How Mill and Mortar managed high order volumes by integrating multiple webshop with accounting app

Project Overview

Mill & Mortar is a company that specialises in selling high-quality spices from around the world. They prioritise ecological and fair trade practices and offer clean label and estate products. They believe in treating the earth and their suppliers fairly, and they take care to only sell products that meet their high standards. But selling things online can get pretty complicated, especially when you're committed to doing things right.

At first, they used one system to run their online store and another system to handle the money side of things. But that setup wasn't doing everything they needed, so they decided to switch to a new online system called Shopify.

This change made things tricky. They needed to figure out how to get information about orders, find out who had placed them, understand all the details of each order, and make sure everything was recorded properly in their accounting system. And they wanted to do all this without losing sight of what's important to them: offering top-quality, ethically-sourced spices.

It was a big challenge, but they knew it was essential to find a way to make everything work smoothly so they could keep on doing what they do best.

The Challenge

What did Mill & Mortar needed help with?

Mill & Mortar needed help with syncing Shopify [previously used WooCommerce] updates with their accounting system e-conomic so that every order placed in Shopify would automatically generate an order in e-conomic.

Essentially, they needed help with:

• Automatically adding updates from Shopify to e-conomic
• Invoice processing
• For every order placed in Shopify an order should be created in e-conomic automatically.

The Solution

How did we approach it?

To solve these problems, we connected Mill & Mortar's online store with their accounting system. This made things run smoother and allowed them to manage their orders and customer information more easily. We began with integrating Shopify and e-conomic followed by building custom work processes according to their business needs.

Integrating Shopify with e-conomic involves several steps.

Here's an overview of the detailed workflows:

Get order from Shopify: The first step is to retrieve an order from the Shopify store. This is done using the "getShopifyOrder" function which takes in two parameters: orderId and shop_name. This function makes a request to the Shopify API to get the order information and returns it in a response object.

Find customer on Shopify: Once the order is retrieved, the next step is to find the customer who placed the order on Shopify. This is done using the "findCustomerOnShopify" function which checks the value of shop_name, sets the URL and configuration variables, and makes a request to the Shopify API to get the customer information.

Get the order details: After retrieving the order and customer information, the next step is to extract specific details from the order and customer objects and send them to a server using the "getOrderDetails" function. This function extracts important information such as the order date, shipping address, items, and shipping methods from the order and customer objects. It also adjusts prices to exclude taxes when necessary. Finally, an object called "data" is created with all the extracted information, and an HTTP POST request is sent to a specific URL with this data object as the request body.

Create draft order in e-conomic: In order to create an order in the e-conomic system, we use a function called "createDraftOrderInEconomic". This function works by first sending a request to the e-conomic API to get a template for an invoice that we can use to create the order. Once we have the template, we use it to create an XML string that contains information about the order, such as the customer's name and address, currency, payment terms, and total amount. Finally, we send an HTTP request using this XML string as the request body to create the order in the e-conomic system. Essentially, this function helps us create a preliminary version of the order in the e-conomic system that we can review and edit before finalising it.

Automations delivered - SaaS apps that helped Mill & Mortar grow:

• Shopify - The webshop was integrated with e-conomic to sync the updates from the e-commerce site.

• e-conomic - The accounting system already being used by Mill and Mortar and Cloudify has the expertise for creating custom workflows with WooCommerce and e-conomic.

The Results

Cloudify successfully helped Mill and Mortar integrate Shopify and e-conomic to achieve their business goals. They created scalable and user-friendly workflows, automated information flow between the platforms, and enabled the creation of orders in e-conomic for every Shopify order. Cloudify also handled complexities like B2B/B2C differentiation and multiple VAT zones. They provided a personalised dashboard for monitoring automation, allowing easy tracking and resolution of errors. Mill and Mortar gained efficiency, accuracy, and control over their e-commerce operations, thanks to Cloudify's expertise.