Shopify as your store system

The Retail tools work the same whichever system runs your store. If your company sells through Shopify (online, in person with Shopify's point of sale, or both) and doesn't use Lightspeed, Shopify is your store system. Your sales reports, returns, prices, images, brand audits, purchase orders and vendor statements all work on your Shopify data, and the changes you make go straight back to Shopify.

If you also use Lightspeed, Lightspeed keeps the numbers instead, and Shopify stays your online catalog (see Retail tools for Lightspeed).

Connect it

A company Admin opens Sales & Inventory → Overview and clicks Connect Shopify (or opens Settings → Connected apps → Shopify). Connecting is described in Connected apps. The first sync brings in:

• Locations: each Shopify location becomes a shop, with its address, so it shows on the Locations Map. Online orders are grouped under Online store.
• Items: every product variant, with its SKU, barcode, price, compare-at price and cost. The product's vendor is used as both brand and vendor, and its product type as the category.
• Stock: what's available at each location.
• Orders: the last 60 days. Refunds come in as returns, with negative quantities, the way the sales reports and Returns expect. Canceled orders are kept but left out of sales; test orders are skipped.

After that, Shopify syncs every hour. Sales & Inventory → Setup → Shopify shows how the sync is doing; Manage the Shopify connection opens it to sync now or disconnect.

What each tool does on Shopify

• Sales reports group your Shopify orders by day, location, brand, vendor, category or item. Cost is Shopify's item cost when each item sold.
• Returns lists each location's refunds to log. A return that can't be resold comes out of stock at that location in Shopify (marked damaged).
• Prices shows Price, Compare-at and Cost for each variant (Shopify has no online, IMAP or MAP price, and no matrices). Uploads go to Shopify within a minute, and each location that stocks the item gets a shelf tag to reprint.
• Item tags: Shopify takes new tags, so you don't have to create them first. Tags belong to the product, so every variant of it gets them.
• Images: images belong to the Shopify product, shown in a row above its variants. Add or remove them there; a variant's own picture shows but is changed in Shopify.
• Purchase orders are kept in TicketStacker (see below).
• Brand audits, Subscriptions and Statements work as they do with Lightspeed. For marketing and frequent buyer programs, pick the Shopify discount by name in Statement settings.

Purchase orders

Shopify doesn't let other apps create or change purchase orders, so they're kept in TicketStacker:

1. Open Sales & Inventory → Purchasing. Pick the Location and a Vendor (or every vendor) and click Start purchase order. It starts with what's suggested: items whose stock, after the next days of subscriptions, is at or below the reorder point, ordered back up to the reorder level.
2. Change quantities, reorder points and reorder levels, then click Save changes. Shopify has no reorder settings, so they're kept in TicketStacker for each location. Use Add an item (SKU or barcode) for anything else.
3. Send the order to your vendor, then click Mark as ordered.
4. When it arrives, enter what came in and click Receive into Shopify. The units are added to Shopify's stock at that location. Partly received orders stay ordered until everything is in.

Back to open undoes Mark as ordered while nothing has been received; Cancel purchase order cancels it. Open and ordered and Received and canceled list them.

To keep more on each purchase order, like a delivery window or who approved it, an Admin adds fields in Settings → Custom fields → Purchase orders. Fill them in on the More details card at the bottom of the order and click Save details. They show under each PO number on the list too.

If you connect Lightspeed later

Connecting Lightspeed makes it the store system. The Shopify copy of your locations, items, stock and orders is removed and refills from Lightspeed; your logged returns, statements, audits and price uploads stay. Shopify stays connected as your online catalog.