Introduction

In this article, we describe how to integrate with a Shopify vendor. If your vendor has a Shopify store, Onport can automatically sync products and orders.

Disclaimer

As of January 2022 this method has changed. Please see this article below. Vendors currently connected with this method will see no disruption. If any changes are needed, vendors will need to use the new setup method: https://jettisupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4416402664466

Getting started

Video tutorial: How to generate the correct credentials needed for a Shopify vendor integration

Share the video tutorial or this support article with your Shopify vendors to ensure they provide the correct credentials needed for the Shopify integration.

Vendor Setup

As a vendor integrating into Onport, orders from the marketplace will automatically be pushed to your store. It should be picked up and processed by any third-party apps you have installed (e.g. Shipstation).

The invoicing address will be set to the merchant you are dropshipping with and the shipping address to the customer. Also, Onport will automatically match up the products being dropshipped and won't change any product details in the store.

To enable the integration with Onport, you will need to provide the marketplace with the following:

• Your store name (e.g. dropship.myshopify.com)
• API Password
• Enable a set of credentials

How to do this:

1. In Shopify, go to Apps > Manage private apps > Create private app:

3. Enter a name and contact email address. These can either be those of the store asking for the connection, or you can also use Onport as the name, and support@onport.com as the email.
   
   
4. Now, you will need to enable a set of permissions. Onport will need access to "Orders" (Read and Write) and "Products" (Read). You'll need to enable "Inventory" (Read) if you want to sync cost prices or to pull inventory from a specific location:
   
   

❗️If you do not want to give access to your orders, you can leave the "Orders" permission blank. In this case, the orders will not be routed directly from the marketplace to your store, but instead, you will be able to view them from a vendor portal.

6. Once the permissions have been enabled, you can click save > Create private app.
   
   

7. On the next page, you will see a set of API credentials. You need to copy across the API password (NOT the key) to the store asking for the connection:

9. Last, you also need to provide your store URL (e.g. dropship.myshopify.com). Be mindful that you send the correct URL, as a common mistake is to send the actual URL of the store (e.g. my-brand.com). This can be found when logging into the Shopify Admin and copying the first section of the URL:

Tip for the Marketplace owner: If you as the marketplace are not sure that you received the correct URL from the vendor, you can look it up yourself by going to the homepage of the vendor's site. Right-click on the site, and click inspect. Then click ctrl+f or cmd+f (find) and type "myshopify". This should show the URL in the code that is needed, just copy that one across.

❗️Please copy and paste all of the details into the email to your retailer. Onport will need both the store URL and the API password. If these are not in the email, we won't be able to connect your store.

5. If inventory needs to be pulled from a specific location, the location can be looked up from the URL directly, as shown in the screenshot below. Just ensure that Onport has access to Inventory.

If a vendor on Shopify works with Onport with another retailer, should they create another private app?

Yes, We recommend using a separate app for higher API throughput and to ensure vendors can granularly control their relationship with the different marketplaces.

Syncing pricing

If you select the option to sync the customer price or purchase price when placing the order in the vendor's store, Onport will not be able to set the currency. This is fine if you and the vendor are using the same currencies. However, if they are different, a 100 USD price will be synced as 100 GBP, without taking into account any currency conversion. What you can do is pass back the order value as the default price in the store, which should be in the right currency. To do this, select the option Use the default price in their store under the Orders tab.

If required, one of our support team will be able to demonstrate the process and what to expect when live dropship orders are being placed.

Issues syncing errors

If your order didn't sync to the vendor's store, you can click on the Review & send button to view details error messages. A common error is that the vendor did not enable the correct permissions when creating the private app, as detailed in the earlier section of this article.

What happens if my vendor deletes their private app?

If your vendor has accidentally deleted their private app, there is no reason to panic! Firstly, you don't need to delete or change the already existing inventory feed in Onport, leave it as it is. All that needs to be done is for the vendor to re-create a new private app following the same instructions detailed in this article, and then you can enter the new credentials in the vendor settings within Onport. No information will be lost from your store during this process.

Handling fraudulent order flags

On rare occasions, orders get marked as fraudulent when being imported into the vendor's system. We've only observed this being an issue on a small fraction of integrations (< 1%). While it's not possible to fully prevent these alerts, it may be possible to adjust settings to reduce reoccurrences of this. 

Turning off the setting to mark the order as paid in their store has alleviated the issue for vendors impacted. While we understand this may not be ideal. Unfortunately, the intermittent nature of the issue (it only impacts a fraction of vendors) and the lack of specific advice from the Shopify technical teams (they may not want to provide guidance on how to bypass the fraud checks), means it may not be something that can be completely eliminated despite the above settings change. 

We'd recommend trying the above, before escalating to our support teams.