An order can be paid for, confirmed to the customer and still be waiting for someone to copy it into the next system. From the customer’s side, the shopping is done. From your team’s side, the chasing has just begun.
The storefront is on Shopify. Stock sits with a third-party logistics provider, or 3PL. Finance runs in the ERP. In between are the exports, spreadsheets and helpful people who make the whole thing work.
Those people are doing more than administration. They are filling the gaps between your systems. Their work can keep orders moving while hiding a process that depends on someone remembering the next step.
If that sounds familiar, the first question is not necessarily whether you need new software. It is what happens between the systems you already have.
Follow one order
Take an illustrative example: a Shopify order needs to reach the ERP, then the warehouse, with dispatch information coming back. Later, finance needs to account for the payment.
Each system can be doing its own job while the handover between them is incomplete:
- The sale is recorded, but the warehouse has no order. Someone exports it, adjusts the file and sends it on. The customer confirmation is not evidence that fulfilment has started.
- The warehouse has stock, but the storefront shows a different quantity. The update may be delayed, or the systems may use different rules for what is available to sell. Retrying the update will not fix a disagreement about which stock should count.
- The invoice exists, but the bank deposit is hard to explain. Fees, refunds and grouped settlements can mean the payout does not match individual sales amounts. Moving the sales data is only part of the reconciliation.
This is why a green status on each dashboard is not the whole answer. Can you follow the same order from checkout to dispatch and settlement, and explain anything still waiting?
Check the handover
Good integration removes routine re-keying, but it also makes the handover checkable. Four questions help separate a working connection from one that still needs babysitting:
- Which system owns each fact? Agree where product details, prices and available stock are maintained. Different facts can have different owners; letting every system overwrite every other system invites conflicting updates.
- Did the next system accept the work? Sending an order and having it accepted are different events. Keep the references that connect the records, and make rejected or waiting items visible.
- What happens if it runs twice? A timeout does not always mean the receiving system did nothing. A retry needs a way to recognise work already accepted, rather than create a second order or shipment.
- Who handles the exceptions? Invalid addresses, unknown products and cancelled orders need an agreed response. Some can be handled automatically; others need a person with enough context to decide.
An agreed update interval matters too. A scheduled stock update may be working exactly as designed but still be too slow for a busy promotion. Delayed, failed and wrong are different problems. Knowing which one you have helps you fix the cause.
Where to start
Before drawing a diagram of everything, pick one order, stock update or payment your team recently had to chase. Walk it through with the people who handle it:
- Where did the information start, and where was it needed next?
- What did someone have to copy, correct, approve or check?
- How did they notice the problem, and what would happen if nobody noticed?
- How often does this happen, and what work does it interrupt?
That gives you a starting point based on effort and business risk, rather than whose software has the longest feature list. Automate the repeatable handover, keep the necessary judgement, and agree how you will check the result.
A spreadsheet is not automatically a problem, and a custom integration is not automatically the answer. If a supported connector already covers the process and its exceptions, use it. Our guide to connecting Shopify and Business Central explains how to compare that option with other approaches.
How we work
This is the work we do at Inite. We’re an integration and automation team connecting the systems NZ businesses run: Shopify, ERPs, warehouses, 3PLs, freight and finance tools. Business Central is where our ERP experience runs deepest. If it has an API, we can connect it.
The aim is orders that arrive without re-keying, stock updates people can rely on, and a month-end with less spreadsheet archaeology. Getting there also means making responsibility clear:
- Everyone in the same conversation. Your team, ours and your other vendors share a Microsoft Teams chat, so a question that crosses systems does not have to restart with each supplier.
- Work you can follow. A live information-flow diagram shows how the systems connect. Kori, our AI Integration Support Engineer, investigates supported integrations and reports findings in that shared conversation.
- Scope and ownership agreed up front. We agree fixed-price packages before work starts. We partner with implementation firms to connect the ERP to the systems around it, never compete for the ERP implementation, and leave you owning what we build.
You do not need to connect everything at once. Bring one troublesome handover to a free one-hour conversation about your systems and future integration plans. We can work through what is happening, what should happen instead, and a useful next step.
