Connect your first store

Authorizing your first integration takes a few minutes, and it brings back the products already on it, so your catalog starts full instead of empty.

An integration is a live connection between the PIM or the Repricer and a place you sell. You authorize it once, and after that your data moves between the two on its own.

Until you have one, both products are waiting on you. The PIM has nowhere to publish your catalog, and the Repricer has no listings to price. Connecting is also the quickest way to fill either one. The connection reads what is already on the store and brings it back with it, so you never type your catalog in yourself.

You do this inside the product that will use it. The first time you open the PIM or the Repricer, it asks you to connect one before anything else. After that, Integrations in the left sidebar of that product is where every connection is.

The same store run through both products is authorized twice, once in each. They are separate applications with separate credentials, and neither one can borrow the other’s connection.

Before you start

Three things matter before your first connection. Everything else on this page can wait until you need it.

What your role lets you do

You need the product role Admin in the product you are connecting. It is the only role that can connect or disconnect anything, and below it the Integrations link is not in the sidebar at all.

So if you cannot find Integrations, your role is the answer and not the page. Someone with the organization role Owner or Admin changes that for you, and team, roles and permissions covers both sets of roles.

One seller account, one organization

Your Shopify store, your Amazon seller account, your Square merchant: each one can be connected in one organization at a time, across all of Ready for Commerce. If a teammate connected it under a different organization, yours is rejected until they disconnect it there.

When the organization that has it is one you are in, the message names it, so you know exactly where to go. When it is not, the message points you at our support address instead.

What connecting does to the store

Connecting a store to the PIM also makes two locations inside it, named Supplier Stock and On-hand Stock. They are how the PIM publishes a quantity without counting twice what your own locations already have, and they are meant to be there. Inventory explains what each one is for.

How to connect your first integration

1. 1

   Open the PIM or the Repricer

   Open the PIM or the Repricer. The first time you open one, it asks you to connect an integration before anything else, and Skip for now under the cards takes you into the product without one. Every other time, click Integrations in the left sidebar.

2. 2

   Click the card you want

   The Integrations page is a grid of square cards, one per integration, grouped into sections. Click one you have never connected and the dialog opens right on its connect form. A card with a dimmed logo and a Coming soon tag is not built yet and does nothing when you click it.

3. 3

   Fill in what the form asks for

   Several ask for nothing at all. Shopify, BigCommerce and Walmart ask for credentials you create yourself first, and each of those three forms links to the page you make them on.

4. 4

   Click Connect and approve it

   Connect is in the bottom right of the dialog. On the integrations that asked you for nothing it sends you to their own site, where you read what is being asked for and accept, and they send you back here.

5. 5

   Wait for the first sync

   A dialog opens over the page by itself and counts what is happening. Leave it until it finishes, then click Go to catalog in the PIM, or Go to listings in the Repricer.

That is the whole flow. Your account is connected as soon as the approval comes back, the first sync starts on its own, and the card gets a Connected tag once it finishes.

Everything below explains those pieces one at a time. You do not need any of it to connect your first one.

Every option in detail

Where connecting happens

There are two screens, and the first one only appears once.

The first time you open a product, it shows you a grid of cards and asks you to connect one. Skip for now is under the grid and takes you into the product with nothing connected. That costs you nothing, because the screen never comes back and Integrations does the same thing with more in it. The Repricer adds a second step that sets up how it competes on price, and that one has a Skip, use defaults of its own.

Integrations in the left sidebar is the real home. It has every integration that product connects, every account you have on each one, and everything you can change about them later. Connecting from here is identical, and this is the screen that lists every integration.

Use the first-run screen if the store you want is on it. Use Integrations otherwise, and for a second account, a second store, or anything you connect later.

What each integration asks you for

Which integrations you see depends on which product you are in, because the PIM and the Repricer do not connect to the same set.

Start with the store your products are already on. A store you have sold from for years fills your catalog or your listings in a single step. Everything you connect after that is published out of what the first one brought in. Connecting an empty store works and gives you an empty result, which is the slow road to the same place.

Shopify runs on an app that belongs to you. You create it in your own Shopify account, install it on your store, and paste its Client ID and Client secret into the form. The form has the steps for making it, and the accordion below has them too.

Shopify’s Shop URL takes your address in any shape you have it. Paste the address out of your browser, paste your myshopify.com address, or type the store name on its own. All three get you to the same store.

BigCommerce and Walmart need credentials you make first as well. Both forms have a link to the page you make them on. Connect stays gray, with Fill in all required fields on it, until every box has something in it. Make yours in another tab before you start, because a half-filled form is not waiting for you when you come back.

Approving it on the integration’s own site

Clicking Connect on a form that asked you for nothing sends you to that integration. You get their own permission screen, read what is being asked for, and accept. They send you right back, and the connection exists from that moment.

The credential forms have no hand-off. Creating the credentials was the approval, so clicking Connect there finishes it where you stand.

You are never asked to pick a marketplace, a region or a country. Each integration finds where you sell on its own: Amazon from the marketplaces your seller account is enrolled in, Shopify from your markets, BigCommerce from your storefronts. Square and eBay have one apiece. You switch off the ones you do not want after that, in the account itself.

The extra step Google adds

Google is the one that asks you for something on the way back. A shopping feed sends people to your own website, so every product it publishes has to name the address of that product’s page on your site. Google can only tell you which site it has verified after you sign in.

So a dialog headed Product page setup opens between Google sending you back and the first sync dialog. Fill in your website and click Save and publish, or click Configure later and set it in the account’s settings when you get to it. Nothing is lost either way, and the first sync runs behind that dialog while you type.

Watching the first sync

You come back to Integrations with a dialog already open. It shows a bar and a running count while the sync builds. When it finishes, it changes to a summary of what happened, with a link under it that downloads the errors as a file.

What that summary counts depends on which product you are in and which integration you connected, and the section on what the first sync leaves you with sets it out. Two things about the dialog itself matter on your first one.

A sync you started yourself has no close button. There is nothing to cancel and nothing to dismiss. Leave the tab and come back if it runs long, because none of it depends on your browser staying open.

A sync you find already running closes freely. Open Integrations while someone else’s import is going, and the dialog comes back with an X in the corner. A long import can never trap you on that screen, and closing it never stops the work.

How long it takes depends on the integration and on how much is in the store. Amazon takes the longest to get going, in either product, because it has to prepare a report of your listings before anything can be read. Several minutes of no visible progress there is normal.

Pausing and disconnecting an account

Pausing is the reversible one and it is what you want most of the time. The switch on the right of a row in the accounts list stops the reading and the writing for that account. It deletes nothing, everything already synced stays where it is, and flipping the switch back starts the account again.

Disconnecting is not reversible. Delete is in the bottom right of the account dialog, and the dialog tells you what it is about to remove before it lets you near the button. It then asks you to type the account name exactly, and to type the word DELETE in a second box, and only then does Delete become clickable.

Disconnecting a Shopify store does not remove your app from it. The app stays installed, so connecting the store again later means filling in the same connect form with the same credentials, and that is a new connection with a first sync of its own. Uninstalling that app in your Shopify admin disconnects the account too, and the product is told and removes it for you.

Limits

What connecting cannot do

What the first sync leaves you with

A first sync runs once, on its own, the moment your account exists. It is the only time either product reads a store from top to bottom, and what it does with what it finds is different in each of them.

In the PIM it fills your catalog. A store’s products come in as your products. Anything matching something you already have is linked to it instead of duplicated, and your version is the one that goes back out. Two of them behave differently enough to name. Amazon creates nothing at all, because it matches your existing variants to your live offers by SKU. Google publishes instead of reading, because a shopping feed has no products of its own. Pull has the full picture, integration by integration.

In the Repricer it fills your listings. They come in with the prices they are selling at right now. Where the integration reports what an item costs you, that cost comes in too, and the Repricer then has what it needs to work a floor and a margin out.

Nothing that comes in brings its stock tracking with it. An imported variant arrives with tracking switched off, with the integration’s own counts shown beside it as numbers you can read and not edit, and inventory covers turning that on.

When something goes wrong

The connection was rejected before it started

The first sync failed

The dialog says so and gives you the error report. There is nothing to retry and no button that re-runs it. The fix in both products is the same: disconnect that account and connect it again, which runs a fresh first sync.

One cause is worth checking before you do. A store whose currency is not your organization’s currency stops the sync dead, on Shopify, BigCommerce and Square in the PIM. Nothing at all is imported, because a price in the other currency would come in relabeled and not converted. Line the two currencies up first, by changing your organization currency while your catalog is still small, or by connecting a store that matches. Organizations has what that change costs you once a catalog exists.

The connection says it needs attention

Credentials expire, and an integration can revoke yours. Neither repairs itself, so the account waits for you. Reconnect in the account dialog puts you back through whatever the connection asked for the first time, and nothing you set up is lost. It has to be the same account, and connecting a different store is rejected. Connection health covers every state an account can be in.

Nothing came in

An empty result almost always means the account you authorized is not the one with your products in it. On Shopify, check that the address you gave is the store you meant. On Amazon, check which marketplaces came back with the connection.

Everything looks connected and nothing moves

Open your Billing page in your account settings before you check anything else. A product that is past due or paused stops syncing and repricing while every switch on the Integrations page still reads as on. Plans and billing has what each status stops and how to clear it.

Where to go next