Shopify is an eCommerce platform that allows businesses to sell products on various channels. In no time at all, you’ll be able to showcase your branded merch, coffee beans, pour-over kits, tumblers, cakes, and more - on your own eCommerce store, on the online marketplace, and on social media!
Read on to discover how to set up this integration and process online orders straight from Lightspeed POS.
What's in this Guide?
- Things you'll need before you get started
- Enable & Connect the Shopify Integration| 5mins
- Configure the Shopify Integration| 5mins
- Export your products and match with products| 15mins
- Match the SKU column on your CSV|5mins
- Sending your Shopify orders to Lightspeed| 5mins
- Frequently Asked Questions
Things you'll need before you get started.
Before configuring your Shopify Integration, you will need to prepare a few things before you can get started
- You will need to have a Shopify account.
- You will need to have a paid Shopify plan.
- You will need to be on the Manage plan and above.
- We also suggest you make sure email is mandatory for your checkout (we won't be able to accept the order from Shopify otherwise).
- The tax settings in your Shopify store would need to match the ones in Lightspeed (ie you can't have tax exclusive pricing in one and not the other).
Enable & Connect the Shopify Integration
We have kept the Shopify Integration with a really simple setup.
You will first need to head to the Integrations section & enable the Shopify Integration.
Once it has been enabled you will see the screen below, to Connect enter your Shopify URL and press Connect
Once connected, it will return to the below screen showing that it has been connected.
Configure the Shopify Integration
The Shopify Integration only has the following three options to configure.
Tax Code Mapping
If a Shopify product cannot be automatically matched, this will be the default tax code used when we create the product.
Create Shopify orders in Lightspeed
If this option is enabled, we will create any Paid Shopify order in Lightspeed as an order. The order must have all products with a matching SKU in Lightspeed. The order must also have a customer that has an email address.
Auto accept Shopify orders
If this option is enabled, we will create any Paid Shopify order in Lightspeed as a Completed Order. These orders will not auto print and will go straight to your reporting history.
Update Lightspeed inventory levels in Shopify
When this option is enabled, Inventory levels will sync between Lightspeed & Shopify automatically every 30 minutes & whenever an order is placed in Shopify.
Note: If this is your first time syncing your store and you have a significant amount of products (more than say 500) it can take a couple of hours to process.
Export your Products & Match with Lightspeed Products
The Shopify Integration will match your Shopify products by SKU.
When an order is placed, if a matching SKU product is found we will use that product otherwise we will create a new product with the Shopify Product Name.
Exporting your Shopify products
For detailed instructions on exporting a CSV listing of your Shopify products, please review this guide
Export your Shopify products via CSV
- From your Shopify admin, go to Products > All products.
- Click Export.
- From the dialog box, choose the products you want to export:
- Select which type of CSV file you want to export
- Click Export products.
Exporting your Lightspeed products
For detailed instructions on exporting a CSV listing of your products, please review this guide
- Under Products from the Back Office, select the cloud icon with the arrow pointing down
- In the Export Products page, make sure CSV (Comma Separated Values) file is ticked
- Select Export Products
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Then, select Download the export
Match the SKU Fields & Import your Products
The only column that the integration will look at for matching with your Shopify store, is the Variant SKU column, so make sure that all of your products have an identifiable field in here.
Shopify
Lightspeed
As long as the Variant SKU in Shopify matches the SKU field in your Lightspeed products, your products should match up perfectly when an order is sent to Lightspeed, only in the case where the SKU doesn’t match will the integration attempt to recreate a new product.
For steps on how to import your product changes, review the following guide.
Sending your Shopify Orders into Lightspeed
When a customer orders through your Shopify store and the order is marked as Paid, you will be able to see this on your Shopify Orders dashboard.
The integration will then pick this up and send this as a Paid Lightspeed order which will alert you of their arrival and be viewable in your Open Orders
Simply tap the order and click 'Accept' and the order will complete (and if configured print a production docket).
Note: clicking Reject will remove the order from POS, but the order will not be cancelled in Shopify.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Shopify cost?
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to grow your business, Shopify has different plans available that are suited to your needs. See the Shopify website for more details about their available plans.
How do I accept payments on my Shopify store?
You have a wide range of payment options for your Shopify store. Visit Shopify’s help centre to view Shopify’s guides on choosing and setting up your payment options.
Once transactions come through to your Lightspeed POS from Shopify, they would show as PAID since payments are made on Shopify.
Are Shopify payments included in my reconciliation?
Shopify payments are automatically reconciled on Lightspeed POS - meaning you don’t need to enter the amount. Upon reconciliation, amounts are already logged for you.
Our experts recommend that reconciliation be done daily or at the end of every shift. This way, you can minimise the likelihood of untraced revenue variances. Our walkthrough on finalising your end of day takings will show you the steps!
How do I report on Sales by Payment Type?
On the Payments dashboard of Lightspeed Insights, you’ll be able to view the breakdown of all your payment types processed within a chosen period. This dashboard shows you the performance and historical trends of the payment types you have.
A more basic and tabular report, the Sales Summary by Payment Mean Report can also be found in Back Office.
My integration is set up, but orders are not coming through.
There are usually two causes for this, assuming that your site has the "Create Shopify Orders" flag turned on.
Be aware that Lightspeed will not pull through a Shopify order unless it is both marked as "paid" and also has an email address associated with the order.
Further to this, every product in the Shopify order must have a matching product in Lightspeed, they are only linked by the SKU field so the SKU must be identical. So if a Shopify order has a product that doesn't have a matching counterpart in Lightspeed, it will not send through to Lightspeed at all.
Please also be aware that the Product Availability add-on is not compatible with Shopify at all, if your item gets marked as "unavailable" the Shopify order will succeed in Shopify but will not arrive in POS. (This is not the same as running out of stock to be clear, Product Availability and Inventory are separate)
My stock is not synchronizing.
Firstly make sure the products in Lightspeed are set to "I stock this item" and have a valid stock quantity to sync over. The easiest way to confirm this is to run a Stock On Hand report and ensure your product appears in this report.
If it is there, triple check that you have "Track Quantity" is set in Shopify, and that the SKU matches between Lightspeed and Shopify for that product.
Also of note, that ideally products should be created in Shopify before they are created in Lightspeed.
However sometimes this can't be avoided and what will happen is Lightspeed will think it has already sent the stock figure to Shopify, and won't update it properly until the stock count in Lightspeed changes.
This can easily be fixed by changing the stock count in Lightspeed (or doing a sale in Lightspeed for the same product) and the next sync process (in 30-60 minutes) should update the change. The key is that the "In Stock" figure in Lightspeed needs to have been changed. That will trigger an update on the next 30 minute cycle and update Shopify.
Realistically speaking this can be as simple as just waiting for the next time the item gets sold in POS or Shopify. Because if the stock count changes for any reason in Lightspeed, that product gets queued up to update in Shopify on the next stock sync.
If for some reason this is still not working please raise a support ticket and we will investigate.
Stock will sync every 30 minutes, but keep in mind that larger stores (more than say 500 products) may take longer if they submit a full and complete stocktake. They should never be more than a few hours out of place however so contact our support team if you have any concerns.
How do Shopify and Lightspeed sync customer data?
To clarify: they won't. When an email address is provided in a Shopify order, Lightspeed will check if that email address is linked to an existing Lightspeed client. If it is, it will use that data.
If there is no matching email address Shopify will create a new customer and provide that data.
I have multiple locations and Lightspeed Sites, can I use Shopify to send orders to specific sites?
This depends.
At the moment, inbound orders are based on the Shopify website itself - and one Shopify 'website' can only send orders to one Lightspeed 'site'. So www.myshop.shopify.com can only send orders to one site.
If you have multiple separate shopify websites ie www.sydneystore.shopify.com and www.melbournestore.shopify.com those are completely independent shopify websites and will have no problem.
The use of 'Pickup Locations' to designate sites is not at this time supported by our integration but we are hoping to announce this as a feature in the future.
Are there any limits to how many products I can use with Shopify and Lightspeed?
Lightspeed O-Series itself is supports no more than 6000 products to be stored on it's system to maintain peak efficiency with iPad devices. The Shopify integration has been tested and verified to work with 7500 products.
My business is located outside of Australia and New Zealand, can I use this integration?
You're welcome to try the integration but be aware that we can't support different tax settings between Shopify and Lightspeed. We've accounted for the use case of online ordering in Australia and New Zealand from a taxation perspective and if your requirements are similar then by all means see how it goes.
But there are no plans at this stage to roll out full support for this integration outside of the Australia / New Zealand market.
Please note that Shopify is a completely separate and independent company from Lightspeed.
Our testing of this integration only accounts for Shopify in it's Out Of Box Experience.
We cannot in any way guarantee compatibility with custom modules and add-ons within Shopify.