style of yarn that displays all the available colors as a part of the collection).

Integration Training #

There are lots of videos on how to set up your integration with Shopify.  You can find them here.

If you need training, we are happy to provide this as a billable service.  Try the videos first.  We are here to help if you need us.

Working With Existing Shopify Items #

Items should be added in RetailEdge first since it is your database of record and then pushed up to Shopify.  If you create items on Shopify first, you can link them to existing RetailEdge items, by making sure that the RetailEdge Key Mapping Field value is entered in the Shopify SKU field.  This can be tricky especially when dealing with variants in Shopify as the mapping must be 1 to 1. So if you have existing items on Shopify you want to link with RetailEdge, special consideration is required and setting up might be more painful than it needs to be.  Sometimes the easiest solution is to just push up the RetailEdge items as new Shopify items, then copy the detailed description and images from the old Shopify item to the new.

Gift Card’s Don’t Sync (Shopify Limitation) #

RetailEdge does not sync gift card information with Shopify.  Shopify does not allow syncing of gift cards with third party applications unless you are on a Shopify Plus plan (currently running at $2300/month).   Most RetailEdge customers do not want to pay $2300 a month for their e-commerce site.  Even with the higher-level plan, RetailEdge would not be able to fully sync gift cards with Shopify as gift cards created with online orders, are not editable and so in-store use of these cards would not be allowed.

Maximum Number of Variants Sent Per Day (Shopify Limitation) #

Only 10,000 variants can be sent a day. This can be a problem for larger stores that are making a lot of changes to products and product quantities.   If you hit this limit, you will have to wait till the following day to see the changes propagate up to Shopify.

Customer PII data can’t be downloaded with Orders on the Basic Plan #

As of recent changes, custom apps (RetailEdge) on the Shopify Basic plan do not have access to customer Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in orders.  Customer Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on Shopify refers to any data that can be used to directly or indirectly identify an individual customer. This includes information such as Name, Email address, Phone number, Physical address.  To access PII and have customer information on sales come into RetailEdge , customers must upgrade to a higher-tier plan (Grow, Advanced, or Plus) or be grandfathered and may need to purchase an additional Customer PII add-on.  RetailEdge’s integration will still pull down orders on the Basic Plan, but the orders will not have any customer information.

Sales Tax Reporting #

Shopify’s sales tax reporting is very complex and designed to track sales tax for hundreds of jurisdictions and manage nexus thresholds.  So even when bringing sales into RetailEdge, we recommend that you run your sales tax reports for online sales using Shopify’s sales tax reporting tools.