How to Integrate BigCommerce With an ERP

steve-7 Oct 13, 2026 | 2 Views

Information Technology

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As an online store grows, managing orders, inventory, customers, fulfillment, and financial data across separate systems becomes increasingly difficult.

Employees may re-enter the same information in multiple applications. Inventory quantities can become inconsistent. Orders may take longer to reach fulfillment teams, while finance departments spend additional time reconciling transactions.

Integrating BigCommerce with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can reduce many of these problems by allowing information to move between the storefront and the systems responsible for inventory, purchasing, finance, and fulfillment.

But successful ERP integration involves more than connecting two APIs.

Businesses need to decide which system owns each type of information, how data should be translated between platforms, what happens when a transaction fails, and how the integration will be monitored and supported after launch.

Getting these decisions right is what turns a basic system connection into a reliable business integration.

Why ERP Integration Matters

BigCommerce typically manages the customer-facing commerce experience, while an ERP may manage areas such as inventory, purchasing, accounting, order processing, and fulfillment.

When these systems operate independently, people or separate processes must fill the gaps between them.

An employee might need to enter an online order into the ERP manually. Inventory quantities may need to be updated in several systems. Shipment information might need to be copied back into the storefront, while finance teams reconcile transactions separately.

These manual steps become increasingly difficult to manage as order volumes grow.

Integration allows appropriate information to move automatically between systems. Orders can enter the ERP for processing, inventory changes can be reflected in the storefront, and shipment information can return to the commerce platform.

The objective is not simply to automate data transfer. It is to keep the systems involved in ecommerce operations consistent enough for the business process to run reliably.

Decide Which System Owns Each Type of Data

One of the most important integration decisions should be made before development begins: which system is responsible for each type of information?

It is often described as defining the system of record or source of truth.

The answer does not need to be the same for every data domain.

For example, the commerce platform may originate online orders, while the ERP controls available inventory. A product information management system may own detailed product descriptions and attributes, while another application manages shipping or tax information.

Customer information can be more complicated because different systems may legitimately own different parts of the customer record.

The important point is to avoid allowing several systems to update the same information without clearly defined rules.

Before development begins, teams should establish ownership for important information such as:

Orders
Products and SKUs
Product attributes
Inventory
Pricing
Customer information
Addresses
Tax information
Payment status
Fulfillment status
Shipment and tracking information
Returns
Refunds

In some cases, ownership may need to be defined at the individual field level rather than for an entire record.

Clear ownership reduces conflicts and makes it easier to determine which system should prevail when information differs.

Map the Data Before Building the Integration

Two systems rarely represent business information in exactly the same way.

A product, customer, order, or shipment may contain different fields, identifiers, status values, and relationships in BigCommerce and the ERP.

This means integration requires more than moving data from one endpoint to another.

Teams need to define how information in one system corresponds to information in the other.

Data mapping may need to address:

Product SKUs and variants
Customer identifiers
Billing and shipping addresses
Warehouse identifiers
Units of measure
Order statuses
Shipping methods
Payment methods
Discounts
Tax information
Currencies
Price lists
Returns and refunds

Some values may need to be transformed before the receiving system can use them.

For example, one system may identify a shipping method using a descriptive name while another expects an internal code. Order statuses may also differ between platforms.

These differences should be documented before development rather than discovered one by one after transactions begin failing.

Data quality should also be reviewed at this stage. Duplicate SKUs, missing identifiers, inconsistent customer records, or incomplete product information can create integration problems regardless of how well the technical connection is built.

How Order Integration Works

Order integration is often one of the first workflows businesses implement because it can eliminate a significant amount of manual processing.

A typical integration may detect a new eligible order in BigCommerce and pass the required information to an integration layer or directly to the ERP.

Before creating the corresponding ERP transaction, the integration may validate important information such as customer details, products, quantities, addresses, payment status, or other required fields.

The ERP can then process the sales order according to the organization’s normal business rules.

As fulfillment progresses, relevant information such as shipment status and tracking details can be returned to the commerce platform.

The exact workflow varies between businesses.

Payment processing, fraud review, inventory reservation, tax calculation, warehouse routing, invoicing, and fulfillment may occur at different stages depending on the systems involved.

For this reason, businesses should document their actual order process before deciding how the integration should behave.

Use Webhooks and Scheduled Checks Appropriately

Some information needs to move between systems quickly, while other information can be synchronized periodically.

Webhooks can be useful when another system needs to react to an event, such as the creation or modification of an order.

Scheduled API requests may be appropriate for other types of synchronization or where an event-based mechanism is not available.

These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

An integration may use event-driven processing for day-to-day transactions while also running scheduled checks to confirm that important records remain synchronized.

This can be valuable because even a well-designed integration can experience temporary outages, missed events, authentication problems, or other interruptions.

The synchronization approach should therefore be based on the operational needs of the business rather than an arbitrary interval applied to every type of data.

Keep Inventory Accurate Across Systems

Inventory synchronization is particularly important because discrepancies can affect what customers are able to purchase.

If the storefront shows more stock than is actually available, customers may place orders that cannot be fulfilled. If it shows less inventory than the business actually has, potential sales may be lost.

The appropriate synchronization frequency depends on the business.

Stores with high order volumes, limited quantities, several sales channels, or fast-moving products may require inventory updates more frequently than businesses with slower-moving stock and larger buffers.

API limitations, ERP processing capacity, warehouse systems, and other operational requirements also influence the design.

Businesses operating several warehouses need an additional decision: how should inventory from different fulfillment locations be represented to the storefront?

Available inventory may also be affected by more than physical stock on a shelf.

Depending on the business rules, calculations may need to consider reservations, backorders, damaged stock, returns, safety quantities, and incoming inventory.

The integration should therefore have a clearly defined meaning for the inventory quantity it publishes rather than simply transferring whatever number happens to exist in one system.

Prevent Duplicate Transactions

Reliable integrations need to assume that messages may occasionally be delivered or processed more than once.

For example, an order could be successfully created in the ERP but the confirmation back to the integration fails. If the transaction is retried without checking what already happened, the same order could potentially be created again.

Integrations should therefore be designed so that retries do not automatically create duplicate business transactions.

A common approach is to retain and check unique identifiers associated with the original transaction before creating another record.

The exact technical implementation varies, but the business objective is straightforward: the same ecommerce event should not accidentally create multiple orders, refunds, shipments, or other transactions simply because processing was retried.

Duplicate prevention should be considered during the original integration design rather than added only after the first production incident.

Plan for Exceptions and Failed Transactions

A successful integration is not one in which transactions never fail.

Failures will occur.

The more important question is whether the business can identify, understand, and recover from them.

An order might fail because a SKU does not exist in the ERP. A customer mapping may be missing. An address may not pass validation. The ERP could be temporarily unavailable, an API request might time out, or authentication credentials could fail.

Choose the Right Integration Approach

There are several ways to connect BigCommerce with an ERP. The appropriate approach depends on the systems involved, the complexity of the workflows, and the level of control the business requires.

Pre-Built Connectors

A pre-built connector can provide a relatively straightforward route when its supported workflows closely match the business requirements.

This can reduce initial development effort because common integrations and mappings may already be available.

However, businesses should evaluate what the connector actually supports rather than assuming that compatibility between two platforms means every required workflow is covered.

Complex pricing, unusual fulfillment rules, extensive ERP customization, or specialized data requirements may expose limitations.

Middleware and iPaaS

Integration platforms can sit between BigCommerce, the ERP, and other applications.

They may provide capabilities for data mapping, workflow orchestration, transformation, scheduling, monitoring, and error handling.

This approach can be particularly useful when the ecommerce process involves several systems rather than a simple point-to-point connection.

It can also reduce the amount of custom integration infrastructure a business needs to build and maintain itself.

Custom API Integration

A custom integration gives organizations greater control over how their specific workflows and data models are handled.

It may be appropriate when standard connectors cannot support important business rules, performance requirements, system customizations, or integration patterns.

However, custom development also creates long-term responsibilities.

The organization must maintain the integration, monitor it, test changes, respond to API updates, manage security, and support production failures.

Custom does not automatically mean better. The appropriate solution is the least complicated architecture that can reliably support the business requirements.

Different ERPs Create Different Integration Requirements

The ERP itself can significantly influence integration design.

Platforms such as SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Odoo, and Acumatica differ in their data models, APIs, authentication methods, transaction structures, customization capabilities, and deployment options.

Even two companies using the same ERP may have very different integration requirements because one may operate largely with standard functionality while the other has extensive customizations.

Instead of choosing an integration architecture based only on the ERP’s name, teams should examine the actual environment.

Important questions include:

Which APIs or integration interfaces are available?
How is authentication handled?
What custom fields or workflows exist?
How are products and customers identified?
How are sales orders represented?
How is inventory managed?
Are there API or processing constraints?
What test environments are available?
How will failures be monitored?
How are changes managed?

These details have a greater effect on implementation than a generic assumption about how a particular ERP normally works.

Secure the Integration

An ecommerce-to-ERP integration can handle commercially sensitive and customer-related information, so security should be part of the design from the beginning.

Connections should use the authentication mechanisms supported by the relevant systems, and credentials should be stored securely rather than embedded in source code or exposed in configuration files.

Access should follow the principle of least privilege. An integration account should have the permissions required to perform its intended functions without receiving unnecessary access to unrelated systems or information.

Teams should also consider credential rotation, encryption in transit, access logging, and the information written to application or diagnostic logs.

Logs are valuable for troubleshooting, but they should not unnecessarily expose sensitive customer, payment, authentication, or business information.

Security requirements should reflect the types of information being processed and the organization’s broader security and compliance obligations.

Test More Than the Happy Path

Testing a successful standard order is necessary, but it is not enough.

Production systems encounter cancellations, returns, partial shipments, unavailable products, API failures, duplicate events, and many other conditions that do not appear in a basic demonstration.

Testing should reflect the workflows the business expects to encounter.

Depending on the implementation, scenarios may include:

Standard orders
Multiple-product orders
Discounts and promotions
Tax calculations
Different payment methods
Cancellations
Partial fulfillment
Backorders
Returns
Refunds
Inventory adjustments
Failed API requests
Duplicate events
Invalid data
Temporary ERP outages
Multi-location fulfillment

Failure and recovery scenarios are especially important.

If an ERP is unavailable temporarily, the team should know what happens to new orders, how they are retained, how processing resumes, and how the business confirms that nothing was lost.

Testing should therefore verify not only that the integration works when every system is available, but also that it fails safely and can recover predictably.

Monitor the Integration After Launch

An integration becomes part of the operational infrastructure of the ecommerce business once it enters production.

Monitoring should therefore continue after the initial launch period.

Teams need visibility into whether transactions are being processed successfully and whether failures or delays are increasing.

Depending on the architecture, useful operational information may include successful and failed transactions, processing delays, retry volumes, queue backlogs, API errors, authentication failures, and inventory discrepancies.

Logs remain useful for investigating individual failures, but monitoring should also help teams recognize broader patterns.

For example, a gradual increase in processing time may indicate a problem even if transactions have not yet begun failing completely.

Monitoring should be designed around the business processes that depend on the integration, not simply around whether the integration service itself is technically running.

Reconcile Important Data Regularly

Monitoring individual transactions does not guarantee that two systems remain completely synchronized.

Temporary outages, missed events, software defects, manual changes, and other problems can create differences that are not immediately obvious.

Periodic reconciliation provides another layer of protection.

A business may compare important records across systems to confirm that expected transactions were received and processed.

Depending on the integration, reconciliation may examine areas such as:

Ecommerce orders compared with ERP sales orders
Shipment status
Inventory quantities
Returns
Refund status

The appropriate frequency and scope depend on how critical the information is to the business.

Reconciliation is especially valuable because it can identify discrepancies even when neither system reports an obvious technical failure.

Plan for Outages and Recovery

Businesses should assume that one of the connected systems will eventually become temporarily unavailable.

An ERP may be offline for maintenance. An API can experience an outage. Authentication may fail, or network connectivity may be interrupted.

The integration should have a defined response.

Depending on the architecture, transactions may need to be queued until the receiving system becomes available. Temporary failures may be retried, while persistent problems should trigger alerts.

The system should also avoid losing transactions or processing them incorrectly when service resumes.

After a significant outage, reconciliation may be necessary to confirm that all expected orders, inventory updates, shipments, or other important transactions were processed.

Recovery planning is particularly important for businesses where ecommerce continues accepting orders even when back-office systems are temporarily unavailable.

Define Ownership and Support Before Go-Live

An integration should not become ownerless after development is complete.

Before launch, the business should establish who is responsible for the integration and what happens when a production problem occurs.

Technical ownership may sit with an internal engineering team, integration team, platform team, or another responsible group.

Business ownership is also important because some failures require decisions that cannot be made by developers alone.

For example, a failed order may need someone to determine whether it should be reprocessed, cancelled, corrected, or handled manually.

Teams should establish:

Technical ownership
Business ownership
Monitoring responsibility
Alert recipients
Support procedures
Escalation paths
Documentation
Change management
Recovery procedures

The integration should be treated as an operational system that requires ongoing maintenance rather than as a one-time development project.

Common BigCommerce ERP Integration Mistakes

One common mistake is beginning development before deciding which system owns each type of data. This often leads to conflicts when several applications attempt to update the same information.

Another is assuming that matching field names means the data models are compatible. Differences in identifiers, statuses, units, pricing, and transaction structures often require explicit transformation rules.

Businesses can also underestimate exception handling. An integration that works perfectly for ordinary orders may become highly manual once cancellations, partial shipments, backorders, returns, and API failures occur.

Choosing technology too early creates another problem. A connector, middleware platform, or custom integration should be selected after the requirements are understood, not before.

Other common mistakes include insufficient testing, weak monitoring, missing duplicate protection, insecure credentials, and failing to plan for outages.

Finally, businesses sometimes treat launch as the end of the integration project.

APIs change, ERP configurations evolve, business processes are updated, order volumes grow, and new sales channels are introduced. Integration architecture needs ongoing ownership if it is expected to remain reliable.

Final Thoughts

Integrating BigCommerce with an ERP can reduce manual data entry, improve inventory consistency, accelerate order processing, and give different parts of the business access to more consistent information.

But reliable integration requires more than moving orders from one platform to another.

Businesses need to establish data ownership, map information carefully, handle exceptions, prevent duplicate transactions, secure the connection, test failure scenarios, monitor production activity, reconcile important records, and prepare for outages.

The choice between a pre-built connector, middleware platform, and custom integration should follow the actual business requirements rather than assumptions about which technology is more advanced.

Most importantly, the integration needs an owner after it goes live.

When these operational considerations are addressed from the beginning, BigCommerce and ERP systems can work together as part of a more reliable ecommerce operation rather than becoming another collection of disconnected applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is BigCommerce ERP Integration?

BigCommerce ERP integration connects an ecommerce storefront with an enterprise resource planning system so that appropriate information such as orders, inventory, customers, fulfillment updates, returns, and financial data can move between the systems.

The exact information exchanged depends on the business processes and which system is responsible for each type of data.

How Long Does BigCommerce ERP Integration Take?

There is no reliable universal implementation timeline.

The time required depends on factors such as the ERP platform, existing customizations, number of workflows, data quality, integration method, testing requirements, security reviews, available environments, and the number of systems involved.

A relatively standard connector implementation may require considerably less effort than a custom integration involving complex pricing, multiple warehouses, specialized fulfillment rules, or extensive ERP customization.

The implementation should therefore be estimated after the required workflows and dependencies have been documented.

Can BigCommerce Integrate With SAP?

BigCommerce can be integrated with SAP environments, but the appropriate architecture depends on the specific SAP product, configuration, available integration interfaces, surrounding systems, and business requirements.

Organizations should evaluate the actual SAP environment rather than assuming that one integration method applies to every SAP implementation.

How Often Should Inventory Be Synchronized?

There is no single synchronization interval that works for every ecommerce business.

The appropriate frequency depends on order velocity, available stock, overselling risk, number of sales channels, warehouse structure, ERP processing capacity, API constraints, and other operational requirements.

Businesses with fast-moving or limited inventory may require more frequent updates than businesses with larger quantities and slower transaction volumes.

Should I Use a Connector or Custom Integration?

A pre-built connector can be a good choice when its supported workflows closely match the business requirements.

Middleware can provide additional flexibility when several systems, transformations, or workflows need to be coordinated.

Custom integration may be appropriate when standard options cannot support important business rules, data structures, performance requirements, or system customizations.

The decision should be based on functional requirements and long-term maintenance responsibilities rather than assuming that a custom solution is automatically superior.