Integration combo
Shopify to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central integration
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is where mid-market operations and finance live in a lot of UK and EU retailers. Shopify is increasingly what sits in front of it. The integration carries orders into Business Central as proper sales documents with the right dimensions, posts customer and item data the right direction, and lifts inventory and pricing back out so the storefront stays honest. We design, build and support the integration as a Patchworks Partner Agency, with the SLA picking up from go-live.
Flow shape
Order sync: Shopify to Business Central
How a Shopify order lands in Business Central as a sales document with the right posting groups, dimensions and VAT treatment from the first run.
- Trigger Shopify Order created order/create webhook
- Extract Patchworks Ingest payload queue, dedupe, normalise
- Transform Patchworks Resolve VAT codes rate, posting group, EU rules
- Decision Patchworks Customer exists? BC customer lookup
- Transform Patchworks Map dimensions channel, location, salesperson
- Action BC Create sales order via OData / web service
- Writeback Shopify Tag order store BC document number
Illustrative only. The diagram above shows how an integration of this shape works in concept. It is not a screenshot or export of the actual Patchworks process flow; the production flow has more nodes, more branches and more error handling than a marketing page can usefully render.
What we sync
8 synchronisations between Shopify and Microsoft Dynamics Business Central.
Only the data flows that both platforms actually support. Each section below describes what’s in scope, the gotchas we watch for, and how the flow is shaped inside Patchworks.
- 01
Order sync
Shopify Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
Orders raised in Shopify flow into Microsoft Dynamics Business Central on creation, status change and edit. The flow normalises Shopify's order schema into the record shape Microsoft Dynamics Business Central expects, including line-level discounts, taxes, gift cards, shipping methods and multi-currency. Partial cancellations and post-capture edits are handled with idempotent updates so Microsoft Dynamics Business Central stays the system of record without double-counting. Edge cases that come up most often on this pair: backorders, pre-orders, subscription rebills and orders placed through guest checkout with no matching customer record on the destination side.
- 02
Inventory sync
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Shopify
Stock levels in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central push to Shopify on a schedule, on movement events, or both. The flow handles multi-location and multi-warehouse split, safety stock buffers, in-transit and committed quantities, and channel-specific availability rules. Where Shopify has its own location model we map Microsoft Dynamics Business Central's locations onto it explicitly rather than relying on default behaviour. Throttling protects both sides during bulk recalculations; deltas only during normal operation. The goal is one source of truth for sellable inventory across the estate, with Microsoft Dynamics Business Central retaining authority.
- 03
Product sync
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Shopify
Product master data syncs from Microsoft Dynamics Business Central to Shopify on publish, with channel-aware enrichment so Shopify only receives the attributes it can act on. Variants, option sets, media, locale-specific copy, category mappings and metafield or extension data are handled explicitly. New SKUs flow in; deprecated SKUs are flagged rather than hard-deleted so historical orders stay intact. Where Shopify has channel-specific requirements that Microsoft Dynamics Business Central does not natively model (typing rules, required attributes, image dimensions), the integration enforces them at the boundary rather than asking the merchandising team to.
- 04
Pricing sync
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Shopify
Price lists in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central push to Shopify with currency, tax-class and customer-group awareness intact. Promotional pricing, contract pricing and tiered B2B pricing are handled as first-class concepts rather than overrides applied at the storefront. Where Microsoft Dynamics Business Central runs effective-dated pricing, the flow coordinates the cutover so Shopify's catalogue switches at the same instant as the finance side rather than drifting by hours. Currency rounding and display-tax rules are reconciled at the integration boundary to avoid the classic 1p / 1c off-by-one that haunts multi-currency rollouts.
- 05
Customer sync
Shopify Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
Customers created or updated in Shopify flow into Microsoft Dynamics Business Central with a stable cross-system identifier so the same shopper isn't fragmented into duplicates across the estate. Addresses, marketing preferences, B2B account hierarchies, tax exemption flags and channel attribution are mapped explicitly rather than left to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central's defaults. Where Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is the customer system of record (CRM or ERP) we publish back into Shopify so storefront personalisation and segmentation reflect the canonical state. GDPR deletion and rectification are propagated across the integration in both directions.
- 06
Returns sync
Shopify Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
Return authorisations created in Shopify flow into Microsoft Dynamics Business Central with reason codes, inspection state, restocking decisions and refund eligibility carried through. Where Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is the ERP or WMS, the return becomes an inbound record that affects available stock and accounts. Where Microsoft Dynamics Business Central is the storefront, the order record updates so the customer-facing return state stays honest. Exchanges are handled as a paired return-plus-outbound rather than collapsed into a refund-plus-new-order, which keeps the accounting clean and the operational picture accurate.
- 07
Refund sync
Shopify Microsoft Dynamics Business Central
Refund decisions raised in Shopify push into Microsoft Dynamics Business Central as the financial event they are, with original payment method, partial-versus-full handling, tax recalculation and currency intact. The flow waits on inspection outcome where the merchant policy requires it rather than firing on RMA creation. Refunds against gift cards, multi-tender orders and marketplace orders (where the marketplace owns the refund execution) each take a different path; the integration picks the right one based on the original order's tender mix rather than a single default rule.
- 08
Tax sync
Microsoft Dynamics Business Central Shopify
Tax codes, tax classes and jurisdiction rules in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central push to Shopify so the storefront or marketplace charges what finance will actually post. VAT groups, reverse-charge B2B handling, marketplace-of-record tax (where the channel collects on the seller's behalf) and US sales-tax nexus are each modelled explicitly. The integration validates that Shopify's tax calculation matches Microsoft Dynamics Business Central's before publishing a price; mismatches are flagged loudly rather than left to surface at month-end on a VAT return.
Typical delivery
6 to 9 weeks for a standard delivery.
Up to 5× faster using PatchBuddy- Week 1 Discovery: BC tenant setup, posting groups, dimensions, VAT scheme, location codes.
- Weeks 2 to 4 Build: order, customer, inventory, pricing and credit-note flows in Patchworks.
- Weeks 5 to 6 Integration testing against a BC sandbox using staged Shopify orders.
- Weeks 7 to 8 UAT with finance and operations; sign-off on dimension and posting-group mappings.
- Week 9 Cutover and hyper-care; transition into support retainer with monitoring and SLA.
Patchworks delivery
How Patchworks shapes Shopify to Microsoft Dynamics Business Central.
Business Central rewards integrations that respect its document model: orders are sales orders, not generic transactions. We build the Shopify-to-Business-Central flows in Patchworks mapping orders onto the right document types, posting groups and dimensions, with explicit handling for the VAT and currency rules Business Central enforces at posting. Item ledger entries, item availability and unit-of-measure conversions all flow back into Shopify in the same Patchworks integration.
Got more connectors that need to live in this flow? A 3PL, a marketplace, returns, a PIM, anything. We can do it. Most live integrations end up larger than a pair, all built and supported as one estate. More on multi-platform estates →
Our Patchworks practiceQuestions
Common questions.
-
01 Does the integration work with Business Central SaaS or on-premise?
Both. The Patchworks connector talks to Business Central SaaS via OData and web services; on-premise deployments are reachable via the same APIs through a published web service tier. The flow logic is the same. -
02 How are BC dimensions handled?
Dimensions are first-class. Channel, location, salesperson, project and any custom dimension you use get mapped explicitly during scoping. The integration enforces them at the boundary rather than relying on BC posting defaults. -
03 What about multi-company Business Central?
Supported. Where you run multiple BC companies for separate legal entities or currencies, each maps to its own integration target. Orders route to the right company based on the storefront, market or channel attribute. -
04 Can BC inventory drive Shopify availability across locations?
Yes. BC location-level inventory publishes to Shopify with channel-aware availability rules. Safety stock buffers and in-transit handling are configurable per item or item category. -
05 Do you support Shopify-to-Business-Central under SLA after go-live?
Yes. The same team that builds the integration runs it under retainer. Monitoring on every shipped flow, on-call cover, monthly health checks and tiered response SLAs from £750/month.
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