When the re-keying and the reconciliation spreadsheets finally get old, you have five realistic paths. We’re one of them, so read this knowing we have a horse in the race. We’ll be straight, including about when you shouldn’t pick us.
Option 1: the native Microsoft Shopify connector
Business Central ships with a Shopify connector, and for a single store with straightforward flows it can be enough. Simple catalogue, standard fulfilment, modest volume: switch it on with your BC partner and stop reading here.
Where it runs out is where most growing operators live: multiple storefronts and brands, a 3PL in the middle, payout-level reconciliation, gift cards and refunds that have to hit the ledger correctly. Configuration has a ceiling; past it, you’re in integration territory whoever you choose.
Option 2: an integration platform (iPaaS)
New Zealand has capable players here, and for retailer EDI especially they carry real infrastructure. The model to understand: you subscribe to their platform, and your integrations live inside it, built and priced their way. That’s not a criticism, it’s a design. It suits businesses that want one throat to choke and don’t mind the box.
What to ask before signing: who fixes it at 2am, what happens to the integrations if you leave, and what the subscription looks like in year three. If the answers work for you, it’s a legitimate path. Sometimes we even sit alongside an EDI platform: they carry the pipe, we do the ERP-side logic.
Option 3: hire a developer
The maths, since you’ll do it anyway: a capable integration developer costs six figures with KiwiSaver and recruitment on top, takes months to find, and gives you one person who understands your integrations. Which is exactly the situation most of our clients were in before the person resigned.
Hiring makes sense at a scale where integration is a full-time stream of work. Below that, you’re paying a full-time salary for a part-time need, and re-buying key-person risk with your own money.
Option 4: your BC partner
Your ERP partner knows your BC setup better than anyone, and for work inside BC they should absolutely be your first call. Integration beyond the ERP boundary is a different trade though: webhooks, queues, retry semantics, other vendors’ APIs. Some partners do it well; many quietly don’t want it, which is why the Shopify item keeps sliding down the meeting agenda.
Worth knowing: this is not an either-or. We work alongside BC partners by design, never touch the ERP implementation, and put that boundary in writing.
Option 5: an integration firm
A firm that does integration as its whole trade. The questions that separate a good one from a rebranded body shop, whoever you evaluate:
- Do you own the code at the end, in your repositories, on your accounts?
- Is the price fixed, with scope in writing, or hourly with hope?
- Who watches it after go-live, and how fast is the response in writing?
- Could another firm take over from their documentation alone?
- Have they done your exact pair before?
That list is also, not coincidentally, a description of how we’ve set ourselves up: code you own, fixed-price packages, Kori watching around the clock, and runbooks another engineer could pick up cold.
Choosing
If you’re small and simple: option 1. If you want a managed platform and accept the box: option 2. If integration is a full-time stream: option 3. If the work is inside BC: option 4. If you’ve outgrown point-to-point patches and want connections you own, watched, at a fixed price: that’s option 5, and that’s us. What good looks like for this exact pair, including when the native connector is enough, is on our Shopify and Business Central page.
Still unsure which side of the line you’re on? That’s what an hour on your systems is for, and “you don’t need us” is an answer we give more often than you’d think.
