Connecting Shopify to Business Central for wholesale

Most wholesale teams we speak to already have Business Central in charge of the numbers. Items, customers, price lists and stock all live there. The website is where those numbers get copied by hand, or not at all.

A Shopify Business Central integration fixes that by agreeing which system owns each piece of data, then syncing it automatically. For wholesale, Business Central should usually own items, trade prices, stock and customer terms. Shopify should own the buying experience and create the orders. Get that split right and the rest of the build gets much simpler.

Which system should own what?

Ownership decisions come before any code. When two systems can both edit a price, you'll eventually have two prices.

This is the split we start from on wholesale builds.

• Items and variants. Business Central owns the codes and units. Shopify adds photography, copy and merchandising.
• Trade prices. Business Central owns them, whether they sit in customer price lists or price groups.
• Stock. Business Central owns it by location and pushes availability to Shopify.
• Customers and companies. They can start in either system, but they're matched on one shared reference so nobody ends up with two accounts.
• Orders. Shopify creates them and sends them to Business Central as sales orders.
• Invoices and payment terms. Business Central handles them, and buyers see what they need in their account.

Some businesses need a different split. That's fine, as long as it's written down and everyone signs it off before the build starts.

What makes wholesale harder than retail?

A retail sync mostly moves products, stock and orders. Wholesale adds the parts trade buyers care about most.

Units of measure come first. A buyer might order by the case while your warehouse counts single units. The integration has to convert both ways, every time, without rounding errors creeping in.

Customer-specific pricing is second. Each account can see different prices, and those prices can change over time. On Fáilte Foods, we built a custom date-based pricing system for delivery processing, sitting alongside the Business Central sync.

Credit and payment terms are third. Trade customers expect to order on account. Business Central already knows their terms, so Shopify shouldn't have to guess.

Then there's reordering. Trade buyers repeat the same order week after week. Fáilte's store has a custom favourites list so customers can save and reorder with ease. It only works because the products and prices behind it stay in step with Business Central. Our guide to Shopify for Scottish food and drink wholesale covers how that build came together.

Connector, middleware or a custom app?

There are three common routes, and each is right for someone.

Microsoft publishes a Shopify connector for Business Central. It's a sensible starting point when your catalogue and pricing are fairly standard and your Business Central partner is comfortable configuring it.

Middleware sits between the two systems and handles the mapping. It suits businesses that want a managed platform, or that already use one for other sales channels.

A custom Shopify app talks to both APIs directly. We build one when the pricing logic, ordering rules or data shape are specific to your business. It's also the route that gives you full control over error handling and alerts.

The right answer depends on your pricing model, your order volume and who will look after the sync. We'd rather recommend the simplest route that holds up than build something custom for its own sake.

What should you have ready before the build?

A few things save weeks once the project starts.

1. A named owner for Business Central, internal or at your partner, who can answer configuration questions quickly.
2. A clean item list, with consistent codes, units of measure and variant logic.
3. A decision on how trade customers are approved and linked to their Business Central account.
4. A list of the order types you actually take, including deliveries, collections and anything unusual.
5. Test data that reflects real accounts, not three tidy examples.

Fáilte had only just moved to Business Central when our project started, so a lot of configuration was still in progress. We worked through the product sync carefully so everything landing in Shopify was clean and reliable from day one. If your ERP is new too, plan for that overlap rather than waiting for a perfect moment.

How do you know the sync is working?

An integration isn't finished at go live. Orders fail quietly. A price update lands on some products and not others. Stock drifts until someone in the warehouse notices.

We build logging and alerts into the sync from the start, and we agree who checks them. On wholesale stores, orders and stock matter most, because trade buyers reorder often and expect accuracy. Our wider guide to what a Shopify ERP integration involves covers testing and monitoring in more depth.

If you're leaving Magento at the same time, as Fáilte did, our Magento to Shopify migration checklist covers the data side of the move.

Where parallel helps

We connect Shopify and Shopify Plus to Business Central for wholesale businesses. We work alongside your ERP partner rather than around them. They own the ERP. We own the commerce layer. See how we approach apps and integrations and B2B commerce on Shopify.

Tell us which version of Business Central you're on and how your trade pricing works. Book a call and we'll walk through the sync with you.