BC + Shopify Implementation / Integration rescue

Option 04

Fix a Shopify and Business Central Integration That Is Not Working

Orders that do not arrive. Stock levels nobody trusts. Duplicate customers multiplying. Payouts your controller reconciles by hand every month. The integration exists, it was signed off, and it is quietly costing you a person's worth of time. We audit it, tell you what is actually wrong, and fix it.

What the audit costs Recognise any of these?

Fixed fee audit
Written findings you keep either way
No obligation to use us for the fix

Option 04Integration rescue

Audit, fixed fee: $6,500 USD
Audit duration: 2 to 3 weeks
Deliverable: Written findings and plan
Remediation: Quoted from findings
Who built it: Does not matter
Middleware or native: Either
Live store: Keeps selling throughout

Symptoms

What a broken Shopify Business Central integration looks like

These are the calls we get. If two or three of them describe your month, the integration is not working, whatever the status dashboard says.

✗

Shopify orders are not importing into Business CentralThey sit in Shopify, or they appear hours late, or some arrive and some do not and nobody can see the pattern.

✗

Inventory in Shopify does not match Business CentralYou oversell items you do not have, or you hide stock you do. Either way the warehouse has stopped trusting the numbers.

✗

Duplicate customers keep appearingThe same person exists three times in Business Central because the matching rules were never configured properly.

✗

Shopify Payments payouts will not reconcileYour controller unpicks a lump sum by hand every month because fees, refunds and chargebacks were never mapped.

✗

Tax is wrong on some ordersUsually orders from a country whose template was never set up, or a customer whose tax area does not resolve.

✗

Refunds and returns are handled manuallyReturns were left out of the original scope, so somebody raises every credit memo by hand and inventory is adjusted separately.

✗

The sync log is full of errors nobody readsJob queue entries failing daily, error logs nobody owns, and a workaround that has quietly become the process.

✗

Prices differ between the two systemsNobody agreed which system owns pricing, so both do, and somebody reconciles the difference on a spreadsheet.

✗

Only one person understands itIt was built by a contractor or an employee who has since left, there is no documentation, and nobody dares change anything.

✗

You are paying for middleware you may not needA monthly subscription for a connector doing work the native Microsoft connector now does at no licence cost.

Root causes

What is usually actually wrong

In our experience the technology is rarely the problem. These are the causes we find, roughly in order of how often they turn up.

Cause 01

Nobody decided who owns what data

The most common finding by a distance. Items, prices and customers are edited in both systems, so every sync overwrites somebody's work and the team invents workarounds to protect their own records. No amount of technical fixing helps until that decision is made and enforced.

Cause 02

The item master was never mapped properly

Variants modelled as separate products, SKUs that exist in one system only, units of measure that do not correspond, barcodes on some items and not others. The integration was built around the exceptions instead of the exceptions being fixed.

Cause 03

Returns and refunds were left out of scope

The original project covered the happy path. Returns, partial refunds, cancellations and order adjustments were deferred and never came back, so finance carries them manually and the inventory position drifts.

Cause 04

Sync scheduling was never tuned

Everything on the same interval, or intervals set once at install and never revisited as volume grew. Order sync too slow, item sync too frequent, and a job queue that falls behind at exactly the times you cannot afford it to.

Cause 05

Customer matching rules were left at defaults

No smart mapping on email, phone or tax registration number, no country templates, no default customer strategy for guest checkout. The duplicates follow inevitably.

Cause 06

Finance mapping was never completed

Payouts, fees, gift cards, tips and chargebacks with no accounts behind them, so everything lands somewhere generic and the month end unpick becomes routine.

Cause 07

Nothing was documented

No mapping decision record, no runbook, no troubleshooting guide. When the person who built it left, the integration became something the business is afraid of rather than something it operates.

Cause 08

The wrong tool for the requirement

Occasionally the finding is that the business genuinely outgrew what was built, or the opposite: it is paying for middleware to do something the native connector handles. Both are worth knowing before you spend anything else.

The audit

What we do in two to three weeks

A fixed fee, fixed scope assessment. Your store keeps selling throughout and we change nothing without your approval.

Read the system, not the documentation

Connector or middleware configuration, mapping setup, job queue entries, error logs, sync history, and a sample of real transactions traced end to end from Shopify order to posted Business Central invoice.

Data integrity check

Item and variant mapping coverage, orphaned and duplicate records, inventory variance between the two systems, customer duplication rate, and unreconciled financial entries. Measured, not estimated.

Talk to the people working around it

Finance, customer service and the warehouse. The workarounds people have built are the fastest route to the real problems, and they never appear in a configuration review.

Written findings and a remediation plan

Every issue found, its business impact, its root cause, and what fixing it involves. Ranked by what it is costing you, not by what is easiest to fix. With a fixed price against each remediation item.

yours to keep
no obligation to proceed
usable by another vendor

If the honest finding is that the integration is sound and the problem lies elsewhere, that is what the report will say. We would rather write that than sell a rebuild nobody needs.

Cost

What integration rescue costs

$6,500USD, fixed fee for the audit

One price, whatever we find. The deliverable is the written findings and remediation plan, and it is yours to keep and to act on however you choose, including with another vendor.

Remediation is quoted from the findings, item by item, at a fixed price each. Most engagements land well below the cost of a rebuild, because most of what is wrong is configuration and process rather than code. Where a rebuild genuinely is the answer, the audit fee is credited against it.

What the alternative usually costs

Rebuilding the integration from scratch$15,000 to $30,000
Middleware subscription, ongoing$600+ per month
North America developer rate, time and materials$100 to $150 per hour
A person spending half their week on workaroundsyour call

Frequently asked

Integration audit questions

Our integration was built by someone else. Will you still look at it?

Yes, and most of the ones we audit were. It makes no difference whether it was built by a Dynamics partner, a Shopify agency, a middleware vendor, a contractor or an employee who has left. We are reading the configuration and the data, not reviewing anyone's work.

We use a third party connector app, not the Microsoft one. Does that matter?

No. The audit covers whatever is actually running. Part of what the findings answer is whether the native Microsoft connector would now do the job, since it has gained a lot of ground, and what dropping the subscription would save you against what migrating would cost.

Will you have to stop our store or our sync?

No. The audit is read-only. We review configuration, logs and data, and trace transactions that have already happened. Nothing changes without your explicit approval, and any remediation work is scheduled with you and tested in a sandbox first.

What if the findings say we should replace it entirely?

Then the report says that, with the reasoning and the cost. The audit fee is credited against a rebuild if you choose to do it with us. If you would rather take the findings to another vendor, the document is written to be usable by one, and that is a legitimate outcome we have no problem with.

How much of our team's time does the audit take?

Around four to six hours in total, spread across finance, customer service and warehouse, plus read access to both systems. We do the rest ourselves, deliberately, because the point is to see what is actually happening rather than what people believe is happening.

Can the audit be a first step toward a larger project?

Frequently it is. Businesses often discover through the findings that the real answer is a fuller rebuild, a storefront replacement or a Business Central reconfiguration. The audit is designed to let you make that decision on evidence, at a low fixed cost, rather than on a vendor's assertion.

Other options

If this is not quite your situation

Next step

Tell us what is going wrong

A short call to confirm the audit is the right starting point, then two to three weeks to a written answer. Your store keeps selling the whole time.

Book an integration audit