Best Systems To Streamline Back End with Shopify

Ask & Offer
1

Hello!

We are a women’s fashion brand who has a brick and mortar store, online store and wholesale department. We where using apparel magic and it did not work for us. We have two separate Shopify stores; one for wholesale and the other for e-commerce / POS. We want a system that will help us with manufacturing, taking wholesale orders, populating manufacturing orders, keeping inventory correct, and something that can mirror our products to both Shopify stores. We need in depth reporting systems for all needs such as allocation for all wholesale orders. Since we pre-order all goods to be manufactured then add on our own quantities based on orders we have gotten at shows. We are in a Dallas and Atlanta showroom but they will not do anything other than paper orders. We need a system that is not $10,000 + a year. We want something that is manageable but good for us as our reps will not be using it. I just do not even know where to start looking. We use multiple apps but having to go to a different app for each individual need is getting time consuming and confusing.

Honestly anything anyone has used (other than apparel magic) that has streamlined their back end I would love to hear the names so I can do some research.

2

Hi @BlairDarviny :waving_hand: I’m @PaulNewton shopify-partner with a range of merchant solutions and over a decade of experience helping tens of THOUSANDS of merchants.

If your just looking for alternatives just do the research on g2
https://www.g2.com/products/apparelmagic/competitors/alternatives

If your serious about fixing this reach out to me for consulting, or automation services.
To connect CLICK my profile-pic or visit my profile on the forums
ALWAYS include context in new communications, e.g. reference urls, posts urls, etc

Your mainly outlining a situation for custom app development.
As your describing vague requirements forming the shape of unicorn.
each req is force multiplier compounding the problem: store-to-store sync + custom reports + dashboard + pre-orders + POS = :unicorn:
So not going to find any one single thing to fix things in the way you want unless you tailor make it.

As a minimum the mechanic app can fill a lot of middleware needs, though it’s demos are primarily single store based https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=sync
Mechanic can do some heavier api lifting, store to store sync, sku/inventory sync, pdf or reports generation (has an integration with report toaster), rest apis, transactional email.

Either that or find a bottom of the barrel WMS or ERP solution.

A bare minimum is burn time and frustration figuring out how to DIY single store processes with shopify-flow to claw back time for dealing with bigger and bigger things; and til you find the limits of shopify-flow; flow can’t really do store to store sync, then start to expand to bigger things.

And this part always is a cliche I see all the that undermines SMB merchants with a bad mentality:

We need a system that is not $10,000 + a year

Be 300% sure of this and have done the actual math.
Without you providing revenue numbers that self imposed solution-limitation doesn’t communicate anything except your not willing to invest in good tools or expertise that MAKE YOU MONEY and free up your most valuable resource: time (READ: opportunity costs === $$$) .
The math of: lost man hours, frustrated customers, missed networking oppurtunites, just plain time to be in strategic thinking mode vs putting out fires mode etc etc etc.
Don’t fall into a trap of unwillingness to get good tools that are PROFITABLE because they cost money and you have a hard time attributing value to tools.

3

Two Shopify stores plus wholesale plus manufacturing is a lot of moving parts, so I get why it feels messy with a bunch of separate apps.

Before looking at tools, it helps to split the problem into layers. Inventory sync between two stores is one thing. Wholesale order management is another. Manufacturing/pre-order tracking is a third. Trying to find one tool that does all three under $10K/yr is going to be really hard, but you can probably cover most of it with 2-3 tools that actually talk to each other.

For the store-to-store inventory sync specifically, look at Mechanic (someone mentioned it already) or Syncio. Syncio is built for multi-store sync and it’s pretty straightforward for keeping products and inventory mirrored. Way cheaper than an ERP.

For the wholesale/order side, have you looked at Shopify’s own B2B features? They’ve added a lot in the last year - price lists, company accounts, net payment terms. Depending on how complex your wholesale process is, that might replace the need for a separate wholesale store entirely.

For reporting across both stores, Report Pundit or Lifetimely can pull from multiple stores into one dashboard. Not perfect but way better than doing it in spreadsheets.

The manufacturing/pre-order piece is the hardest part. That’s usually where people end up needing something custom or at least a good project management setup (even Airtable with some automations).

What’s the biggest bottleneck right now - is it the inventory sync or the wholesale order flow? That might help narrow down where to start.

4

We looked into plus but since we already have so much historical data on the other store shopify can’t “merge them” and transfer the store into a B2B. I think plus is a good option for us to have it all under one roof but migrating everything has to be done with CSV uploads and that would take hours. I spoke to support so much over this because we upgraded then canceled. Maybe I was being mislead I am not sure.

With syncing our prices for online and wholesale they are obviously different but it isn’t a set discount (ex: 50%).

I would say the most pressing part is the purchase orders for manufacturing. Shopify’s native PO function is not great. It doesn’t allow us to accurately safe purchase orders because it doesn’t change if 4 out of 5 units we ordered where received it keeps the same 5 of 5 total amount.

We use Multi Store Sync Power for products right now because I like to chose what syncs same with collections, tags, images, descriptions, price, etc. I think its working fine.

The issue isn’t that what we are using isn’t working, it is just that I know there is a system that can do it all in one program/ app. It can be an external app or program.

I feel like the biggest bottle neck is that we have someone leaving and they have learned all of the apps such as product syncing, reporting apps, tracking commission on orders for our sales reps app, processing partial payments, invoicing, and populating manufacturing orders. Apparel Magic did all of this but it was too complicated for us. We are a smaller team of 7 so we don’t have an IT person to make sure everything is correct.

I feel like our situation is so complicated I just wanted to know some manufacturing and pre-order app that has all the other capabilities.

5

I would like to discuss once your problem areas were apparel magic didn’t worked for your business process. The reason been using automation tools the daily problem areas can handled.

Please let me know If you think its feasible at this point of time.

7

We’ve been seeing this pattern a lot—especially with brands doing wholesale + retail + manufacturing on top of Shopify.

The challenge usually isn’t finding another tool, it’s that each part of the workflow lives in a different place:
wholesale orders → manufacturing → inventory → store sync → reporting

Even when each piece “works,” the gaps between them create most of the manual work and confusion—especially around allocation and keeping inventory consistent across stores.

The pre-order + manufacturing piece you mentioned tends to make it even harder, because planning and execution get disconnected pretty quickly.

Curious—where does it break the most for you today?
Is it inventory staying in sync, allocation for wholesale, or managing production vs orders?

8

If wholesale is part of the backend problem, I’d separate ordering from finance control.

Shopify’s B2B features can cover a lot now: companies, catalogs, and payment terms. But once buyers are ordering on account, the backend still needs a way to see who owes what and whether a new order should be allowed.

That’s usually where spreadsheets start becoming painful.

The key control I’d add is a company-level credit check before checkout completion, especially if multiple buyers can order under the same company.