Shopify NetSuite ERP Omnichannel OMS

Standard Shopify NetSuite Connector vs HotWax Commerce Order Management System

by Divesh Dutta |

For retailers looking to embrace omnichannel strategies, the ability to integrate various systems is crucial.

Shopify often serves as the eCommerce platform of choice, while NetSuite takes on the role of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to manage backend operations like inventory, accounting, and warehouse fulfillment. To synchronize data between these systems, retailers turn to connectors such as the NetSuite ERP Connector or third-party solutions like Celigo.

At first glance, these standard connectors appear to handle the essential flows of inventory, orders, and customer data. However, as businesses scale and the complexity of their operations increases, these basic integrations start to show significant limitations. Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors are not designed to accommodate intricate business scenarios like kit products, advanced gift card management, kits, and service product automations, which are essential for many growing retailers.

In this blog, we will dive into key differences between Shopify-NetSuite connectors and HotWax Commerce Order Management System (OMS). We will specifically focus on how HotWax Commerce OMS helps in managing special cases such as calculating ATP, handling kits, gift cards, service products, and other specialized scenarios that are vital for omnichannel success.

Role of Shopify, NetSuite, and Standard Connectors

  • Shopify: Primarily, Shopify serves as the storefront and manages product catalogs, customer data, and order information. As customers place orders, Shopify generates the sales orders and stores customer information, order details, and initial payment data.

  • NetSuite: NetSuite acts as the backend ERP system, responsible for accounting, inventory management, financials, and warehouse fulfillment. Its role in the ecosystem is to provide a unified view of business operations, helping retailers manage everything from procurement to GL posting.

  • Standard Shopify NetSuite Connectors: Standard connectors between Shopify and NetSuite exist to pass basic data between the two systems. For example, they sync order information from Shopify to NetSuite, update inventory levels back to Shopify from NetSuite, and pass shipping updates back to Shopify once orders are fulfilled in warehouses.

    At a high level, this data flow seems functional, but as soon as more advanced needs arise, like handling kits, gift cards, or multi-location fulfillment, the connector's capabilities hit a wall.

Advantages of Standard Connectors

Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors offer benefits for smaller, less complex businesses:

  • Ease of Setup: Standard connectors are typically quick to implement for businesses that only require basic order and inventory synchronization.

  • Cost-Effective: These connectors are usually less expensive than more comprehensive OMS solutions, making them a practical option for businesses with limited budgets.

  • Simplicity: For businesses with straightforward operations, a standard Shopify NetSuite connector provides a functional and relatively low-maintenance solution.

Challenges with Standard Connectors


Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors are designed to facilitate basic integration between Shopify and NetSuite. They primarily handle straightforward data synchronization but have notable limitations:

  • Static Inventory Management: Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors sync static inventory data from NetSuite to Shopify, which means they only reflect the current Quantity on Hand (QOH).

    However, they lack the capability to calculate more complex metrics such as Available to Promise (ATP) inventory. ATP involves deducting factors like safety stock, thresholds, and stock at non-participating locations from the QOH, providing a more accurate view of what can be promised for online sales.

    Without ATP calculation, retailers are left without a clear picture of their actual inventory that can be sold, potentially leading to overselling.

  • No Configurable Order Routing: As retailers expand their operations across multiple fulfillment locations, the need for efficient and flexible order routing based on factors like inventory levels, order priority, shipping costs, and delivery timeframes becomes paramount.

    Unfortunately, standard Shopify NetSuite connectors do not offer configurable order routing capabilities. Without configurable routing, retailers are forced to rely on external systems or default Shopify routing logic, which is rigid and may not accommodate the retailer’s specific fulfillment goals, resulting in higher logistics costs and slower delivery times..

  • Inability to Handle Special Product Types: As retailers scale, they often introduce more complex product offerings such as kits, gift cards, and service products. Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors are not designed to handle the intricacies of these products, resulting in frequent fulfillment errors and inventory mismatches. For example:

1. Kits: Kits bundle multiple products that may also be sold individually. The challenge arises when one component is out of stock, making the kit unavailable.

Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors do not account for the dependencies of kit components and require third-party apps like Bundles to compute kit inventory availability. However, even these apps struggle with multi-location fulfillment, as they aggregate inventory from multiple locations without ensuring all components are available in the same location.

2. Gift Cards: There are two types of gift cards, physical and digital.

Physical gift cards are tangible cards purchased online or in-store, each with a unique serial number. Digital gift cards are virtual gift cards sent via email or text, featuring unique serial numbers.

Managing both types of gift cards involves multiple steps such as inventory management for physical gift cards, activation, fulfillment, balance tracking, and detailed reporting across Shopify and NetSuite.

Standard Shopify Netsuite connectors don’t support this workflow, leaving retailers to manually track these transactions, which introduces the risk of errors.

3. Service Products: Service products are additional services that customers can purchase alongside finished goods. For example, if a customer requests gift wrapping for their order, all items must be wrapped together and fulfilled from a single location.

Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors lack the ability to combine service products with physical products in the fulfillment process, leading to disconnected or incomplete deliveries.

The result? Retailers are left to implement costly and time-consuming manual workarounds or develop custom solutions, further complicating the integration.

  • Exchanges 2.0: Customers often visit physical stores to return or exchange items purchased online, which seems straightforward with Shopify’s POS system.

    With Shopify’s recent Exchanges 2.0 update, store associates can manage returns and exchanges within the same order, simplifying the in-store process.

    For example, if a customer returns an item and exchanges it for another, the new item is added to the original order. While this streamlines in-store returns, it introduces challenges for downstream systems, especially ERPs like NetSuite, due to Shopify’s logic of consolidating returns and exchanges in one order.

    Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors fall short when handling these complex transactions, leading to several issues:

1. Tracking Challenges: Each return and exchange transaction needs to be tracked separately for accurate financial reporting. However, Shopify's method of consolidating them into a single order complicates tracking of individual returns or exchanges in NetSuite..

2. Accounting Errors: Shopify does not link refunds or additional payments to specific items, making reconciliation of returns and exchanges a challenge. This can lead to inconsistencies in financial records, increasing the risk of accounting errors.

In essence, retailers with a standard Shopify NetSuite connector are left to manually separate these transactions and fix accounting discrepancies, creating inefficiencies and increasing the risk of errors.

  • Auditing Data Leaks: The ability to audit and trace potential data leaks between integrated systems is critical.

    Retailers push sales and return data from multiple systems to NetSuite. However, integration issues or errors can result in unnoticed data loss, leading to financial discrepancies and gaps in bookkeeping records.

    Another challenge with standard Shopify NetSuite connectors is their inability to track data leaks during the sales and return sync.

    Manually exporting and reconciling this data from disparate systems can be time-consuming and prone to human error. This makes accurate auditing difficult and puts data integrity at risk, especially for retailers handling large volumes of transactions across different platforms.

  • Lack of Scalability: As retailers grow, their operational demands increase.

Unfortunately, standard Shopify NetSuite connectors are not built to scale with a business. As more locations, higher order volumes, and diversified product types come into play, the basic functionality of these connectors becomes a bottleneck.

The limited ability to handle complex workflows forces retailers to invest in custom developments, patching their operations together with manual processes. Over time, this leads to higher operational costs, slower order processing, and an increased risk of errors.

What’s the Takeaway?

Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors aren’t enough.

The truth is, no two businesses operate the same, especially when it comes to mid-market and enterprise retailers with complex omnichannel operations. As a business grows, these connectors, built with basic assumptions in mind, become increasingly limiting. Growing retailers need more than a simple, pre-built connector to easily integrate Shopify and NetSuite. Handling specialized cases like kits, subscriptions, service products, and gift cards requires deep integration and a high level of flexibility that standard connectors simply don’t offer.

What begins as a cost-effective solution for smaller businesses quickly turns into a hindrance, with additional custom work piling up to keep pace with growing demands.

Standard connector vs OMS

How HotWax Commerce Bridges the Gap

Unlike standard Shopify NetSuite connectors that offer basic data synchronization, HotWax Commerce delivers a fully integrated OMS that handles the complexities of omnichannel retail. It bridges the gap between Shopify and ERP systems like NetSuite, addressing advanced requirements such as ATP calculations, configurable order routing, and specialized scenarios like exchanges, kits, gift cards, and service products.

  • Accurate ATP Calculation: Unlike standard Shopify NetSuite connectors, which merely sync static inventory data between systems, HotWax Commerce syncs inventory totals from various systems, ERP, POS, and WMS to create a unified pool of inventory.

    After syncing all inventory data, HotWax Commerce calculates ATP by factoring in safety stock thresholds, orders in the brokering queue awaiting inventory allocation, reserved inventory that’s already been allocated, and inventory at non-participating facilities.

    This unified ATP inventory is then synced to Shopify, ensuring it always reflects the most accurate inventory counts, preventing overselling or underselling and allowing retailers to confidently capture orders they can fulfill.

  • Configurable Order Routing: As retailers grow, the ability to efficiently fulfill orders from multiple locations, be it warehouses, distribution centers, or physical stores becomes essential for scaling operations. HotWax Commerce recognizes the complexity of these fulfillment challenges and offers a sophisticated order routing engine tailored to meet the unique needs of retailers.

    HotWax Commerce’s dedicated Order Routing App enables retailers to fully configure their order routing strategies with flexibility and precision. This app allows retailers to manage their fulfillment logic across three key components: Runs, Routings, and Rules.

    By using these components, retailers can design routing logics that perfectly align with their specific business objectives: Whether it’s prioritizing same-day deliveries, balancing demand across fulfillment locations, or implementing multi-retry inventory allocation rules where inventory allocation can be retried until the most optimal fulfillment location is identified.

    This level of customization ensures that every order is fulfilled in the most efficient and cost-effective manner, significantly reducing fulfillment errors and delays.

  • Handling Complex Product Types i.e. Kits, Gift Cards, and Service Products: Standard Shopify NetSuite connectors struggle with more complex product scenarios, often leaving retailers to manage fulfillment issues, inventory mismatches, and manual workarounds. HotWax Commerce is designed to easily handle these complexities:

    Handling special products-1

1. Kits: HotWax Commerce manages kits by computing the inventory of all component products. The kit’s inventory is determined by the lowest common denominator (LCD) among its components. For example, a kit consisting of a sunglass (inventory of 7) and a frame case (inventory of 4) would have a kit inventory of 4.

Orders including kit products are fulfilled together from a single location where all components are in stock. This ensures accurate fulfillment and synchronization to NetSuite.

2. Gift Cards: Whether physical or digital gift cards, HotWax Commerce manages the entire gift card lifecycle.

I. Physical Gift Cards: HotWax Commerce recommends retailers to stock blank cards that can be loaded with value and activated after an order is received. In this scenario, retailers can create multiple variants of a gift card with different denominations but treat them as a single product with shared inventory and a common SKU.

For example, if a customer orders a $200 gift card, the retailer will take a blank card, load the $200 value, and activate it, ensuring that the gift card is ready for immediate use upon receipt by the customer.

HotWax Commerce also handles the activation flow for retailers, ensuring that when customers receive their gift cards, they can instantly redeem them.

II. Digital Gift Cards: These are auto-fulfilled in Shopify and HotWax Commerce also handles their end-to-end processing and their reporting to NetSuite.

3. Service Products: When customers purchase additional services alongside finished products, HotWax Commerce ensures they are fulfilled from a single location.

HotWax Commerce manages this by grouping service products with the associated items, ensuring these are processed and shipped together. Orders with service products are also accurately synchronized with NetSuite, ensuring efficient fulfillment from warehouses and that customers receive their personalized orders as expected.

Some of the examples that illustrates service products offered by our clients and how HotWax Commerce handles them:

I. First-Time Customer Flyers: New customers receive a special introduction flyer included with their first order. This product is fulfilled from the warehouse and is designed to enhance the initial shopping experience.

II. Gift Wrapping: Customers can select items in their cart to be gift-wrapped. This choice is saved in Shopify using line item properties and transferred to HotWax Commerce as order item attributes for processing.

III. Keepsake Boxes: High-value special products trigger the inclusion of a keepsake box, which is not part of the Shopify order but added in HotWax Commerce after the order is created.

  • Exchanges 2.0: HotWax Commerce simplifies in-store exchanges by managing them as separate orders, ensuring each return, payment adjustment, or refund transaction is clearly reflected.

    Creating separate transaction records for each exchange allows for clean and accurate financial reporting, even when managing complex exchange scenarios.

    This structured approach ensures accurate reconciliation of returns and exchanges in NetSuite, something standard Shopify NetSuite connectors struggle to handle due to their consolidated transaction model.

  • Comprehensive Sales Auditing for Data Integrity: HotWax Commerce’s auditing tool, OReSA, ensures financial data accuracy by offering an automated solution to synchronize sales, returns, and appeasements across systems like Shopify, POS, and NetSuite. It provides retailers with a unified source of truth for financial auditing, eliminating the manual, error-prone process of exporting data from multiple platforms.

    OReSA compares sales totals between sales capturing systems and the bookkeeping system, providing gap analysis reports that highlight inconsistencies. The platform also breaks down missing transactions, allowing finance teams to quickly identify and rectify discrepancies, ensuring data integrity and consistent financial reporting.

  • Reducing Integration Time: A significant drawback of standard Shopify NetSuite connectors is the prolonged integration time needed to address advanced scenarios. While basic data flows may be quick to set up, the need for custom solutions to handle specialized cases increases operational complexity, delays go-live dates, and adds hidden costs.

    HotWax Commerce offers deep pre-built integration with Shopify and NetSuite, advanced capabilities like ATP, configurable order routing, and complex product handling out of the box. This drastically reduces integration time, allowing retailers to go live faster without months of custom development. As a result, HotWax Commerce empowers retailers to scale quickly and efficiently, providing the flexibility needed to meet growing omnichannel demands.

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Not Just a Connector, A Complete Solution

As retailers scale, their operational complexity increases, and they need more than just a simple connector to bridge Shopify and NetSuite. Standard Shopify-ERP integration using the NetSuite ERP Connector or Celigo are suitable for retailers with straightforward operations, limited locations, and basic inventory and order management needs.

For retailers navigating these advanced requirements, HotWax Commerce offers the depth of functionality that goes beyond a simple connector. With accurate ATP calculations, configurable order routing, preventing data leaks and robust support for complex product types like kits and gift cards, HotWax Commerce helps retailers streamline operations, eliminate manual workarounds, and scale with confidence. Its deep integration with both Shopify and NetSuite ensures that critical data flows accurately, reducing integration time and enabling retailers to maintain operational agility as they expand. Ultimately, HotWax Commerce is not just a Shopify NetSuite connector, it’s a complete solution designed to support the growing needs of modern omnichannel retailers.

Contact an expert to see how HotWax Commerce OMS can help retailers in managing special scenarios like kit products, gift cards, and multi-location fulfillment.