Shopify - Products & Inventory
This feature requires additional licensing. Please contact AcctVantage Sales for a quote.
Product records and inventory availability are easily pushed to your Shopify store. After you have created your Shopify store (including testing the connection with AcctVantage) you are now ready to begin uploading Products and Available Inventory to the store.
If you have not completed the Integration Setup, please CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.
Best Practices
Any Product record in AcctVantage can be synced with Shopify to create (or update) the Product on your web store.
- The best practice is to create the Product in AcctVantage first and export it to Shopify.
- If a Product already exists in Shopify but not in AcctVantage, it will be need to be created in AcctVantage before a Sales Order [containing the Product] is imported.
- It is not considered a best practice to manually create the Product in both Shopify and AcctVantage. However, there is a utility that can build the relation between the two platforms if this does occur.
- After the Product record has been exported from AcctVantage to Shopify, you can modify the Product (or Variants) in Shopify to include details that are not stored in AcctVantage (e.g. images, additional attributes that are specific to your web store, etc.)
- The fields that are uploaded to Shopify are included in the tables below ⬇️⬇️⬇️. Additional AcctVantage fields can be added (or removed) from the sync via custom script project. Contact AV Support for more info.
Some notes on how Shopify's Products are structured
- A Product is a general group of similar items (e.g. shirts).
- A Variant is a specific item in the Product group (e.g. small red shirts, medium blue shirts, large orange shirts, etc.)
- Every Product in Shopify has at least one Variant which carries the sell price, description, SKU, inventory levels, picture, etc.
- If a Product only has a single Variant, the UI in Shopify will look different than if it has multiple Variants.
- A single Shopify Product can have up to 100 Variants and up to 3 options (size, color, material, etc.)
- When you're uploading & syncing Products from AcctVantage to Shopify, you are essentially just uploading Variants.
- You might want to only have one Shopify Variant per Shopify Product ... and that is totally OK! A setup like this would mirror AcctVantage's Product structure.
- Optionally, you can leverage the AcctVantage's Parent Product Title to link groups of similar Variants together under one master Product on Shopify.
How mapping Product Details with Shopify works ...
The mapping logic depends on a few values. See the tables below for details.
- Sync Product Details (in System Setup): This setting must be enabled to export Products to Shopify.
- Sync to Webstore (on the Product): If this setting is enabled, then a new Product will be exported to Shopify when it is saved in AcctVantage.
- Parent Product Title (on the Product): The status of this field determines which value gets used for the Shopify Product Title & SKU or whether the item is linked as a Variant to an existing Product in Shopify.
- Match on SKU (in System Setup): If this setting is enabled, then the Product SKU will be used in place of Part Number in several cases.
... if Parent Product Title is BLANK
- If the Parent Product Title in AcctVantage is BLANK, a new Shopify Product and Variant will be created using the AcctVantage Part Number as the Shopify Product Title.
- The Variant Title will be set to "Default Title". This will only be visible if more Variants are added.
| AcctVantage Field | Shopify Field | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part Number | Product Title |
| 2 | Part Number (or SKU if Match on SKU = True) | SKU |
| 3 | Webstore Categories | Product Type (only applies to the Parent Product) |
| 4 | List Price | Compare at Price |
| 5 | Sell Price | Price |
| 6 | Weight | Weight |
... if a match is NOT found for the Parent Product Title
- If the Parent Product Title in AcctVantage has a value but no match is found in Shopify, a new Shopify Product and Variant will be created using the AcctVantage Parent Product Title as the Shopify Product Title.
- The Variant Title will be set to "Default Title". This will only be visible if more Variants are added.
| AcctVantage Field | Shopify Field | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parent Product Title | Product Title |
| 2 | Part Number (or SKU if Match on SKU = True) |
SKU |
| 3 | Webstore Categories | Product Type (only applies to the Parent Product) |
| 4 | List Price | Compare at Price |
| 5 | Sell Price | Price |
| 6 | Weight | Weight |
... if a match IS found for the Parent Product Title
- If the Parent Product Title in AcctVantage has a value and a match is found in Shopify, a new Shopify Variant will be created.
- If the Shopify Variant already exists, it will be updated to match AcctVantage values if the Sync Product Details setting is enabled in System Setup.
- Webstore Categories is only relevant for the Parent Product. If a Variant is being created or updated, this field will be ignored.
| AcctVantage Field | Shopify Field | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parent Product Title (used for matching purposes only) | Product Title (used for matching purposes only) |
| 2 | Part Number |
Variant Title |
| 3 | Part Number (or SKU if Match on SKU = True) |
SKU |
| 4 | List Price | Compare at Price |
| 5 | Sell Price | Price |
| 6 | Weight | Weight |
How Inventory Levels are synced with Shopify
Sending AcctVantage Inventory Levels to Shopify also depends on a few values:
- Sync Inventory Levels (in System Setup): This setting must be enabled in the Order Settings to export Inventory Levels to Shopify.
- Warehouse (in System Setup): Inventory levels will be synced only from the warehouse designated in Order Settings.
- Sync to Webstore (on the Product): If this setting is enabled, then Inventory Levels will be exported to Shopify when Qty Available changes in AcctVantage.
- % of available in webstore (on the Product): This setting must be > 0% in order for Inventory Levels to be synced with Shopify.
If all of the above settings are set properly, Inventory Levels will be updated in Shopify any time the Qty Available changes in AcctVantage. This includes any transaction that affects inventory (e.g. PO Receiving, Sales Order Fulfillment, Inventory Maintenance, Warehouse Transfer, etc.)
Referencing the screenshots below, you can see we have set 100% of available inventory from AcctVantage to appear in Shopify. We have 25 units available in AcctVantage and after the sync has occurred, there are now 25 units of inventory On hand in Shopify.
You might be wondering why we're syncing AcctVantage Qty Available to Shopify Qty On Hand -- this is because Shopify calculates its own Qty Available, which could be different than AcctVantage's Qty Available if there are orders placed on Shopify but not yet imported to AcctVantage.
All inventory values used in this article are presented in the base unit of measure. Currently, the integration does not support syncing alternate units of measure.
How to manually export Products to Shopify
Typically, this will only need to be done for new products that do not yet exist on your webstore. Once the Product has been created, all changes to Product Details and Inventory levels will be automatically synced (as long as Sync Product Details and Sync Inventory are enabled.)
- On the Inventory tab of the Product, check the Sync to webstore box, enter the % available in webstore and enter the Parent Product Title (if needed). Save the Product.
- Highlight one or more Products in the list view.
- Use the Action Menu to select Export to Web Store.
That’s it! Products that are not yet in your Shopify store catalog will be created and existing Products will be updated.
If you manually edit a Product that has the Sync to webstore setting enabled, the sync will automatically happen when the Product is saved.
Build Shopify Relation Table
The best practice is to create Products in AcctVantage then export them to Shopify. If you do this, then the below utility is unnecessary.
The Build Shopify Relation Table function is only to be used if Products were entered in Shopify and AcctVantage separately. This utility will build the necessary relation between AcctVantage and Shopify so Product Details and Inventory can be synced successfully.
