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Connecting WooCommerce

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This article provides a brief overview and best practices for connecting your WooCommerce shop to Xentral. You can find additional resources and in-depth information in the Related articles section. 

Goal

Once you complete the steps from this article, you can automatically sync orders from your shop to Xentral, and you will be able to send back your stock numbers to WooCommerce.

Prerequisites

To connect Xentral with your WooCommerce shop, please ensure that you:

  • created products in Xentral
  • have a unique product number (SKU - Stock Keeping Unit) for all your products in WooCommerce
  • created a project in Xentral
  • added payment methods that you offer to your customers in Xentral
  • added carriers in Shipping methods
  • created products for shipping costs and discounts. For each of these products, go to Master data > Product and select either Item is postage or Discounted item.

Workflows

The following procedures describe best practices for connecting Xentral with your  WooCommerce shop.

  1. Connecting the shop
  2. Mapping products to your shop
  3. Special case for WooCommerce - Status
  4. Testing your order import
  5. Activating the warehouse synchronization
  6. Going live

Connecting the shop

  1. Create API credentials in WooCommerce.
  2. Log into Xentral, and go to Administration > Shop Interface  > WooCommerce to initiate the setup process.
  3. Add WooCommerce API credentials to the popup dialog box, and click Next.

    Important: Don’t select any option in the Which features do you want to use? screen as this could lead to incomplete data transfer in this early stage of your setup

  4. After completing the setup, click Check connection to verify the setup.

Mapping products to your shop

Once you have successfully connected the shop, you must map each product with your shop interface to synchronize the correct products in your shop orders. There are three alternative ways to do this:

Mapping a single product

  1. Go to Master data > Product, and open the product you would like to map.
  2. Go to the  Online Shop options tab, and click New Entry.
  3. Enter the name of your online shop and click Save.

Mapping multiple products

  1. Go to Master data > Product and select the products you want to map.
  2. In the Bulk Batch Processing dropdown menu, select Bulk processing and click the To run button.
  3. In the edit article window, select Shopverknüpfungen and click Next.
  4. Choose the shop for each product and click Next.

Mapping products via the CSV import


It is possible to map products to shop via the CSV Import. You can find the instructions on the following link.

Note: If your WooCommerce SKUs don’t match the xentral product number, you must import the WooCommerce SKUs as foreign numbers.

Special case for WooCommerce - Status

The status of your orders indicates the interaction between Xentral and WooCommerce. In the interface tab of the WooCommerce online shop, you need to map the following status fields according to your shop status:

  • Status name order pending - orders in this status will be imported from WooCommerce to Xentral
  • Status name order in process - orders are set to this status in WooCommerce upon successful import
  • Status name order ready - orders are set to this status in WooCommerce after you fulfilled them in Xentral

If you want to import orders with the status such as pending, processing, and on-hold you must create a new status in WooCommerce and use this as Status name order in process.

Important: You must not use the same status in two different fields. For example, your import will fail if you add the processing status both to Status name order pending and Status name order in process.

The following statuses are available in WooCommerce by default:

  • pending
  • processing
  • on-hold
  • completed
  • canceled
  • refunded
  • failed

This is an example of a status combination if you do not want to create a new status in WooCommerce:

  • Status name order pending - pending; processing
  • Status name order in process - on-hold
  • Status name order ready - completed

Testing your order import from your shop

  1. Log into WooCommerce and create a test order. We do not recommend using actual orders from your customers during the test phase.
  2. Log into Xentral, go to Administration > Shop Interface  > Online Shop, and open your WooCommerce online shop.
  3. In the Settings tab, add your products that represent shipping costs and discounts, respectively. Save this change.
  4. In the interface tab, set the import mode to Manually (With import center). Use the Trial (for testing) mode only to check the connection.
  5. In the interface tab, set the Pick-up mode to according to status.
  6. Select the Orders in intermediate table check box. This option allows you to perform additional checks before the actual import.
  7. In your online shop, add the WooCommerce project in the Project field and click Save.
  8. Click the pickup orders button. You can check the orders in the intermediate table before you finally import them, as described in the above step.
  9. Select the test order that you want to import.
  10. Import your order and review it in Sales > Sales Order.

We recommend running test imports for each use case you expect (for example, different payment methods, carriers, discounts, and others). The orange popup warning in Xentral indicates that you need to map payment methods and carriers.

If all your tests pass, you can deactivate the intermediate table by clearing the Orders in intermediate table check box. Once you deactivate it, you can import all existing orders directly to Sales > Sales Order without additional inspection.  

 

Activating the warehouse synchronization

  1. Log into Xentral, and set up your warehouse in Fulfillment > Warehouse Management.
  2. Add your stock numbers to the warehouse.
  3. Go to Master data > Products > Open your product > Online shop options and select the Stock numbers sync button to activate the warehouse synchronization of your products.

    Hint: You can activate the warehouse synchronization of multiple products by using the batch processing option (located below the product list).

  4. Go to your online shop and select the Allow warehouse numbers to be transferred check box in the Settings tab.
  5. Check if the Lagerzahlen process starter is running.

Going live

After you have successfully tested the import process, you can fully automate the order import from WooCommerce to Xentral. Please ensure that all your Xentral users are familiar with your order workflow before automating the process. 

To configure the automated import process:

  1. Log into Xentral, go to Administration > Shop Interface  > Online Shop, and open your online shop.
  2. In the interface tab, deactivate the intermediate table by clearing the Orders in intermediate table check box.
  3. Update the import mode from Manually (With import center) to Automatically (via process starter).
  4. Ensure you activated the Shopimport process starter. This process should run at 15-minute, or longer intervals.

Common issues & questions

What features are available for which shop?

  • You can find a list in your system. Go to Administration > Shop Interface  > Online Shop and open the Shop Functions tab. This table contains features available for each shop.

I can’t send my product data from Xentral to my WooCommerce shop?

  • Ensure that you allow the transfer of product data in your shop settings.
  • Does the product ID in Xentral match your number in your shop? If not, ensure that you added the product number to the foreign numbers tab within your product in Xentral.
  • Ensure that you have a unique product ID for all your products.
  • Ensure that you connected your online shop in Master Data > Product > Online shop options.

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