01First steps
Connect Shopify
Installed from the Shopify app store, without copying keys.
Shopify connects by installing Koalab from the Shopify app store, without copying keys or typing your store's address. You can start from Koalab's Channels or from the app store itself: the path is the same.
Open Channels and choose Shopify
Click “Connect a channel”. Shopify is among your own stores and its card says “One click (OAuth)”. Connecting is for the owner or an admin: with another role, the button is off.
Click “Install from Shopify”
The panel asks you for nothing: it says “You chose Shopify” and reminds you that the install happens in Shopify. Click “Install from Shopify” and you land on Koalab's listing in its app store.
Mock-up: the “Connect with Shopify” panel with the “Install from Shopify” button Install and authorize in Shopify
On the listing click “Install”, pick your store if you have several and approve what Koalab asks for: read and write products and inventory, read locations and read orders. Locations are needed to write stock; orders, to tell a sale from a manual edit. Koalab never sees your password.
You come back to Koalab automatically
Shopify sends you back to Koalab's Channels (without a session, you sign in or create your account first) and the store connects to your active organization: you see “Channel connected” —or the reason, if something failed— and the channel in the list. Do it in the same browser, within an hour and as owner or admin. If the store works in another currency than your organization, the channel isn't created and the notice offers “Connect as an independent catalog”; if Koalab can't read the currency, wait a few minutes and try again. With everything in order, Koalab sets your store up to tell it about every change and every sale.
Choose the channel's role
Koalab asks “What role does this channel play?”: “Receives from Koalab”, “This channel leads” or “Independent”. With “Not now”, it shows “Role not chosen” and in the meantime receives from Koalab; you choose it later in Channels, in its settings or in Organization → “Inventory”. To bring in its products, go to Products and click “Import”.
What happens from then on
Shopify reports when a product is edited or deleted, when inventory changes and when an order is created or cancelled. A sale takes stock off on its own and a cancellation puts it back. If it receives from Koalab, what someone changes by hand in the store waits in “Pending approval”. Of the order Koalab only keeps what was sold and how much: not the buyer, their address or the payment.
Details worth knowing
- A sale and a manual edit lower stock the same way. Koalab tells them apart by the order: if there was one for the same product in the previous fifteen minutes, the drop counts as a sale; if not, it's treated as a manual change.
- If you reauthorize the same store —with “Reauthorize”, in its settings—, Koalab updates the channel you already had: it doesn't create another one or take another slot in your plan.
- The channel takes the name your store has in Shopify. You can change it in its settings, “General” tab, “Channel name” field.
- Once you install Koalab from Shopify, your plan is billed through Shopify (see “Plans, trial and billing”); if your organization already paid for its plan in Koalab, it keeps paying the same way. And if you open Koalab from the admin of a store that is already connected, you go straight to Channels.