VEND – WOOCOMMERCE INTEGRATION

Setting up

1. Vend –> Add-ons –> Connect Vend to Woocommerce
   
2. You need to create an API token in woocommerce:
   

• Go to woocommerce settings –> Advanced –> REST API –> Create an API key
  
• Description – Vend, Permissions – Read/Write -> Generate API Key
  
• Copy ‘Consumer Key’ and ‘Consumer Secret’ and paste in Vend
  

3. Sync Inventory Levels – You can choose to display inventory from one store location or combine multiple store locations.
   
4. Register - The woocommerce sales will be recorded within this register in vend
   
5. Payments - You can have a payment type as ‘Woocommerce Payments’ to track online payments separately.
   
6. Once done click ‘Connect Woocommerce’
   
7. Publish to Woocommerce – You can publish all products to woocommerce or choose to publish specific products from within vend to woocommerce. Any changes you make to your products in Vend will be made in woocommerce too.
   
8. Import All Products – If you want your products in woocommerce which doesn’t already exist in vend to be imported.
   
9. Import All Orders – You can transfer your historical sales data into Vend from woocommerce so that they are reflected in your sales history and reporting in vend.
   

The Vend-WooCommerce integration shares product, inventory, customer and sales information between both systems, simplifying daily operations by saving time on manual admin and double-entry. Everything is kept up-to-date between your online store and physical stores, so you can be confident that you will only sell the stock that you have.

You will be able to manage sales, inventory, and reporting all from one place.

Products -

By integrating Vend & woocommerce you are ensuring that you only sell products that you already have.

Once the products are synced your inventory levels will stay up to date across vend and woocommerce.

Here after, manage your product catalogs from Vend to ensure everything is kept accurate and up to date across both the platforms. You can add new products or edit existing products and ‘Publish to woocommerce’.

How the sync works

1. Enter products to Vend
   
2. Publish products to WooCommerce
   
3. WooCommerce sells products and inventory levels are reflected in Vend.
   
4. Product management is done in Vend for all values that are synced by the integration: Price, images etc. while WooCommerce provides the beautiful storefront.
   

Vend overrules/manages WooCommerce product inventory while WooCommerce feeds selected info (sales, inventory) back to it. Due to the fact that Vend is the deciding factor in this system, new products must be entered to Vend and published to WooCommerce. Additional info can then be added to the product on the WooCommerce site.

Images can be included when creating the product in Vend but deleting the images in Vend will not delete them in WooCommerce. You will need to delete them in WooCommerce if required.

Adding new single products

1.Create the product in Vend.

2. Find the product on the product page in Vend. Select it and click the Publish to WooCommerce button.

3. Add beautiful images and other details needed for online sales, such as weight, in WooCommerce.

Publishing images

When publishing your product to Vend, we will also publish all the images you have in Vend to WooCommerce. If you decide to add new images to a product at a later stage, these images will overwrite the images you have in Woo

Variants and Composite Products

Composite products will display as an individual product in WooCommerce, with the information matched to the composite product in Vend, rather than the component items. Sales of a composite product in WooCommerce will still update the inventory of those items in Vend.

Variant products will display as a single product in WooCommerce, with drop-down menus to select your different variant options on the product’s page. This means that you won’t be able to display each product in your WooCommerce store separately. If a product is set up as a variant in Vend, all versions of the variant will be sent to WooCommerce. You cannot publish a selection of the versions of the variant to your WooCommerce store.

If you want to display each product individually, you’ll need to set them up as separate products in your Vend store.

Managing Linked Products

Update linked products

Once you have linked your products in both WooCommerce and Vend, apart from the exceptions below, your product will always be updated. All other fields (name, price, tags, description, quantity etc.), including new variants to a product, should be edited in Vend when you make updates to your product.

The exceptions are weight & collections

When you edit a product in Vend, WooCommerce will be updated when you save the changes. Sometimes, updates take a while to process.

Hide a linked product (make a product inactive)

Important: If you make any changes to a hidden product in Vend, it should be made visible again in WooCommerce.

You can toggle the visibility of a product in Vend if you do not wish to display it in WooCommerce. This can be useful if a product is seasonal, or you no longer sell the product currently but may sell it again at some point in the future.

To hide a product on Vend, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Products screen in Vend and find the product you wish to disable.

2. Choose Edit Product.

3. Once on the Edit Product screen, under the Product Type field, click on the green toggle for Sell on Point-of-Sale. This will turn the toggle grey and will disable the product in both Vend and WooCommerce.

It will no longer be accessible on your WooCommerce store or the Vend Sell screen. However, it does not break the link between the product in Vend and WooCommerce, so any updates made to the product in Vend will still carry across to the product in WooCommerce.

To confirm that this has worked you can click the View on WooCommerce button on the product page.

Delete a linked product

I want to delete the product from my Vend store AND my WooCommerce store.

To delete the product in both your Vend and WooCommerce store, always delete the product in Vend. Click on Delete Product on the product detail page of the product. This will update your WooCommerce store. Do NOT manually delete the product in WooCommerce.

I only want to delete the product from my WooCommerce store.

You may not want to delete a product from your Vend store, as you can report on the deleted product. This is useful for items you no longer have in inventory, and will not be reordering.

Important: This does not apply to products with variants. You must delete the variant in Vend to remove it from WooCommerce.

To delete the product from your WooCommerce store, follow the steps below:

1. In Vend, head to the Product page.

2. Click on the product you wish to delete. This will take you to the product detail page.

3. Click the Unpublish button. This will break the link with WooCommerce. The item will continue to appear on your WooCommerce store at this stage, therefore you will need to delete the item from your WooCommerce store.

Inventory - 

You can think of the WooCommerce integration as an extra shop window for your entire store. After connecting your WooCommerce and Vend store, you will have the option to link your WooCommerce store to one or more of your Vend outlets. By doing so, you can pick which of that outlet’s inventory are shown online, and WooCommerce will display available inventory levels from the linked outlet.

When a customer makes a purchase in your store, or you complete a stock order or transfer, the sale will be recorded on the register selected for the WooCommerce integration in Vend (‘WooCommerce’), your inventory levels will be updated, and this will be updated in your WooCommerce store.

Adding or Adjusting Inventory

1. Complete an order, transfer, or stock take in the Vend outlet(s) linked to your WooCommerce store.
   
2. When the order (transfer or stock take) is completed in Vend, the changes will be updated in your WooCommerce store. Note: If you have a large number of products, especially during your stock take, any changes may take some time to update in your WooCommerce store.
   

Sales - 

Online orders made in woocommerce will also be recorded as a completed sale in Vend. 

If an online sale is cancelled it will show as voided sale in vend.

Receiving an order in your WooCommerce store

1. A customer completes a sale (order) in your store.
   
2. In Vend:
   

• The sale and payments are recorded in the linked outlet on the register you have selected.
  
• The closed sale reduces the inventory level for that outlet.
  

3. In WooCommerce:
   

• The order will be recorded.
  
• An email will be sent to the customer confirming the sale.
  
• You need to fulfil the order on the WooCommerce order fulfilment page.
  
• The order fulfilment will send a shipping confirmation to the customer.
  

Note: Orders are received by Vend when they are in Processing status on WooCommerce, to ensure inventory at the time. For BACS, direct bank transfer and cash on delivery, Vend will receive the order when the order is On Hold. You will need to follow the steps below (‘Bank Deposit payment type’) to add payment to the order to complete it.

Shipping Charges

When a sale comes through to Vend from your WooCommerce store, we’ll create a Shipping Charges product. Each WooCommerce order with shipping charges will have this product, with your shipping charge amount, added to the sale.

This means you can also report on the total amount of shipping charges using the Product reports in Vend.

Bank deposit payment type

If you accept payments made via bank deposit, the sale from WooCommerce will be sent to Vend at the time the order is made. The sale balance will show as unpaid.

When the customer pays you, you will need to record the payment and fulfil the order in WooCommerce and record the payment in Vend. Updating the sale in WooCommerce WILL NOT update the sale in Vend.

To apply the payment in Vend:

• Your register MUST be open when you apply the payment.
  
• Locate the sale in the Sales Ledger.
  
• Click the Apply Payment link.
  
• Select the payment type, today’s date, and the current time. The current time MUST be after the register was opened, and before the register was closed, or your payment will not appear in your register closure reporting.
  

Customers – 

If an existing customer buys something online in woocommerce, this will update the customer purchase history in vend. When a new customer shops online, this will create a new customer in Vend.

Reporting – 

A register has been added called ‘xyz’ and all web sales will be shown against this register. It was necessary to add the register as each online order will open the register WooCommerce uses in Vend and this avoids opening the main register after hours.

With the new register setup for online sales, you can easily view all your reporting in one place – Go to sales report and filter the search by the register.

Payment Type - 

A payment type of ‘WooCommerce’ has been added to Vend and each website sale will be shown in Vend as this payment type.

Receipts for WooCommerce sales will have a suffix of TP-WC- . If this is not suitable, please change it in Vend->Setup->Outlets and Registers->Receipt->Suffix

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 LIST OF THINGS TO CHECK BEFORE INTEGRATION:

1. Check the API keys pasted in Vend are correct
   
2. Check the API keys are created by the Administrator user which has the highest level of permission on WooCommerce - WooCommerce batch manipulate error
   
3. Check that the Read/Write permission is enabled - WooCommerce API Key does not have edit permissions
   
4. We were unable to connect your WooCommerce store because something is wrong with this API Key
   
5. Authentication over HTTPS is enabled to establish a secure connection - WooCommerce website does not pass the Basic Authentication header information
   
6. Make sure the traffic from the AWS server is not blocked - WooCommerce API couldn't be found at the supplied location
   
7. Whitelist the currently used IP addresses of services responsible for making incoming requests on your security & firewall plugins.
   
8. Remove any security & firewall plugins which may be blocking the API calls (incoming requests) from AWS servers or allow AWS IP Addresses range if the previous step doesn't resolve the issue.
   
9. Check the web hosting account is not running out of memory to support the integration. To check the minimum requirements for WooCommerce, click here. 
   

Linking Existing Vend and WooCommerce Products

Scenario 1: I have common products in Vend and WooCommerce with matching SKUs.

If you have common products in Vend and WooCommerce, syncing the products from WooCommerce will link them to the same products in Vend based on the exact match of SKUs. To do this:

Navigate to Setup -> Add-ons -> WooCommerce Settings.

Once here click Import All Products.

All of your WooCommerce products will be synced with Vend and any products with matching SKUs will be linked together going forward. If you are using Barcodes in WooCommerce, you will need to transfer these to the Variant SKU field within WooCommerce before you pull them into Vend. This is to ensure that the products will match with an existing Vend product.

  Important

Selecting Import All Products will pull all the products from WooCommerce but won't overwrite the product information in Vend.

Scenario 2:  I have products in both Vend and WooCommerce, and none of them are common, but I want to link and keep all the products on both platforms.

Sometimes you may have a set of products in Vend and a different set in WooCommerce. If you’d like to combine the two, so both Vend and WooCommerce have all of the same Products, follow the steps below:

1. First, sync the WooCommerce products into Vend by navigating to Setup -> Add-ons -> WooCommerce Settings and clicking on the Import All Products button.

  Important

We do pull images from WooCommerce into Vend when linking the existing products from WooCommerce.

2. Publish the Vend products to WooCommerce by going to the same WooCommerce settings page in Vend but this time, click Publish All Products.

By doing this, all active products in Vend will be published to your WooCommerce store.

Important: When publishing your product to Vend, we will also publish ALL the images you have in Vend to WooCommerce, except for variant images. If you wish to show multiple images, such as images for the variant products, then you’ll need to upload these manually afterward.

Scenario 3: I have products in Vend and WooCommerce, and most of them are common, but the SKUs between Vend and WooCommerce do not match.

Sometimes you may have the same products in Vend and WooCommerce, but the SKU’s for these products may not match perfectly between Vend and WooCommerce. To fix this, follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that the common products in Vend and WooCommerce have the same SKU.

2. If any common products in Vend and WooCommerce do not have matching SKUs then edit the SKU for these products in either WooCommerce or Vend.

  Important

Before going ahead with this change it is important to note the implications of changing SKUs in Vend or WooCommerce:

• Changing the SKUs in Vend -> If you use barcodes in store then you’d have to print the barcode again for the new SKUs.
  

Please check with WooCommerce Support regarding the implications of changing the SKU.

3. Once you have the SKU match for every product then head over to the WooCommerce Settings page in Vend and click Import All Products. This way Vend will look for the SKU on the WooCommerce products and link them together.

4. It is important that you Import All Products when you are first linking WooCommerce with Vend. Once you’ve done this, all future products should be created in Vend, as Vend will be the system of record for all inventory and product management going forward.