V8 VIDEO TUTORIAL

Integrating with Shopify

What you’ll learn in Integrating with Shopify

• How to set up a Shopify cart connection with SOS Inventory

Video transcript: Integrating with Shopify

Welcome to our video tutorial, Integrating with Shopify. In this video, we will cover how to set up a cart connection between a Shopify custom app and SOS Inventory.

The cart connection enables Shopify sales orders and sales receipts to be synced to SOS Inventory. In addition, SOS Inventory updates Shopify with available quantities of your inventory.

For communication between the applications to work properly, it is important that the items in Shopify and SOS Inventory match. So before creating the cart connection, add and/or edit items as needed in both applications. Make sure the SKU and name assigned to each Shopify product matches those for its corresponding item in SOS.

The preferred method for mapping Shopify and SOS Inventory items is with SKU-to-SKU matching, so we highly recommend that SKU numbers be assigned to products in both applications. If a Shopify product or variant has a SKU, and the item in SOS Inventory has a matching SKU, the items will be linked by SKU.

The other method is title/variant matching. If a product or variant in Shopify does not have a SKU–or if the SKU in Shopify does not match an SOS Inventory item’s SKU–SOS Inventory will match using the title or variant.

If an item in Shopify has no variant, the product title will be used to match the item name in SOS Inventory. If a match is found, the item will be linked by Shopify title to the SOS Inventory item name.

If an item in Shopify has a variant, a combination of the product title and variant name will be used to match the item name in SOS Inventory. If a match is found, those items will be linked by the Shopify title/variant to the SOS Inventory item name.

To give an example, let’s say you have a Shopify product title Shirt with a variant named Small. In SOS Inventory, the item would be named Shirt – Small with a space before and after the dash. However, If you use the master and variant item feature in SOS Inventory, use SKU-to-SKU matching to ensure that a variant in SOS Inventory matches a variant in Shopify.

If no match can be made using SKU-to-SKU or title/variant matching, a new item will be created in SOS Inventory when that item is used on a sale in Shopify that syncs to SOS.

Making the connection

1. Once you have entered your items in Shopify and SOS Inventory, you are ready to make the cart connection. The first step, creating a channel to tie all Shopify sales together, is an optional one. Go to the Company menu and select Channels. Then select Add new.
    
2. Enter Shopify for the channel name and, if desired, a description. Then Save and close.
    
3. Now go to the Settings menu and select Cart connections. Then select Add new.
    
4. On the Cart connections page, select Shopify from the Cart field’s dropdown list. In the Shopify app type, note that the options are Custom app and Private app. The one you choose depends on the type of app you have in Shopify. If your cart connection will be linked to a Shopify custom app, choose the Custom app option in SOS Inventory. If the Shopify app is a private one, select the Private app option. This video will cover creating a custom app, as any new Shopify app created after January 2022 will be a custom app in Shopify.
   
   The following steps pertain only to custom apps:
   1. In the Instructions section, Step 1 has you enter your Shopify shop’s name. Let’s scroll down to the Shop field. Enter the shop name here. And notice that the system will automatically follow the name you enter with .myshopify.com. Let’s go back up to Step 2. It has a gray box, which contains a list of instructions that need to be completed in Shopify. So let’s go into Shopify now and walk through those steps.
   2. On the left menu in Shopify, select Apps.
   3. Next, either click on Develop apps in the upper right part of the page—or scroll down and select Develop apps for your store.
   4. Then select Create an app.
   5. Enter SOS Inventory in the App name field. I already have an SOS Inventory app, so I will call my app Test 3. After entering the app name, click Create app.
   6. Now we will click on the Configuration tab, and on Admin API integration, select Configure.
   7. Under the All tab of Admin API access scopes, we need to enable the following permissions:
      1. Under the Customers section, enable read_customers. Under Inventory, enable write_inventory to allow SOS Inventory to send quantity updates to Shopify. You do have the option to keep write_inventory disabled if you do not want SOS Inventory to send item quantity updates.  But in either case, read_inventory must also be enabled.
      2. Under Locations, check read_locations,
      3. And under Orders, enable read_orders.
      4. In the Product listings section, check both write_product_listings and read_product_listings.
      5. Then go to the Products section and enable write_products and read_products.
      6. Move on to the Webhook subscriptions, and in the Event version dropdown list, choose the latest version.
      7. Scroll back to the top of the page and select Save.
      8. After the configuration has been saved, click the green Install app button. This will give the app access to your data and provides an access token. Under Admin API access token, copy the access token and save it in a secure place, as it can be accessed only once in Shopify. Ignore the API key and API secret key that are listed.
          
5. Now we will go back to our cart connection page in SOS Inventory and:
   1. Paste the access token in the Admin API access token field.
   2. In the Sales channel dropdown, select Shopify.
   3. Then configure the other settings in SOS Inventory as needed for your Shopify cart connection.
   4. When finished, Save and close.

Once you have saved the settings, the item mapping is completed between the two systems and the connection is verified. Your sales from Shopify will sync to SOS Inventory and your inventory levels will be updated by SOS in Shopify.

After the connection has been created, go back to the Shopify cart connection page and resave whenever you add or edit items in Shopify or in SOS Inventory. This enables new and modified items to be remapped by the system.

This concludes our tutorial on Integrating with Shopify. Thank you for watching this presentation!