Shopify inventory integration — what it must actually deliver

The key facts

• The four-part spec: webhook order import, live stock checks, truth flowing back to the store, and the accounting handoff — anything less is a copy job.
• The quantity-master rule decides success: the operations record adjusts stock from real movements; the store displays what it is told.
• BSimple ships the spec: Shopify orders import by webhook into the normal flow — pick/pack, approval, stock deduction — with invoicing between Shopify and your books.
• Stated plainly: no BSimple storefront; Shopify runs the shop, BSimple runs the truth underneath it.
• The wider system: inventory management end to end maps the whole record this page sits in.

The integration spec that matters

Orders in, as they happen. Webhook import means the order appears in the operational record at checkout — not on a nightly sync. The gap between "sold" and "recorded" is where overselling lives; two units on the shelf and three sales before the sync is the classic failure the webhook exists to prevent.

Stock truth back, on a known schedule. After picking, packing and counts, the store's available quantities update from the record. Continuous or batched matters less than known — mystery gaps are how the store promises what the shelf cannot honour.

One quantity master. The operations record adjusts stock from real movements — receipts, sales, transfers, counts. The store displays. Two systems adjusting the same stock is the drift engine; the quantity-master rule applies to Shopify exactly as to accounting.

The accounting handoff included. The checked order becomes an invoice that reaches the books without re-entry — in BSimple's case, pushed to Xero or MYOB after approval, with payment status mirroring back (the boundary).

How BSimple ships it

We build BSimple, so weigh that. The Shopify connection imports orders by webhook into the same flow every other order takes: delivery slips, picking and packing, stock deduction at invoice approval. The store and the phone order and the wholesale portal order all land on one record, so the floor works one queue and the stock truth is single. Invoicing stays between Shopify and your accounting system — the integration spec is core, with no add-on fee in plans running $180/$250/$399 per month AUD.

Stated plainly: BSimple runs no storefront — no product pages, no checkout, no theme. If you want channel management inside an all-in-one suite, that is a different category; if you want the truth underneath the store you already run, the Shopify comparison and the connection guide cover the details, and the trial connects your real store before any commitment.

Testing any integration in one afternoon

Three tests, your store, your products: sell the last unit and watch the store react — oversold or sold out? Receive mid-day and time how long until the store can sell it. Mismatch deliberately — let store and record disagree — and see which system surfaces the conflict first. Any vendor can demo the happy path; these three reveal the integration's real opinion. Run them in the trial, and the retail-store angle covers the shop-side pattern if that is your shape.