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Epicor Kinetic is one of the more common ERPs in mid-market manufacturing. It handles production scheduling, inventory management, purchasing, and financials. Shopify handles your customer-facing commerce, whether that's a B2B portal for wholesale buyers, a D2C storefront, or both.
Without an integration between the two, data lives in silos. Orders placed in Shopify need to be manually entered into Epicor as sales orders. Inventory changes in Epicor don't reflect in Shopify until someone updates it manually. Pricing maintained in Epicor isn't automatically enforced in your Shopify catalogs. These gaps create errors and operational overhead that compound as order volume grows.
This guide covers the integration approaches available for Epicor and Shopify, what data typically flows between them, and what to verify before committing to an approach.
An Epicor-Shopify integration typically involves data moving in both directions.
From Epicor to Shopify:
From Shopify to Epicor:
The direction, frequency, and field-level mapping for each of these will depend on which system is the source of truth for each data type. For most manufacturers, Epicor is the source of truth for inventory and pricing, and Shopify is the source of truth for customer-facing order data.
Shopify doesn't have a native Epicor connector in the admin. The integration happens through one of three approaches, each with different tradeoffs.
Check the Shopify App Store for a purpose-built Epicor connector before pursuing other approaches. Shopify's Global ERP Program lists certified ERP integration partners that provide hosted, turnkey connectors. These handle the initial mapping, sync logic, and API connectivity in a pre-configured package.
Pre-built connectors reduce setup effort significantly when they cover your use cases. The tradeoff is that they may not support every custom field or workflow in your Epicor configuration. Evaluate how closely the connector's default mapping matches your data model before committing.
Best for: Manufacturers whose Epicor setup is reasonably standard and who want a faster path to a working integration without custom development.
An iPaaS platform sits between Shopify and Epicor, handles data transformation and field mapping, and manages the sync schedule and error handling. This approach supports more complex scenarios, including multi-directional sync, conditional logic, and connecting Epicor and Shopify to additional systems (3PL, accounting, CRM) in the same workflow.
Epicor has its own iPaaS offering specifically for this purpose: Epicor Integration Cloud, powered by Jitterbit. It connects Epicor Kinetic with over 1,000 endpoints, including Shopify, and supports data formats that span EDI (X12, EDIFACT), JSON, XML, and flat files. Pre-built templates for common integration patterns reduce the mapping work required for standard data flows. For manufacturers already in the Epicor ecosystem, this is worth evaluating first since the templates are built around Epicor's data model.
Third-party iPaaS platforms (Celigo, Boomi, MuleSoft) also support Epicor-Shopify integrations and may be the better choice if you have existing iPaaS infrastructure, prefer a platform-neutral tool, or need to connect more systems beyond Epicor and Shopify.
Best for: Manufacturers with custom Epicor configurations, complex data transformation requirements, or existing iPaaS infrastructure.
A custom integration built directly against Shopify's APIs and Epicor's APIs (or Epicor's REST/OData endpoints in Kinetic). This gives you full control over field mapping, sync logic, error handling, and scheduling, but requires development resources to build and ongoing investment to maintain.
For manufacturers with unique Epicor customizations, unusual business logic, or no viable pre-built connector, custom API work is sometimes the only practical path.
Best for: Manufacturers with highly customized Epicor environments or requirements that no connector or iPaaS template covers.
If your Shopify store uses B2B features, specifically companies, company locations, and catalogs, verify that your chosen integration supports Shopify's B2B APIs before committing to an approach.
Some connectors were built before Shopify's B2B suite was released and interact only with the standard Orders and Customers APIs. They don't recognize the company/location data model, meaning B2B orders may not associate with the correct company account, customer-specific pricing from catalogs may not be respected, and payment terms may not carry through correctly.
This is a common issue and worth an explicit compatibility check with any provider you're evaluating. Ask specifically: does your Shopify connector support company accounts, company locations, B2B catalogs, and B2B payment terms via Shopify's B2B APIs?
When scoping the integration, these are the specific flows that require the most attention.
Epicor Kinetic uses an item master for products. Mapping Epicor items to Shopify products requires:
Inventory sync frequency matters. Real-time sync via webhook keeps Shopify accurate but places higher load on the integration. Scheduled sync (every 15-60 minutes) is more common and sufficient for most manufacturers. See How Often Should Shopify Sync Inventory with Your ERP for guidance on frequency decisions.
When a Shopify order is placed, it needs to create a corresponding record in Epicor. The typical mapping:
For B2B orders, the review step matters. If your Shopify setup routes B2B orders through a draft order workflow before they're confirmed, make sure the integration triggers the Epicor sales order creation at the right point in that workflow, after the order is confirmed, not when the draft is created.
For order review workflow configuration, see How to Set Up B2B Order Review Workflows in Shopify.
If Epicor holds your definitive price lists (including customer-specific contract pricing), consider syncing those prices into Shopify catalogs rather than managing them in both places separately. This reduces pricing discrepancies when sales reps update contract rates in Epicor.
The sync direction here is typically one-way: Epicor to Shopify. How frequently pricing needs to update depends on how often your pricing changes. For stable price lists, a daily sync is often sufficient. For dynamic pricing tied to cost fluctuations, more frequent sync may be needed.
For B2B stores, keeping company account data consistent between Epicor and Shopify prevents situations where a customer exists in one system but not the other, or where credit limits and payment terms in Epicor don't match what Shopify is enforcing.
Decide which system is the source of truth for customer data. Most manufacturers treat their ERP as the master record for customer accounts and push new or updated customer data into Shopify rather than the reverse.
An Epicor-Shopify integration handles the data movement. Shopify Flow and n8n handle the operational logic around it.
Shopify Flow is useful for:
n8n is useful when you need to bridge the integration to systems outside Epicor and Shopify:
Not verifying B2B API compatibility early: If you're on Shopify Plus with B2B features, this is the first question to ask any provider, not the last.
Using on-hand quantity instead of available quantity: Syncing raw on-hand inventory from Epicor without subtracting reserved or allocated stock leads to overselling. Map the right Epicor quantity field.
Order sync triggering too early in a draft order workflow: For B2B orders that go through a review step in Shopify, configure the Epicor sync to fire on order confirmation, not on draft creation.
Ignoring error handling and retry logic: Integration failures happen. Plan for what happens when a sync fails: does the order queue and retry, or does it drop silently? Build alerting and a retry mechanism before going live.
No data reconciliation process: Plan for periodic reconciliation between Epicor and Shopify inventory, especially after go-live. Discrepancies will occur and catching them early prevents them from compounding.
Confirm B2B API support if you're on Shopify Plus: ask any provider to confirm compatibility with companies, company locations, catalogs, and payment terms
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