How do I integrate my WooCommerce store with Shipvine?

How do I integrate my WooCommerce store with Shipvine?

Shipvine has integrated with the WooCommerce plugin for Wordpress as a third-party logistics provider (3PL). When the integration is set up, you'll be able to transmit orders to Shipvine for fulfillment by updating them to the "processing" status in WooCommerce. When Shipvine has shipped an order, we'll mark the order as "completed" and add a note to the order containing the service name and tracking number. (If you have the Shipment Tracking extension from WooCommerce installed, we'll also create the appropriate tracking object there, too.) Optionally, you'll be able to sync our inventory counts, overwriting your WooCommerce catalog quantities with values that appear in Shipvine Logistics. This integration uses the built-in Wordpress and WooCommerce REST APIs.

Before making the connections

Verify minimum requirements

To use the integration with Shipvine Sync, your installation must be
  • running Wordpress version 4.4 or later;
  • running WooCommerce version 2.6 or later; and
  • if using the WooCommerce Shipment Tracking extension, running the extension at version 1.5 or later.
Additionally,
  • pretty permalinks in Settings > Permalinks must be enabled (which requires the use of mod_rewrite); and
  • an HTTPS connection must be supported by your web server.
Verifying SKUs

This synchronization relies on the SKUs of the products/items matching between systems. WooCommerce is unique in that the SKU field can be left blank and that the same SKU can be reused for multiple products and variants within WooCommerce. Shipvine (and most other 3PLs) doesn't allow this. For inventory to successfully sync and for orders to successfully flow between the two systems,
  • each product and variation in WooCommerce should have a SKU that matches the Merchant Identifier for the item in the Shipvine Logistics catalog , and
  • each SKU must uniquely identify a single product or variation within WooCommerce.
If a SKU for a given product is wrong or incorrectly duplicated, Shipvine may ship the wrong item to the customer or update inventory counts for the wrong product. The SKU is the most critical piece of information shared between the two systems—each one for products that you intend Shipvine to ship must be consistent and correct.

Making the WooCommerce connection

Creating an API key

The Shipvine integration with WooCommerce uses the REST API. We'll need to configure an API key for the Shipvine Sync system to access your data.
  1. Log in to your Wordpress admin panel, and click the "WooCommerce" option on the left sidebar.
  2. Click the "Settings" menu item.
  3. Click the "API" tab.
  4. Ensure that "Enable the REST API" is checked.
  5. Under the row of tabs, click the "Keys/Apps" link.
  6. Click the "Add Key" button.
  7. For "Description", type "Shipvine".
  8. For "User", select the user account that you'd like us to impersonate.
  9. For "Permissions", select "Read/Write".
  10. Click "Generate API Key".
  11. Copy the "Consumer Key" and "Consumer Secret" fields into a safe place. We'll need to refer to these later on.
Making the Shipvine connection

During initial setup, it's sufficient to e-mail your setup information to your Shipvine account representative, who can complete the setup in Shipvine Sync for you. We'll need
  • The host name of your Wordpress installation, such as "https://www.example.com/".
  • The "Consumer Key" that you created for the REST API.
  • The "Consumer Secret" that you created for the REST API.
Once you've e-mailed that to us, you can stop here. But if you'd like to do it yourself, then you can continue with the instructions in this section.

The system that will be accessing your WooCommerce store is a system called Shipvine Sync. It's a system that shuffles data back and forth between various e-commerce platforms (like Shopify, Stitch Labs, or in your case, WooCommerce) and the Shipvine Logistics platform (which is where the fulfillment magic happens). After the setup is complete, you'll never interact with Shipvine Sync again, so don't be scared by its interface!

To make the initial connection,
  1. Go to https://sync.shipvine.com/ and log in with your Shipvine user name and password.
  2. In the black bar at the top of the screen, click Configuration > Endpoints.
  3. At the bottom of the screen, choose "WooCommerce" from the "Create new endpoint at" dropdown, and press the blue "Go" button.
  4. Under the General section, select your name from the Client dropdown.
  5. In the Properties table, fill in all of the fields. Set "Host Name" to the address of your store, like "www.example.com". (Don't include the protocol like "https://".) Set "Consumer Key" to the key you created for the REST API, and set "Consumer Secret" to the secret you created for the REST API. Finally, set the "Shipvine Logistics Merchant Code" to the code that was communicated to you by Shipvine Support; it's a short code that identifies your company in our system.
  6. Then click the blue "Save" button.

Configuring Shipvine Sync.

Configuring shipping method speeds

The only piece of the puzzle left is mapping the shipping methods in WooCommerce to ones that Shipvine Logistics will understand. Since everyone's WooCommerce store varies in this regard a little bit, nothing is mapped by default.

Shipvine Sync will see the shipping method as the human-friendly name in WooCommerce. For example, common default shipping methods are "Flat Rate" or "Free Shipping".

Setting up the mapping requires a little technical configuration on the Shipvine side, so just let us know what you're aiming for before going live.

Familiarizing yourself with the integration

Once the connection is made, Shipvine Sync will begin interacting with WooCommerce within the hour.

Synchronizing Inventory

Items that you've created in the Shipvine Logistics catalog will synchronize inventory with WooCommerce whenever they are updated at Shipvine, as long as the SKU entered in WooCommerce matches the Merchant Identifier for the item in the Shipvine Logistics catalog.

The job by default runs once per evening. We don't recommend running it frequently as this can cause synchronization problems during high-volume sale events.

You can control the frequency of the synchronization or manually trigger a synchronization by interacting with Shipvine Sync. To trigger a manual inventory sync,
  1. Go to https://sync.shipvine.com/ and log in with your Shipvine user name and password.
  2. In the black bar at the top of the screen, click Configuration > Endpoints.
  3. Click the "View" button for the row corresponding to the "WooCommerce" endpoint.
  4. In the "Actions" section at the bottom of the screen, click the "Tasks" button.
  5. Click the "View" button for the row corresponding to "Push Inventory Snapshots".
  6. In the "Actions" section at the bottom of the screen, click the "Execute" button. Then confirm the action by clicking "Execute" again.
Synchronizing orders

Your orders will flow to Shipvine when they are set to the "processing" status in WooCommerce. A typical Shipvine Sync configuration runs on a 15-minute cycle, so there could be a delay of up to 30 minutes between changing the status in WooCommerce and seeing the order appears a fulfillment request or candidate request in Shipvine Logistics.

Synchronizing shipments

Your orders will be updated with shipment information once Shipvine has finished processing them. In a default WooCommerce installation, this means the order status will be flipped to "completed", and we'll add an order note to the backend so that you can refer to the tracking number.


Order note containing tracking information.

If you have the Shipment Tracking extension from WooCommerce installed, let us know so we can configure the integration to use that functionality.

If you modified the copy of the order in Shipvine Sync or Shipvine Logistics, then those changes won't be automatically reflected in the WooCommerce copy of the order. The synchronization is only able to mark the entire order as "completed", regardless of what was actually shipped within Shipvine Logistics.

Shipvine can optionally send a shipment confirmation e-mail with your logo and tracking number to the customer; just contact us if you'd like us to enable this feature for your integration.


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