Acumatica’s Native Shopify Integration B2B Efficiency

Acumatica is dedicated to providing small and midsized businesses (SMBs) with powerful tools, resources, and technologies built to fuel their current and future success. These include robust industry-specific technologies, easy configurations, continuous support, and seamless integrations with world-class applications, like Shopify—a leading software platform that enables its over one million commerce customers to create and customize online stores.

In November 2023, Acumatica became the first ERP solution to integrate with Shopify, offering business-to-business (B2B) merchants a single omnichannel tool to unify their storefront and back-office needs.

At the time, Acumatica said: “Our [native] integration to the new B2B features of Shopify empowers companies to digitally sell their own products using the same solution that automates their day-to-day business operations.”

With Acumatica’s latest release, Acumatica 2024 R2, users will have access to even more features and enhancements delivering advanced retail and ecommerce capabilities. Through updates to the native Shopify Connector, users will be able to leverage new B2B functionalities for managing customer hierarchies, controlling payment terms, and configuring custom pricing rules.

Why Acumatica’s Shopify Connector Is Crucial for B2B Operations

B2B retail—in which goods, usually bulk shipments, are sold to other businesses rather than to consumers—is complex. B2B operations strive to manage and fulfill orders across multiple sales channels, track cash flow, synchronize inventory, provide proactive customer service, and much more. They also typically have specialized payment requirements—like purchase orders, special pricing for repeat customers, or volume-based pricing. Some may operate with invoices and buy-on-credit terms; some may accept cash, credit, or ACH payments at the time of sale; and still others may use a mix of both.

Unfortunately, many B2B companies attempt to manage these complexities with multiple, disconnected systems. This creates data silos, where information is locked in each individual system, so team members have to manually transfer data between applications. Of course, this double data entry is tedious and time consuming, but it can also lead to human error, miscommunication, and ineffective collaboration—ultimately delaying order processing and creating unhappy customers.

Acumatica’s native Shopify Connector supplies B2B and D2C retailers with a unified platform that seamlessly connects front- and back-end office processes, ensuring smooth data flow and putting an end to aggravating operational challenges.

Technical Overview of Acumatica’s Shopify Connector

Acumatica 2024 R2 Updates

Because B2B merchants often need to offer customer-specific and volume-based pricing, Acumatica 2024 R2’s Shopify Connector has been updated so users don’t have to manage these pricing rules separately in the Shopify and Acumatica interfaces.

Directly in Acumatica, businesses will now be able to:

• Configure fixed prices based on a customer’s location.
• Create quantity control rules and tiered price breakdowns to set discounts for bulk purchases.
• Set up product availability controls to manage product visibility and accessibility.

An important note for users: Sales Price Export is unidirectional from Acumatica to Shopify. If the prices are configured in Shopify then those cannot be imported back to Acumatica. By managing all B2B customer pricing rules in Acumatica and exporting them to Shopify, customers will receive consistent pricing estimates, no matter how they engage with the business.

Real-Time Data Synchronization

Data is king. Updated, accurate information informs every business decision. Having easy access to such data—and the ability to analyze it in one place—helps businesses decide what their next strategic move should be.

With the seamless integration between Acumatica and Shopify, users enjoy real-time, data flow that syncs Acumatica’s back-office financial, sales order, warehouse, and inventory information to Shopify storefronts, resulting in better decision-making, improved inventory accuracy and order processing, and an enhanced customer experience.

Advanced Inventory Management

Tracking inventory with a centralized solution—especially across multiple distribution centers, retail stores, and warehouses—provides B2B companies complete visibility into their inventory, which reduces or eliminates over- and under-stocking, as well as the costs associated with losses and storage needs. Acumatica users enjoy automated stock updates, synchronized inventory levels (per item, unit, and location), and the ability to manage complex product catalogs with variants. These features deliver insights that tell companies what to order and when, so they can strengthen their connections with suppliers and customers.

Comprehensive Financial Management

Acumatica tackles business complexities with built-in financial management tools, including General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Cash Management, Currency Management, Tax Management, Recurring Revenue Management, Deferred Revenue Accounting, Multi-Entity and Intercompany Accounting—and more. With the Shopify Connector, financial accuracy is secured as payment information, tax calculations, and discounts are automatically synched between Shopify storefronts and the Acumatica system. The Connector also supports compliance with industry standards—like PCI compliance—and reduces the risk of financial discrepancies.

Scalability and Customization for B2B Needs

B2B companies handle large volumes of transactions and multiple Shopify storefronts. By connecting effortlessly with Acumatica, they can define customer-specific pricing that will carry forward to Shopify. They can create tailored discount schemes and specialized order workflows and add purchase order information to B2B orders that will synchronize with Acumatica. They can also sell bundles using Shopify’s Bundles feature, which automatically shows the individual items and quantities in Acumatica but informs the buyer in Shopify that the “Bundle” is shipped—a feature that leads to greater revenue, satisfied merchants, and happy customers.

Real-World Impact: B2B Success Story

Established to process orders for Jeffree Star Cosmetics, Los Angeles-based company Killer Merch helps artists and brands design, manufacture, and ship merchandise to fans and companies around the world.

Initially, Killer Merch relied on QuickBooks, Shopify, and ShipStation for their accounting, ecommerce, and distribution needs. But Jeffree Star Cosmetics rapidly grew in popularity, bringing complexities—including thousands of orders per day—that the three disconnected solutions couldn’t handle.

The issues kept piling up. Employees had to manually type order information into each system; they had no visibility into inventory, operations, or key data; they couldn’t book revenues and cost of goods sold (COGS) in the same period; and they operated from one Shopify store, causing chaos for royalty payments and cash flow management.

Needing efficiency, the Killer Merch team searched for a single ERP solution with inventory management and data insights. After reviewing many options, they landed on Acumatica.

“A really big feather in Acumatica’s cap is that they were able to understand what we were trying to do (integrate some 80 Shopify sites to facilitate drops) and accomplish it in a world that didn’t really exist four years before,” says Mark Bubb, Co-Owner and Chief Operating Officer of Killer Merch and Chief Revenue Officer of Jeffree Star Cosmetics.

Now, with Acumatica and its native Shopify Connector, Killer Merch handles hundreds of thousands of orders per week, receives those orders in real-time, can modify or cancel orders instantly, and has boosted revenue with access to customer data (e.g., purchase histories.)

“We’ve come to rely on Acumatica to run the whole company,” says Jenni Arant, Chief Strategy Officer of Jeffree Star Cosmetics and Executive Vice President of Killer Merch. “It’s cool to see how far we have come and that we don’t have to make guesses anymore. We can make decisions based on the information in front of us in Acumatica.”

Conclusion

Killer Merch’s story perfectly exemplifies why B2B ecommerce businesses should embrace Acumatica and its native integration with Shopify. The technical and operational benefits—including end-to-end visibility, centralized order management, streamlined buying processes, secured commerce transactions, product and order information synchronization, personalization, multiple Shopify store capabilities, and so much more—drive B2B efficiency and scalability.

To learn more, contact our experts today.