Connecting Shoptet to an ERP: three routes and how to choose

Shoptet powers tens of thousands of e-shops in the Czech Republic and Slovakia — and almost every one of them sooner or later hits the same moment: there are so many orders that retyping them into the accounting system or ERP stops scaling. There are three ways to connect Shoptet to an ERP, each suited to something different. This article compares them without the sales fog — including the things an add-on offer usually leaves out.

The short answer

What Shoptet exposes to the outside world

Shoptet offers three interfaces through which data gets in and out: add-ons from its own marketplace, a partner API and file exports/imports (XML, CSV). One important detail decides the whole architecture: Shoptet has no public API for shop owners. The API is available to registered partners who build add-ons on top of it — and your e-shop grants them access by installing the add-on. In practice this means you cannot just click together “your own API connection”; you either use a ready-made add-on, or an integrator who holds partner access. Higher Shoptet plans further extend the connection options.

Route 1: A ready-made marketplace add-on

For the most common pairs — Shoptet with POHODA, Money S3 or ABRA Flexi — ready-made add-ons exist: from ERP vendors, specialised companies and Shoptet itself. Installation takes hours, you pay a monthly fee and the standard scenario (orders into the ERP, stock and prices back) works out of the box. That is both the strength and the limit of this route: the field mapping is fixed. As soon as you need to convert units on the way, match product codes, split documents by VAT or connect a third system, the add-on can’t do it — and every additional add-on in the shop is another separate thing to manage, with its own behaviour on errors and its own (often non-existent) logs.

Route 2: File exports and imports

The oldest route: orders out as XML or CSV, price list and stock in via import. It costs nothing and is enough for a few orders a day — the accountant downloads a file once a day and imports it into the ERP. But bear in mind the whole process depends on a person: forget the export and documents go missing; change the file structure and the import fails silently. There is no feedback loop (order statuses, real-time stock movements), and as volume grows, so does the room for human error. A good start, a bad permanent state.

Route 3: An integration platform

A platform connects to Shoptet through the same partner interface as an add-on — but the mapping is not fixed. It transforms data on the way (units, codes, item matching), validates it before writing into the ERP, queues transfers with automatic retries on outages, and you learn about errors from a notification, not from a customer. The main difference shows with the third system: a warehouse (WMS), CRM or carrier connects with one connector into the same hub, whereas with add-ons you would be stacking several separate bridges next to each other. When each architecture pays off is covered in detail in our article on integration platforms.

• Add-onA fixed scenario out of the box. Deployed in hours, a monthly fee, no mapping changes.
• PlatformTailored mapping: transformations, matching, validation. Deployed in days, priced per module.
• Add-onErrors typically get fixed once somebody notices — logs and alerting are usually missing.
• PlatformAn outage is retried automatically from the queue, you know about errors immediately and every transferred document can be traced in the log.

An ERP for Shoptet: what gets connected most often

Shoptet gets along with practically every Czech ERP — the question is not “whether” but “how well for your modules”. Smaller e-shops most often connect POHODA or Money S3, growing companies ABRA Flexi or Helios iNuvio, and larger operations Microsoft Business Central. When choosing an ERP for e-commerce, look above all at integrability: what interface it has (API, XML), how fast it handles stock movements and whether a proven connection exists for your combination. All supported pairs are listed in the integration catalogue.

What to check before signing

1. Product variants. Shoptet works with variants (size, colour), the ERP with item codes. Make sure they map 1:1 — mismatched variants are the most common source of stock differences.
2. Who owns the data. Prices and stock should live in the ERP, orders and customers in the e-shop. When both systems edit the same field, conflicts won’t take long — have the sync direction described for each module separately.
3. Stock sync frequency. An hourly sync is fine until you sell last pieces or across several channels. Ask for the shortest possible interval and what slows it down in practice.
4. Order statuses back into Shoptet. Dispatched, parcel number, tracking — without the return flow, customers write to support and support digs through the ERP. The return direction tends to be the quieter half of any offer.
5. What happens on an error. An order with an unknown product code, an ERP outage, a duplicate customer. The right answer includes a queue, automatic retries, a notification and a log — “try sending it again” is not the right answer.

How we do it at Symmy

Symmy is a cloud integration platform built for Czech and Slovak ERP systems. It connects to Shoptet through its API, automatically monitors, transforms and validates the data between the e-shop and the ERP, and operations run under 24/7 supervision. The build is priced per module (usually 6–12 hours of work per module), so you pay for the flows you actually need. Everything we can transfer with Shoptet is on the Shoptet detail page; the pricing page with an online calculator gives you an indicative price for your combination.

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