Shopify & Shopify Plus

This guide outlines 1. how Ramp’s Shopify plugin works and 2. How to increase your shipping speeds and get paid from your customer’s orders faster. If you're a brand or brand owner, learn more about our fulfillment for Shopify here.

Our ⚡️lightning⚡️ fast Shopify plugin connects both Shopify and Shopify Plus stores to our WMS, providing a two-way sync of customer orders (see: Pick Ticket) and inventory. That means that once your Shopify store is integrated, you select which products you'd like us to fulfill and when new orders are created in Shopify, we'll ship them quickly and automatically. For pricing of this integration, please reach out to our sales department. In a nutshell, unless otherwise specified, inventory syncs occur daily during normal volumes, and customer order data is exchanged in batches about every 15 minutes.

What can I do to help reduce integration errors?

1. Understand the basic data process:
   Before anything can happen, all item records on sales orders must be pre-loaded in Ramp’s WMS. If an order gets created in Shopify before the item record is loaded into Ramp’s WMS, the sales order will error and not be sent to the warehouse.

2. Be knowledgeable about the order download criteria:
   Order Status: Ramp’s plugin downloads orders that match this criteria:
   » financial status = paid
   » fulfillment status = unfulfilled

Ramp does not download orders that are UNPAID, once an order is PAID, we can fulfill your order. (Orders might be unpaid because your customer’s credit card was declined, for instance. It’s best practice to pre-auth and secure payment before shipping orders.)
Shipping Address: Orders must have a valid shipping address before the data is sent to Ramp, and there are many plugins available on Shopify that offer front-end address validation. This is in your best interest, preventing incorrect addresses on orders helps you collect your customer’s payments faster and helps the warehouse fulfill orders faster.

Tags

How do the tags work?
By default, once the customer places an order, (paid & unfulfilled), Shopify sends the order to Ramp's system and then adds a tag "ORDER SENT TO RAMP" on the order. Once the order is imported to Ramp's system successfully, we add a second tag "ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP".

#### Re-Pushing Orders to Ramp (ie. if Ramp cancels the order in Ramp's system, and you wish to re-push the order to Ramp a second time)

Ramp's Shopify plugin allows you to re-push an order to our system, which is helpful for several reasons.

For instance, in the event that Ramp cancels a Shopify order in Ramp's system, Ramp emails an alert to you with the order # and if you'd like to 'resend' the order to Ramp, simply go to Shopify and remove the tags "ORDER SENT TO RAMP" and "ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP".

By removing those 2 tags, you'll cause Ramp's Shopify plugin to "re-pick up" the order again.

This is especially useful in events where Ramp cancels an order due to a bad address, and allows you to fix the address and "re-push" the order to Ramp's system automatically, all without leaving your Shopify.

Another helpful function of this ability to "re-push" orders to Ramp is if Ramp cancels an order due to no stock, and you receive stock in the near future, you can simply re-push the order to Ramp to fulfill. If you also have inventory sync on, please communicate with Ramp IT if you intend to utilize this function, as the inventory sync assumes all orders are in sync at all times.

Additional instructions for "mass repushing" orders to Ramp are outlined below:

❗️

PREVENT MISSING ORDERS

If you have orders tagged with ORDER SENT TO RAMP, but do not see ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP, please check your email for an error alert (like invalid shipping address).

If you don't have an email error alert and don't see the ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP tag, reach out to our help desk immediately for assistance. You can find problem orders easily in the shopify admin order search by copying and pasting this into the FILTER ORDERS search bar:

"ORDER SENT TO RAMP" AND NOT tag:"ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP"

For a customization that allows you to only release certain orders to Ramp, see the section: Tags: Custom Release Function

3. Minimize unplanned or erratic system / data configuration changes:
   SKU/item names: Refrain from changing SKU names or making Shopify admin updates without reaching out to Ramp first.
   Shipping Methods: Adding or modifying a shipping method to a value not yet mapped in the plugin will cause the order’s default shipping method to = “OTHR” and quarantine the order. (This prevents orders from shipping quickly.)

How do I install Ramp's plugin?

Please provide RAMP with ADMIN login credentials to your Shopify store and we'll install the plugin!

Before installing Ramp's plugin, please complete the following:

1. Make sure your items (variants) have a unique SKU and unique UPC in Shopify. MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO DUPLICATE SKUS. SKUs should never be modified once created in RAMP. SKUs should be IN ALL CAPS otherwise the flows (like inventory sync or order download) won't properly work, as the integration is case-sensitive and all items in Ramp's WMS are in TITLE CASE (CAPS). Any time you create new items, please send an updated item file to Ramp. If an order is created in Shopify before the updated item file is sent to Ramp, the order will error out. The SKU + UPC in Shopify must match the SKU + UPC loaded into Ramp’s WMS.

SKUs should be unique down to the SIZE level. For example, if you have a t-shirt style called "5YEAR" offered in red and blue colors, in sizes Small-Large, your SKUs might look something like this:

• 5YEAR-RED-S
• 5YEAR-RED-M
• 5YEAR-RED-L
• 5YEAR-BLUE-S
• 5YEAR-BLUE-M
• 5YEAR-BLUE-L

2. In Shopify, go to Settings -> Checkout -> Order Processing, select "Automatically archive the order" after it's been fulfilled and paid. This isn't strictly a requirement, but it will keep your store organized and easy to manage.

3. In Shopify -> Products -> Edit (or Shopify -> Products -> Variants -> Edit, if there are Variants), set the Inventory Policy to "Shopify tracks this product's inventory".

Gift Message integration

1. Create an item in Shopify specifically for the Gift Message SKU with unlimited or untracked inventory.
2. Allow the end-customer to edit the item's description when the item is in their cart.
3. Tell Ramp what the Gift Item's SKU is called (Example: GC101) so we can map that item's dynamic description to our Gift Message field in the WMS.

FAQ & Preventing Errors

• I’ve created new items in Shopify. How can I confirm there are no duplicate SKUs or UPCs in Shopify before sending an item file to Ramp?

• Why don't I see inventory in Shopify yet? How often does inventory sync? What's included in the snapshot?

Unless we've otherwise specified, a full inventory snapshot is sent to Shopify daily at 01:00 pacific. In order for Shopify to update correctly, the item's SKU + UPC must exactly match the WMS's SKU + UPC value.

For instance, this item matches exactly, and inventory will update in Shopify:

• 5YEAR-RED-S (UPC: 112233445566) in Shopify
• 5YEAR-RED-S (UPC: 112233445566) in WMS

Whereas this item is different in Shopify, and inventory will not update:

• 5YEAR-RED -S (UPC: 112233445566) in Shopify
• 5YEAR-RED-S (UPC: 112233445566) in WMS
  The problem with the items above is an extra space character has been added to the SKU in Shopify. Inventory will not load. Action: update item so SKU matches both systems.

Inventory included in the sync are ready to be picked. This means that the inventory is on our warehouse racks, ready to go! (I.e. not in a returns/receiving location nor allocated to other orders.)

• I want to make a major system configuration change in Shopify. When should I let Ramp know about the change? How do I make sure it doesn't impact the integration?

If you are making any system changes to functions highlighted in the image below, please let us know so we can coordinate and test together.

• Why didn't the shipping method translate to WMS?

During the onboarding process, we review the required shipping methods and map the cross references values together. For example, if Shopify lists "Free Shipping" as a shipping method option, we can map that to UPSG, for UPS Ground.

Ship Via Reminders

Sometimes, shipping methods don't translate into the WMS. Two main causes for this are:

1. there are new, unmapped shipping methods in Shopify

• After the onboarding process, please let us know if you plan to modify or add additional shipping methods in Shopify. If changes are made without updating the cross reference map, the shipping translation defaults to the catchall value, OTHR, indicating an issue. To avoid this issue, please let Ramp know when and if shipping methods change in Shopify.

2. no shipping method was selected when the order was saved

• This is a common issue in Shopify; when manually creating a new sales order, or converting a draft order to a sales order, it's easy to overlook the "Add Shipping" link. To avoid this issue, please remember to select a shipping method when manually creating a sales order. When you manually create an order in Shopify, it's important that you choose a ship method prior to saving the sales order. If no ship method is selected, the default catchall will be used in the integration (for example, if ship method = Not Available or Not Selected, default to "PICK UP" or "OTHER", depending on what was mapped during your on-boarding process.)

Below is a visual example of the shipping method cross reference table we set up together during the onboarding process.

• I want to make a change to an order or cancel an order. But, how and when is it too late?
  Our ⚡️lightning⚡️ fast plugin processes data every second, which in turn helps us ship your orders even faster! Often, by the time a customer wants to modify or cancel an order, we've either already shipped it or it's been downloaded to our WMS. Any line-level modifications (like changing the quantity ordered, or manually adding/removing a line) to the order in Shopify could break the integration. Please reach out to us as soon as possible if any modifications or cancellations are made to the order in Shopify and we'll be happy to help!

How do I export inventory and product from Shopify?

To export a product list, follow these steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products > All products.
2. Click Export.
3. From the dialog box, choose ALL PRODUCTS, and select .csv

To export an inventory snapshot from Shopify, follow these steps:

1. Go to Products » inventory » all variants » export inventory.
2. Shopify emails you a .csv report.

Customers

What customer # comes into WMS from Shopify?
If you've set up a customer account in Shopify, the customer # that imports to WMS is found in the link. In this example, the customer ID is: 542960517169

Tags: Custom Release Function

However, if you want to completely control which orders we pick up, we can enable a tag restriction to only pull orders that YOU add the "SEND TO RAMP" tag to. This change requires a request to the IT help desk and 1 test order with you to confirm the settings work. Once enabled, you just need to add SEND TO RAMP to any order you want us to pull. This works great for brands who do drops and presell inventory before it arrives at the warehouse.

If any errors occur, we'll email you the full detail of the problem and we do NOT put ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP. You have the opportunity to fix the error in Shopify, then you can remove the tag ORDER SENT TO RAMP and we'll pick it up a second time. (i.e. if customer doesn't put a complete shipping address, you can edit the address and re-send the order).

Note: After 2 hours, if you notice the order still has ORDER SENT TO RAMP and you haven't received an error alert, nor have you received a new tag ORDER ACCEPTED BY RAMP, there could be a problem and we ask that you reach out to our help desk for assistance.

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Last updated 29 June 2019