Shopify + Business Central: the complete guide

Microsoft has built the Shopify connector directly into Business Central. It synchronises items, inventory, customers, orders, shipments and payouts, and it is free. For most Danish webshops on Shopify, it is the right choice. But it is not plug and play: the set-up of templates, VAT and order flow decides whether the bookkeeping team gets less work or more.

Here is how we set it up, and where it typically goes wrong.

Prerequisites

• Business Central online — the connector does not exist on-premises
• A Shopify store and admin access in both Shopify and BC
• Decide which system owns the item data. Our recommendation: BC owns items, prices and inventory
• Customer templates with the right posting groups and VAT set-up — preferably per country
• Item numbers in BC that match SKUs in Shopify, if the store already has products

1. Installing the connector

The connector is part of Business Central and does not need to be downloaded from AppSource. Search for Shopify Shops in BC, create the shop with your Shopify admin URL, and approve the access in Shopify. If you have several shops — for example a Danish and a German one — each gets its own shop card with its own settings.

2. Product synchronisation

• Choose the direction: from BC to Shopify, from Shopify to BC, or only updating existing items
• Variants in BC become variants in Shopify — check that size and colour are set up the same way
• Images, barcodes, item attributes and marketing texts can be sent from BC
• Prices are controlled through customer price groups and discounts in BC, per shop and currency

3. Order synchronisation

Orders that need to be delivered become sales orders in BC. Orders that have already been handled in Shopify become sales invoices. Turn automatic release off at the start, so that someone looks through the orders for the first while. And decide whether each web customer should be created as a customer, or whether B2C orders should go on one shared customer — the latter is what most bookkeeping teams prefer.

• Payment methods are mapped to payment methods in BC — MobilePay (a Danish mobile payment app), card and Shopify Payments each on their own
• Delivery methods are mapped to shipping agents, so that GLS, PostNord and DAO (Danish carriers) come across correctly
• VAT per country: sales to consumers in other EU countries must carry that country's VAT (OSS, the EU One-Stop Shop scheme) — set up customer templates per country
• Shipping and tips are posted to the accounts you specify on the shop card
• Returns and refunds become credit memos

4. Inventory synchronisation

This is where the gain comes fastest: no sold-out items that can still be bought. BC is the master for inventory and sends calculated availability to Shopify — not just the quantity on the shelf, but adjusted for open orders.

• Choose which locations in BC count towards each Shopify location
• Choose the calculation method. Available inventory today is the safe starting point
• Run synchronisation through the job queue every 15–30 minutes
• Turn off "continue selling when out of stock", unless you deliberately sell on pre-order

5. Customer data

• Customers are matched on email and phone, so the same customer is not created twice
• B2B companies are matched on CVR (Danish company registration) or VAT number
• If the B2B customer has a GLN number, the invoice must go out as OIOUBL (the Danish e-invoicing format), not as a PDF
• GDPR: agree how you delete or anonymise a customer who asks for it — in both systems

Most integration problems come from a lack of master data discipline — not the connector. Spend a week before go-live cleaning up the item register.

Troubleshooting

• Start in the Shopify log in BC. It shows exactly which call failed
• Order imported, but no sales order: typically a missing mapping of customer, payment method or delivery method
• Wrong amounts: compare the totals in the Shopify order with the sales order, and check VAT, currency and rounding
• Inventory is not updating: check that the item has inventory tracking in Shopify, and that the location has a calculation method

And if the shop runs WooCommerce?

Microsoft's connector only exists for Shopify. For WooCommerce we have built our own: Invice WooCommerce Connector. It turns web orders into sales orders, sends inventory and prices back to the shop, handles variants and several shops from one BC — and sends the invoice as OIOUBL when the customer has a GLN number.