Unleashed already connects to Shopify. Why build an integration?

For many stores you shouldn’t. If you sell retail at list price, the standard route is quicker and cheaper. A bespoke build earns its keep when trade and retail orders share a store, when trade orders need checking before they reach Unleashed, or when you also receive emailed POs.

Can paid Shopify orders skip the review queue?

Yes. Automatic approval is built in but off by default. A common setup is to switch it on for paid retail orders where every check passes, while trade orders and anything carrying a warning still wait for a person. You decide the conditions, and can change them later.

How are Shopify customers matched to Unleashed customers?

Trade buyers are matched to their Unleashed customer by email address, company name or a link stored the first time they’re matched. Retail orders can go to a single cash-sale customer or individual accounts, whichever you use today. Unmatched trade buyers are flagged, never guessed.

What happens to Shopify cancellations and refunds?

We agree this in the specification, because businesses handle it differently. Typically a cancellation before dispatch is flagged so the office can deal with the Unleashed order, rather than the platform changing it silently. Refund accounting stays in your existing process.

Does it cope with more than one Shopify store?

Yes. Orders from several stores, such as a UK retail site and a separate trade site, can feed the same queue with different rules for each. Every order records which store it came from, both in the audit log and in the reference that arrives in Unleashed.

Shopify to Unleashed, with rules for trade and retail orders

A Shopify to Unleashed integration built around your rules: paid retail orders straight through, trade and wholesale orders checked and approved, all landing in Unleashed correctly.

Book a discovery call How pricing works

Shopify
Unleashed
Microsoft 365

Zestcode Automation builds bespoke Shopify to Unleashed integrations for businesses that sell to consumers and trade customers from the same stock, where a straight sync isn’t enough. Each Shopify order is checked against Unleashed for product, stock, price and customer, sorted by your rules, and created as an Unleashed sales order, either automatically or after a person approves it.

If your Shopify store only sells retail at list price, a standard connector will probably serve you well, and we’d tell you that on the first call.

Three ways to connect Shopify and Unleashed

	Native integration or connector app	General middleware flows	Bespoke platform
Setup	Quick, configured in settings	Moderate, built in a flow editor	Specified and built, around six weeks
Retail orders at list price	Handles well	Handles well	Handles well
Trade orders with account pricing	Depends on the app’s mapping options	Possible, but tends to get fragile	Checked against that customer’s Unleashed price
Holding some orders for review	Varies by app	Possible with workarounds	Built in, rule by rule
Emailed POs alongside web orders	Not what they’re for	Rarely practical	Same queue, same checks
Who owns it	The app vendor	The middleware vendor	Your business

Unleashed offers a Shopify integration of its own and there are several third-party apps too. Their features change over time, so check the current listing for any option you’re considering; the table describes the usual pattern rather than any one product.

When does a mixed retail and trade store outgrow a connector?

Trouble usually starts when one Shopify store serves two kinds of buyer. Take a hypothetical craft supplies business that sells to the public and also lets approved stockists log in for trade prices, through Shopify’s B2B features on plans that include them or through a wholesale app. Retail orders are paid upfront and simple. Trade orders are on account, need the right Unleashed customer rather than a generic web customer, and sometimes carry a price that doesn’t match the price list because of a discount code or an out-of-date catalogue.

A generic connector tends to treat every order the same way. The business ends up checking trade orders by hand after they’ve already landed in Unleashed, which is precisely backwards.

Rules we commonly build for Shopify orders

Paid retail orders with no warnings go straight into Unleashed, with automatic approval switched on for that case only.
Trade orders are matched to the correct Unleashed customer by email address or company, and held for review.
Any line where the Shopify price differs from the Unleashed price for that customer is flagged.
Orders that would take stock below zero are held, with the shortfall shown.
Orders tagged in Shopify for collection, pre-order or a particular warehouse are routed accordingly.
Wholesale customers who still email POs instead of using the store go into the same queue, read by AI with a confidence score on every field and checked in exactly the same way.

Every decision, automatic or manual, is written to the audit log with who or what approved it and when.

What arrives in Unleashed

An approved order becomes an ordinary Unleashed sales order for the right customer, with the Shopify order number or the customer’s PO number as the reference. Invoicing, stock and reporting continue inside Unleashed as they do now. More detail on the hand-off is on the ERP integration page.

Owning the integration rather than renting it

With an app, you pay every month for as long as you use it, and its roadmap is the vendor’s decision. Here the code is yours and runs on hosting in your company’s name. There’s no per-user or per-order licence, maintenance is optional, and changes you ask for later are charged at £90 an hour.

Building it usually costs £8k–£12k ex VAT, and running costs typically stay under £50 a month for a few hundred orders. Extras such as additional routing rules are priced as add-ons, each between £500 and £2,500. We write a free specification first, then fix the price. The pricing page has the detail.

Common questions

Straight answers to what people ask us about this before a call.

Unleashed already connects to Shopify. Why build an integration?
For many stores you shouldn’t. If you sell retail at list price, the standard route is quicker and cheaper. A bespoke build earns its keep when trade and retail orders share a store, when trade orders need checking before they reach Unleashed, or when you also receive emailed POs.
Can paid Shopify orders skip the review queue?
Yes. Automatic approval is built in but off by default. A common setup is to switch it on for paid retail orders where every check passes, while trade orders and anything carrying a warning still wait for a person. You decide the conditions, and can change them later.
How are Shopify customers matched to Unleashed customers?
Trade buyers are matched to their Unleashed customer by email address, company name or a link stored the first time they’re matched. Retail orders can go to a single cash-sale customer or individual accounts, whichever you use today. Unmatched trade buyers are flagged, never guessed.
What happens to Shopify cancellations and refunds?
We agree this in the specification, because businesses handle it differently. Typically a cancellation before dispatch is flagged so the office can deal with the Unleashed order, rather than the platform changing it silently. Refund accounting stays in your existing process.
Does it cope with more than one Shopify store?
Yes. Orders from several stores, such as a UK retail site and a separate trade site, can feed the same queue with different rules for each. Every order records which store it came from, both in the audit log and in the reference that arrives in Unleashed.