Start by agreeing who owns the data
Connecting a store to ERP involves more than sending orders through an API. Agree where each value originates, who may change it, and how updates reach the other system. Without those rules, a technically successful sync can overwrite the correct price, alter availability, or create conflicting states for the same order.
List only the data you need to exchange. For each value, define its authoritative source, transfer direction, and conflict handling. Ownership can differ within a product: ERP may own stock quantities while the store owns marketing descriptions and photographs.
- Products: who assigns identifiers and manages variants?
- Prices: where does the selling price come from, including B2B pricing?
- Stock: are you exchanging physical stock or availability for sale?
- Orders: which system controls each state?
- Customers: how are existing records matched?
Map the complete order lifecycle
Specify when an order moves to ERP and what should happen there. Should it create a record, reserve stock, or prepare fulfillment? Include payment, item changes, partial fulfillment, cancellation, and returns. Automated steps must follow your operating rules.
Separate business status from transfer status. An order may be paid while its ERP transfer is still pending. A generic 'processed' label leaves staff unsure whether they can ship or need to resolve an integration issue. Staff should be able to trace the same case in both systems.
Define availability separately from physical stock
Not every unit on the shelf is available to sell. Some may be reserved, damaged, or allocated to another channel. Agree what the store should display and what happens if synchronization stops. For multiple warehouses, specify which locations contribute to availability.
Choose an update frequency that fits operations and the capabilities of both systems. Record acceptable delays and how you detect data older than the agreed limit. Policies for the last item, preorders, and substitute products are business decisions; an integration does not decide them for you.
A repeated transfer must not create another order
When a target system does not respond in time, the sender may not know whether the write succeeded. An unchecked retry can create a second order. Agree a stable operation identifier and a way to recognize a transfer that has already been processed. This principle is called idempotency.
Verify the specific API's support; adding an identifier alone is insufficient. Define behavior for different content submitted under the same identifier. Test a lost response and repeated delivery. The desired outcome is one business order creation despite repeated transfer attempts.
Give every exception an owner and a next step
Retries cannot solve every error. A temporary outage differs from an unknown product, missing required data, or a rejected business rule. Agree which cases retry automatically, how many attempts are allowed, and which need human intervention.
The unresolved-case list should show the reason, last attempt, and responsible person. After correcting data, staff need a controlled way to reprocess the case. Logs should help trace issues without unnecessarily copying personal data. Grant integration access according to required actions and agree how credentials are managed.
- Who is alerted when a transfer stops?
- How are data errors distinguished from service outages?
- How is an existing ERP order checked before retrying?
- Who may correct a case and initiate another attempt?
- How are order counts and values reconciled across systems?
Test difficult scenarios before launch
Use representative orders covering the variants, discounts, shipping, and partial fulfillment your business uses. Compare items, quantities, prices, rounding, and totals in both systems. A successful basic transfer does not prove the complete workflow.
Include connection interruption, repeated messages, invalid identifiers, delayed stock updates, and changes to already transferred orders. Set an expected outcome for each scenario. Clearly label test records and use test environments when available. For a controlled production test, agree beforehand how to prevent accidental shipment or invoicing.
Keep the first phase manageable
Start with a flow that removes specific manual entry and has clear rules. Separating order transfer from broader price-list changes or extensive migration can make the first phase easier to verify. Each phase still needs to work end to end, including exceptions and checks.
Before enabling production automation, define failure handling, repair ownership, and reconciliation. If automation is stopped, staff need to know how to handle pending cases without duplicate entry. At DAVOND, we can review your order flow, API capabilities, and integration risks so the proposed scope reflects how your business operates.