Ecommerce ERP Integration in Australia, With GST Right on Every Order and Refund

It is the link that lets your online store and your back office share records without anyone retyping them. Products, prices and stock levels go out to the store and to marketplaces. Orders, customers, payouts, refunds and the GST on each of them come back into Xero, MYOB, NetSuite, Cin7, Unleashed or Odoo. ERP stands for enterprise resource planning, the software that runs stock, purchasing and accounts in one place.

A Brisbane shopper buys two items on your Shopify store, one taxable and one GST-free. The order lands in Cin7 as a sale, Cin7 drops stock by two and pushes the new count back to Shopify. Overnight, the day’s Shopify payout posts to Xero as one summary with sales, card fees and GST split by tax code. When the shopper returns one item, the refund carries the same tax code back.

Xero is accounting software. It keeps your ledger, invoices, bank feeds and BAS, and it tracks simple inventory. Xero’s developer guide recommends a maximum of 4,000 tracked inventory items per organisation. Once you run several warehouses, assemblies, purchase orders or more SKUs than that, most stores add an inventory system such as Cin7 or Unleashed beside Xero, or move to a full ERP such as NetSuite or Odoo.

No. A CRM (customer relationship management system) tracks leads, contacts and sales conversations. An ERP tracks what you buy, make, hold and sell, plus the money behind it. For a store the ERP is usually the system that owns stock and trade prices, while a CRM such as HubSpot holds the marketing history. The two often share customer records through a link of their own.

The same rules apply to Shopify GST and WooCommerce GST. Every product needs a tax code that matches the one in your books: GST on income for taxable lines, GST-free for exempt lines, and a clear rule for shipping charges that your accountant approves. We map each store tax setting to a ledger tax code before the first sync, then test carts that mix taxable, GST-free and discounted lines.

A refund should reverse the exact GST charged on the original line, at the rate and code used that day. We post refunds against the same tax code as the sale, and a partial refund reverses only the GST on the items sent back. The ATO says you need a valid adjustment note before you can make a decreasing adjustment, unless the adjustment is for GST of $75 or less. For trade customers, the ERP should issue that note automatically when a credit is raised.

Only when the customer asks, and then fast. The ATO says that if a customer asks for a tax invoice you must provide one within 28 days, unless the sale is $82.50 or less including GST. Sales of $1,000 or more must also show the buyer’s identity or ABN. We make the order email or the ERP invoice carry every required detail, so a trade buyer’s request never needs manual work.

Rounding. The ATO allows two rounding rules on an invoice with several taxable lines: round once on the invoice total, or round each line and then the total. Stores and accounting tools do not always pick the same one, so a cart of ten lines can differ by a few cents. We choose one rule, set both systems to match where they allow it, and post any leftover cent to a rounding account.

Only if your trade buyers ask for it. The ATO says Australia has adopted the Peppol framework as its common eInvoicing standard and network. If they do, the job on our side is making sure wholesale orders reach your ERP complete, with ABN, purchase order number and tax per line.

For most retail stores, a summary per payout. Xero’s developer guide says Xero is designed for volumes of up to 5,000 sales invoices a month. A store taking 300 orders a day passes that in under three weeks (300 × 17 = 5,100). Summary apps such as A2X post one entry per payout, split by taxed and GST-free sales. Trade orders, where the buyer needs a tax invoice, still go in one by one.

Yes, through apps or a custom link, and the setup matters more than the app. The common routes are a payout summary app such as A2X, an inventory system such as Cin7 or Unleashed that posts to Xero for you, or a custom link when your rules do not fit either. Before anything syncs, decide whether orders go in one by one or as summaries, and agree tax codes and clearing accounts with your bookkeeper.

Shopify Xero integration in Australia ↗

Yes. MYOB’s own support page connects Shopify to MYOB Business through Amaka. It says sales can sync as one summarised invoice or separate invoices, and that bills are created automatically for third-party fees. Syncs run once a day, and MYOB Business Lite users need to upgrade to see the sales orders. For MYOB Acumatica or AccountRight files, or rules Amaka cannot express, we build or configure a different route.

Cin7, if you run it. Cin7 Core’s help centre says stock levels are always pushed from Cin7 Core to Shopify, never the other way, and that a push happens on every stock change, from a sale fulfilment to a purchase order receipt or a return. That makes Shopify a copy. Anyone who edits stock in Shopify directly will be overwritten, so we lock that down for staff during setup.

Through Unleashed’s own Shopify integration. Unleashed’s support guide says stock syncs from Unleashed to Shopify at intervals you configure, and that each Shopify variant needs a unique SKU matching the Unleashed product code. So the first job is a SKU audit: duplicates and blank SKUs in Shopify are the usual reason a sync fails. Unleashed then passes stock movements for sales on to your accounting system.

Yes. Oracle NetSuite publishes a NetSuite ERP Connector on the Shopify App Store, and Odoo has its own Shopify Connector. We work with either or build a custom link. Odoo’s documentation says its Shopify Connector pulls orders every 10 minutes by default and pushes stock to Shopify after each pull. That suits most catalogues, but a flash sale on fast stock may need a shorter cycle. For NetSuite we choose between Oracle’s connector, an integration platform or custom code based on your order volume and pricing rules.

NetSuite AI agents in Australia ↗

Yes, and they should. Orders from Amazon.com.au, eBay, Kogan and Bunnings Marketplace draw from the same stock count as your store, or you oversell. Each marketplace order comes into the ERP tagged by channel, so margin reports show what Amazon or Bunnings Marketplace sales cost you after fees. Each marketplace pays out separately, so each one gets its own clearing account in Xero or MYOB. An Amazon Xero integration or an eBay Xero integration works the same way: each settlement posts to that marketplace’s clearing account, with fees split out. We set the channel rules in your ERP or inventory system rather than in each marketplace.

Amazon agency Australia: Amazon stock fed from your ERP ↗

Payment providers usually deposit sales net of their fees and refunds, often covering several days of orders, so a deposit rarely equals one day of sales. We give Shopify Payments, Stripe, Afterpay, Zip and PayPal a clearing account each. Sales post into the clearing account gross, fees and refunds come out of it, and the deposit clears it to zero. If a clearing account is not zero at month end, something is missing.

Published Australian ranges are wide. Exodigital puts typical integrations at AUD $5,000 to $40,000 each, and AUD $4,000 to $15,000 for a Shopify or WooCommerce link. Insiteful puts a custom Shopify and ERP build at AUD $25,000 to $80,000 and NetSuite implementation consulting at AUD $50,000 to $250,000. Neither says whether GST is included. FactoryJet quotes a fixed price per phase in writing after a scoping call.

A connector is enough when it moves each record in the direction your owner map says, syncs often enough for your stock, handles your tax codes and fits your order volume. Custom wins when one of those fails: trade price lists the connector cannot read, bundles that must split into components, several warehouses with allocation rules, or marketplaces the connector does not support. Often the answer is a connector plus one small custom piece.

Four kinds of team, and many projects mix them. The system makers publish their own connectors: Cin7, Unleashed and Odoo each document a Shopify integration, and Oracle NetSuite lists one on the Shopify App Store. App makers such as A2X and Amaka sell ready-made links to Xero or MYOB. Firms such as Exodigital and Insiteful publish Australian price ranges for this work. Development teams like ours set up a connector or write a custom link when the rules do not fit.

Plan backwards from a BAS quarter. Going live on the first day of a quarter keeps each BAS inside one setup, so the build and testing need to finish before then. Clean-up sets most of the pace: duplicate SKUs, products with no GST setting and tax codes nobody uses any more. Before go-live we replay past weeks of real orders and check the GST totals against the BAS you already lodged. The written timeline follows the signed owner map.

Yes, and that is the test we suggest. Pick the awkward cases from your own catalogue: a cart with a GST-free item next to a taxable one, a discount code, an Afterpay order, a partial refund. We run them through a test copy of your books and your bookkeeper reads the tax code on every line it posts. No contract is signed until those lines look right to them.

Yes, through the form on this page. The most useful Australian brief names the tax codes you use today, whether you lodge BAS monthly or quarterly, every marketplace you sell on, and each payment provider, including Afterpay and Zip. Add a recent payout statement and one month of exported orders if you can. Those let us spot the GST and clearing account problems before a call.

Yes, whether you are moving from Xero to NetSuite or from MYOB to Cin7. The store keeps posting to the old system while the new one is set up, so sales and GST keep reaching the books. We rewrite the owner map for the new system, build the link against a sandbox, replay real orders through it, and switch over on a quiet day at the start of a BAS period so each quarter sits in one system.

We do, if you want us to. Defects found after launch are fixed inside the build price for a cover period agreed before work starts. After that, support is optional, with no monthly minimum: each change is quoted and approved first. The code, the documentation and every account stay in your name, so another team or your own staff can take over at any point.

Store and website care in Australia ↗