Tutorial: Linking branches to locations in Shopify

Tutorial: Linking branches to locations in Shopify

Overview

Learn to link Cin7 Omni branches to Shopify locations to keep sales, returns, and stock levels in sync, and allocate Shopify transactions to specific general ledger accounts for detailed financial reporting.

In this tutorial, we’ll link Cin7 Omni branches to Shopify locations so their sales, returns, and stock levels keep in sync. Creating our links has two parts:

  • Warehouse mapping—uploads stock levels to the right location

  • Order routing—downloads sales and returns to the right branch

For this tutorial, our business has three Shopify locations and three matching Cin7 Omni branches. We want changes to the branches’ stock levels (like, from receiving stock) to upload to the right locations, and sales and returns from each location to download to the right branch for fulfillment.

Let’s get going!

1. Warehouse mapping

We’ll start by creating our warehouse mappings, so stock levels at each branch upload to the right location. This ensures we aren’t overselling or underselling goods in Shopify:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu, open your Shopify integration.

  3. Open Settings.

  4. Open the Settings tab.

  5. Under Stock, select Map Warehouses (see image below).

Selecting Map Warehouses will display the warehouse mapping table below. The first column (Branch) lists our Cin7 Omni branches. The second (Shopify Warehouses) contains dropdown menus, from which we can select Shopify locations.

  1. For each Branch in the warehouse mapping table, select the matching Shopify Warehouse.

  2. Click Save Settings.

Well done! See how each branch is linked to a location? Those are our warehouse mappings. Now let’s set up order routing.

Optional: Advanced warehouse mapping options

  • If you don’t want some branches’ stock levels to sync to Shopify, leave those rows blank.

  • If you want the total level of stock across multiple branches to sync to one Shopify location, select that Shopify location for each branch.

  • If you can’t see all your Shopify locations in the menu, select Refresh Warehouse Options.

2. Order routing

To ensure that Shopify sales and return from each location download to the right branch, we’ll set up order routing.

Before we begin, we need the IDs of our Shopify locations:

  1. Log in to Shopify.

  2. In Settings, open Locations.

  3. Under All Locations, for each location:

    1. Open the location.

    2. Note the location’s ID—the ID is the number following the final forward slash ( / ) at the end of the URL in the address bar (see image below).

Now we have your locations’ IDs. Let’s set up order routing:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu, open your Shopify integration.

  3. Open Settings.

  4. Open the Settings tab.

  5. Under Download Orders > Branches, set Enable Branch Routing to Configure Branches.

Setting Enable Branch Routing to Configure Branches will display the branch routing grid below (see image below). The first column (Branch) lists our Cin7 Omni branches:

  1. For each Branch in the branch routing grid, enter the matching location’s ID into the External Route Code column.

  2. Click Save Settings.

Very good! See how each branch is linked to a location ID? That’s our order routing.

We’ve successfully linked our branches and locations. Our stock levels will upload to Shopify according to our warehouse mappings, and our transactions will download from Shopify according to our ordering routing.

Find out about uploading stock levels and downloading transactions.

Optional: Advanced order routing

If you want to route orders to different branches based on the delivery country, state, or method, or if you want to choose backup branches, find out more about order (branch) routing.

3. Bonus: General ledger allocations

Say we want to allocate Shopify webstore and point-of-sale (POS) transactions to different accounts in our general ledger and build more detailed financial reports.

We can do this with channel mapping in our Shopify integration:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu, open your Shopify integration.

  3. Open Settings.

  4. Open the Settings tab.

  5. Under Accounting, select Channel Mapping Enabled. This will display the channel mapping table below (see image below).

  6. Click Add New Channel Map twice, so you have two rows.

  7. For the first row:

    1. Set Channel Field to source_name.

    2. For Channel Value, enter “webstore”.

    3. Set GL Account to the general ledger account you want to allocate webstore transactions to.

    4. Set Accounting Status to either (a) Do Not Import (if you want to batch webstore invoices and credit notes) or Not Imported Yet (if you don’t want to batch webstore invoices and credit notes). Find out about batching.

  8. For the second row:

    1. Set Channel Field to source_name.

    2. For Channel Value, enter “POS”.

    3. Set GL Account to the general ledger account you want to allocate POS transactions to.

    4. Set Accounting Status to either (a) Do Not Import (if you want to batch POS invoices and credit notes) or Not Imported Yet (if you don’t want to batch POS invoices and credit notes). Find out about batching.

  9. Click Save Settings.

Great! Now, when you download sales orders and credit notes from Shopify, they’ll be allocated to different general ledger accounts depending on whether they’re from your webstore or POS.

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