Create sales documents in Business Central

  • 10 minutes

You can convert a Shopify order into two types of sales documents in Business Central:

  • Sales order

  • Sales invoice

Whether an order or an invoice is created depends on the fulfillment status of the Shopify order. For Shopify orders with the Fulfilled status, sales invoices will be created. For example, when you use another logistics partner to store your products and ship them to your customers, then a Shopify order might be fulfilled before you sync it to Business Central. Because the items are already shipped, you don't need to make a sales order that you need to ship and invoice. Instead, it's more efficient to create a sales invoice.

If the shipping process is managed in Business Central, your Shopify orders will be synced with the Unfulfilled status and will be converted into sales orders that you can release to the warehouse for picking and shipping.

If the Auto Create Orders field is enabled on the Shopify shop card, Business Central will try to create a sales document after the order has been imported. If issues occur, such as a missing customer or product, you need to manually update the Shopify order in Business Central and then try to create the sales document again.

Without the Auto Create Orders field disabled, you can create sales documents from the Shopify Orders page. This process is demonstrated in the following video.

How the connector chooses which customer to use

The Import order from Shopify function tries to select customers in the following order:

  • If the Default Customer No. field is defined in the Shopify customer template for the corresponding country/region, then the default customer number is used, regardless of the settings in the Customer Import From Shopify and Customer Mapping Type fields.

  • If the Customer Import From Shopify field is set to None and the Default Customer No. is defined on the Shopify Shop Card page, then the default customer number is used.

The next steps depend on the Customer Mapping type.

  • Always take the default customer - The connector uses the customer that's defined in the Default Customer No. field on the Shopify Shop Card page.

  • By Email/Phone - The connector tries to find the existing customer by ID first, then by email, and then by phone number. If the customer isn't found, the connector creates a new customer.

  • By Bill-to Info - The connector tries to find the existing customer by ID first and then by the bill-to address information. If the customer isn't found, the connector creates a new customer.

If your settings prevent you from creating a customer automatically, and if you can't find a proper existing customer, then you can assign a customer to the Shopify order manually in the following ways:

  • Assign the Sell-to Customer No. and Bill-to Customer No. directly on the Shopify Orders page by choosing a customer from the list of existing customers.

  • Select a customer template code and then create and assign the customer through the Create New Customer action on the Shopify Orders page. The Shopify customer must have at least one address. Orders that are created through the Shopify POS sales channel often miss address details.

  • Map an existing customer to the related Shopify customer by using the Find Mapping action on the Shopify Orders page.

Impact of order editing

A Shopify order that's synced to Business Central won't be synced twice, unless you edit the order. You can edit the order in Shopify and Business Central. Some edits have impacts, which are described in the following tables.

Order editing in Shopify

When you're editing the order in Shopify, the edits have the following impacts.

Edit Impact
Change the fulfillment location Original location will be synced to Business Central.
Change the fulfillment location and register fulfillment in Shopify If the order was already imported, then the lines won't be updated. Otherwise, the imported order will use the fulfillment location.
Edit an order and change quantity Order header and supplementary tables will be updated in Business Central but the lines won't be.
Edit an order and add new item The order header will be updated but the lines won't be.

Order editing in Business Central

When you're editing the order in Business Central, the edits will have the following impacts.

Edit Impact
Change the location to another location, mapped to the Shopify locations. Post shipment. After it syncs the fulfillment, it updates the location in Shopify.
Change the location to another location, not mapped to Shopify locations. Post shipment. The fulfillment won't be synced with Shopify.
Change decrease quantity. Post shipment. The Shopify order will be marked as partially fulfilled.
Add a new item. Post shipment. The Shopify order will be marked as fulfilled. Lines won't be updated.