Important notice

These details are accurate at the time of writing this Help file. However, from time to time Vend may make further changes that are unknown to Unleashed.When importing products from Vend, Unleashed will also pull across Stock On Hand and Stock On Hand value, therefore calculating your Average Landed Cost. This is the only time that this data will be transferred from Vend to Unleashed.

The following is a summary of key points that you need to note before proceeding:

• Do not integrate Shopify and Vend directly. It is recommended to integrate Shopify and Vend directly with Unleashed. This is because updates Unleashed makes to Vend’s product numbers do not pass through to Shopify, unless Vend registers them as stock orders. The Unleashed integration updates the product page directly, therefore, these numbers do not update Shopify inventory.
• Lay-by sales are not recommended as they can create a stock variance between the Unleashed and Vend systems. This is because Vend removes the quantity that is on lay-by whilst Unleashed does not.
• Unleashed supports the following Vend product types:
  • Product
  • Product variant
• Unleashed does not support Composite (bundled) products.
• At the start of the configuration, make sure that the following drop-down menus are (in the Integration Configuration page) set to ‘Disabled’.

  This will ensure that you only have one flow of information. This is to avoid Unleashed overriding information in your Vend store, e.g. stock levels.

  • Export Customers
  • Export Products
  • Export Stock On Hand
• Sales Returns/Credits will not be imported into Unleashed due to the negative quantities they have on them. It is not possible to have a negative quantity on an invoice in Unleashed so these Returns/Credits will need to be entered as credits if they are to be recorded in both systems.
• Pricing cannot be sent to the tax inclusive field in Vend, it is only sent to the tax exclusive field. This means that you need to set up all your retail pricing in Unleashed as tax exclusive.
• After the integration, sales reports and product reports within Vend will not accurately reflect the costs of goods any more.

Why integrate with Unleashed?

The purpose of integrating Vend with Unleashed is to provide true stock management. The integration streamlines POS and stock management requirements, whether you have one or multiple sales channels.

What is Vend?

Vend is a POS and customer loyalty software that makes it easy to setup, manage and grow your business.Vend operates from any device or platform with a web-browser, or via the Vend iPad application.

Benefits of the integration

• Stock levels in Vend automatically update in real-time.
• View accurate margins for all sales channels — based on landed costs calculated in Unleashed.
• Stock movements are sent to your accounting provider, for all sales (costs of goods sold, stock on hand is always up-to-date).
• You can have centralized sales figures for both retail and wholesale channels.
• You can have sales orders from multiple outlets going into Unleashed.

About Vend and Never Diminishing Products in Unleashed

If you have products that are marked as 'Never Diminishing' in Unleashed; they will be pushed into Vend as standard products. However, you can edit the product in Vend and un-mark the stock tracking option. This will amend the product and change it to a 'Never-Diminishing products.'

This is also the same process coming back from Vend into Unleashed.

The integration flow

Information that is shared between the two systems

• Products
• Customers
• Stock On Hand
• Sales

Diagram of the integration flow

Integration flow descriptions

Products: Unleashed pulls products from Vend. Setting Unleashed to push products back into Vend is optional.

We recommend that you do not use spacing when naming your products; this is because spacing is removed from the product name when it is sent to Vend. Consequently, when you sell a product in Vend, the sale cannot go back into Unleashed when the product codes don’t match. Also note that when you obsolete a product in Unleashed, it will not be marked as obsolete in Vend.

Customer: Unleashed pulls customer details from Vend. Setting Unleashed to push customer details back into Vend is optional.
Stock On Hand: Setting Unleashed to push stock-on-hand details back into Vend is optional.
Sales: Closed sales in Vend are pulled into Unleashed. 

The status of sales that will get imported into Unleashed are:

• CLOSED
• LAYBY CLOSED
• ONACCOUNT CLOSED

Unleashed and Vend video tutorial overview

Supported product types

Products that Unleashed supports

• Products
• Product variants

Product names cannot be updated in Vend!

About Product variants

In Vend, a product can also have variants. These are different versions of the product, such as size, color, style, and flavor. These products are grouped together in Vend — they share the same name and handle, and each variant of the product has its own SKU.

E.g. Product Name: T Shirt, Handle: T Shirt.

When you link your Vend and Unleashed accounts, each variant of the product will be created as a unique product code in Unleashed.

Products that Unleashed does not support

Unleashed does not currently support composite products.

About Composite products

A composite is a bundled product (a group of smaller products); that can be sold separately.

Important aspects to consider before you integrate

Field and data descriptions

When transferring data from Vend to Unleashed, make sure that the data in Vend is in a valid format. The following table provides examples of possible fields that you need to ensure it contains valid formats.

Other aspects to consider

The following topic lists important aspects that you need to consider before integrating Vend with Unleashed.

• In this integration, sales will come through within 5 to 15 minutes of the sale hitting Vend.
• Unlike other integrations with Unleashed, information is shared between the two systems by using the Unleashed API.
• You also have the ability view the log to check details of the integration.
• When entering in Unleashed and Vend base currencies, these currencies must be the same, otherwise it will not work correctly. 

About Serial and Batch Tracked transactions

• All Serialized and Batch Tracked transactions are parked sales. They require editing before being closed.

Accessing the integration store

1. Select Integration | Integration Store, the Integration Store appears.
2. From the Integration Store, you can setup and configure your integration.
3. Click Configure to start the integration configuration. The Vend Overview page appears.

Install the application

Click Install App. It guides you through installing and creating a Vend account.

Configuration tab

Connect your Vend outlets to Unleashed warehouses

By dragging and dropping your outlets into warehouses, it maps sales and stock on hand (optional) between Vend and Unleashed. Stock on hand exports are controlled at a global level, you cannot turn off stock on hand exports for a particular mapping.

You cannot have multiple outlets in Vend mapped to one warehouse in Unleashed. You can only map one outlet in Vend to one warehouse in Unleashed.

Reload Vend Outlets: When clicked, it refreshes the page displays how many Vend outlets you have available for you to drag and drop.
Unleashed Warehouses: Displays how many Unleashed warehouses you have available for you to assign (drag and drop) outlet stores to.

Choose how Unleashed and Vend integrate

Export customers to Vend: Customers in Vend are imported into Unleashed automatically. Enabling this will export Customers from Unleashed into Vend.
Export products to Vend: Products in Vend are imported into Unleashed automatically. Enabling this will export Products from Unleashed into Vend.

We recommend that you do not use spacing when naming your products; this is because spacing is removed from the product name when it is sent to Vend. Consequently, when you sell a product in Vend, the sale cannot go back into Unleashed when the product codes do not match.

Export Stock On Hand to Vend: If enabled, any changes to stock inside Unleashed will update the count in Vend with the "Available" amount of the product.
Available amount is a Stock On Hand minus allocated stock.
Include quantities for auto-assembled products: Available only if the Export Stock On Hand to Vend option is selected. If enabled, the Available Quantity will also include the quantity for auto-assembled products.
Update products: Enabling this selects what system is the master for product information such as Pricing, Notes etc.

Manage your Data tab

Sync products, customers or invoices by previous date

Export products from Unleashed to Vend: Products from Vend are imported into Unleashed automatically. Enabling this will export products from Unleashed in Vend.

Importing products, customers and invoices from Vend to Unleashed: These options allow you to select a date to import these products, customers or invoices from Vend to Unleashed. Follow the in-line help on screen to ensure that you data traverses correctly and in the right direction.

Re-import previous customers, products or invoices

If errors occur during the importing process for either products, customers or invoices, then you should manually re- import them—Customers, Products or Invoices. If you are not successful, you can view the fault in the connection log and fix accordingly.

How it will work

Once the integration is completed:

• You will no longer need to manage stock through Vend. Instead, you will receive your stock through Unleashed.
• All stock reports should only be run in Unleashed.

As soon as the integration is performed, it creates a discount product. The discount is used as a sale where there is a discount line, it uses this Vend discount product.

Process: How Vend and Unleashed will work together

The following processes are examples that demonstrate how Vend works with Unleashed after the integration is completed.

Example process 1

• You receipt in a purchase order in Unleashed.
• Unleashed updates the quantities in Vend for the products receipted.

Example process 2

• You sell a product in Vend.
• A copy of the sales order is pulled into Unleashed.
• Unleashed attempts to automatically complete the sale –or– if there is not enough stock, the sale is given the status ‘Parked’, and allocates stock to that sale.
• Sales orders will be brought into the warehouse automatically, from the mapping that was configured during the setup process.

Viewing the Connection log

The Connection Log provides a list of every single action that has occurred during the integration process. For example, you can use the log screen to determine any issues that might occur during the integration process. This could include a validation error, or any other possible faults. You can use the Connection Log page to determine what the actual fault is, and then plan to fix accordingly. The logs only keep the last 7 days of activity.

Viewing in log levels

You can select the log level that you need to view for analysis. 

• ERROR: Displays error type logs.
• INFO: Displays general log information, such as products details being transferred.
• ALL: Displays all log levels.

Using your accounting provider with Unleashed & Vend

This diagram demonstrates how the three systems work together when fully integrated.

Pricing cannot be sent to the tax inclusive field in Vend, it is only sent to the tax exclusive field. This means that you need to set up all your retail pricing in Unleashed as tax exclusive.

How accounting providers work with Unleashed

If you are using an accounting provider, consider the following:

• Unleashed will not send the invoice for a Vend sale to your accounting provider. Otherwise, this would duplicate the process.
• Unleashed sends the sales journal for the transaction to your accounting provider. This is adjusting your stock levels.

Sales between Unleashed and Vend may differ by a small amount, however; this should not affect your reconciliation as Vend sends both the Sales and the Payment to the accounting provider.

Close Vend registers each day

In order for someone to be confident that all the information in the three systems are up-to-date, you must close all the registers that you are using by the end of each business day.

Returns & Credits

In Vend, returns and credits are handled by entering negative lines on a sale (see image). This does not work the same way as Unleashed, so the sale cannot be imported (Unleashed has a separate module for Returns and Credits).

How to handle your returns and credits

The best way to handle your returns and credits is to do a manual adjustment in Unleashed for the stock returned in Vend (on a regular basis i.e. daily).

1. In Vend, export the sales history to find the returned products

   1. Go to History in Vend.

   2. Filter down the history based on the relevant Date and Register.

   3. Click Export CSV at the top right.

2. With the exported file, filter the rows using the Quantity column (you want the products with a negative quantity as these are your Returns/Credits).

For more information on how to filter in Excel, click here.

3. Enter a stock adjustment in Unleashed to add back these negative quantities for each product.

Field validation mappings

The following is a list of field validations that need to be mapped during the Vend integration. All available information has been gathered to ensure you have the easiest integration possible.