WHat's involved w creating our own interface to get transactions from Shopify?

[seeker]

We are discussing the possibility of creating our own interface between Shopify and Quickbooks Online so we have control over the quality.  Where can I find the API documentation which details what's exposed and available to us?  At a minimum, we want for every sale the Product ID which will map to Quickbooks Online product SKU, and the sale amount.  Right now, without an interface, we get a total sale by business day fed to us from our bank.

Cavaet: I'm not a developer, just an analyst.  I'm used to being able to see an API doc to see the methods and data exposed to a calling interface.

Thank you!

[HunkyBill]

What API do you speak of? Quickbooks has many. Shopify has many. 

What is wrong with existing QB connectors for you? Inventing your own is cool but you're going to blow many thousands on it, but is that needed? What makes you think you'll control quality? What is quality in exchanging data? Uptime? Would help if you told the brief story of what you tried, why you did not like it, and where you think improvements could be made. 

[seeker]

We're interested in a full data dump of Shopify orders by day which we can import into a spreadsheet and analyze as we wish.   Our desire is to include all attributes about the order, the customer, and all products purchased with pricing, taxes, and fees.  We will build reports and analysis from it.  

[seeker]

To clarify, we're ok with using an existing QB connector. I'm helping a
friend (Client) with their existing Shopify account and connecting their
data to QBO. Currently, they don't have a Shopify to QBO data exchange,
so simply record the income received as an incoming transaction to QBO from
their bank feed. We'd like to be able to report on what products sold,
revenue by product, demographics about customer, etc.

Full disclosure, I don't have a Shopify account so don't know what
analytics are available from within the system, but the Client sells on
more than one e-commerce platform, so we'd like to centralize the data
either in QBO or a Dashboard we build.

Does a portal exist which allows you to connect multiple e-commerce
platforms and aggregate the data from each in one place?

[HunkyBill]

That clarification is excellent. Lucky for you, the parts of your analytics about Shopify data are readily available using 3 standard approaches:

1. You accept a webhook from Shopify with all the details of an order, in JSON or XML, to any service you care to dream up
2. You use the old Shopify Rest API to access orders, and again, transfer data to your services for processing.
3. You use the modern Shopify GraphQL API to access orders, and again, transfer the data to your services for processing. 

So feeding your analytics is not a problem. You will encounter almost nothing strange about working with Shopify as it functions at a high-level and in technical ways consistent with all the major players in existence. 

As for QB... that is your challenge, and there are many reasons why it continues to stymie good integrations. It's DNA as a Microsoft desktop App hampered its adjustment to the Internet, and even recently when I checked into it, it has so many limitations as to be no fun. Your mileage may vary of course. 

So there you have it. For a quick perusal of Shopify API possibilities... see here: https://help.shopify.com/en/api/guides

As for portals.. sure, open up your wallet and I am sure someone will gladly take your money and hook you up to Shopify, and whatever else you want. 

[seeker]

Thanks much, HunkyBill.  Any comments on interface capabilities with Xero?  

[Parextech]

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@seeker wrote:

Thanks much, HunkyBill.  Any comments on interface capabilities with Xero?  

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Hi Seeker,

I have a good amount of knowledge about Shopify to QB and Xero.

Please contact me at kumar@parextech.com and i can answer your questions. We have done a great deal of work in this accounting integration space and can provide support based on your requirements.

Thank you.

Kumar

[HunkyBill]

In my opinion and experience, Shopify to Xero is a good choice. Better than QB Online anyway. Of course your mileage may vary. Xero has had the edge as they offered up an API early and recognized the value in that. I know of merchants that have managed to move many millions in sales effortlessly through to Xero, so I am sure you can too.

[seeker]

Awesome, HunkyBill! That's what I was hoping for. Am going to pursue expertise in Xero. I'm already a QB ProAdvisor, but that platform is becoming very unattractive due to its partner strategy.

I'm a retired systems analyst of 30 years. I got out of the corporate rat race last year. I joined two other amazing women who have super powers in the strategic planning, data sciences, and sales/marketing domains. My super power is in implementation of IT systems - coaching, guiding, etc.

We're in the ideation phase of a business model to enable small businesses to be more successful. On first blush it looks like there could be a lot of work in the ecommerce space -- perhaps even with Shopify configuration.

So .. lots of research and reaching out right now. I sincerely appreciate your input.