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Epos Now as master for stock

The Order and Stock syncs work together to ensure stock levels stay in sync across both plaforms.

This page explains how the integration works if you choose Epos Now as your stock master with real world examples.

Epos Now is the source of truth for stock. All stock changes should be made on Epos Now and the integration will update Woo automatically.

  • Stock changes sync from Epos Now to WooCommerce only.
  • Orders and refunds sync from WooCommerce to Epos Now only.
    • If return to stock is ticked on the WooCommerce refund, the items will be added back in to stock on Epos Now
Epos Now master direction
Always manage stock levels in Epos Now

If stock changes are made on WooCommerce, they will get overwritten by the stock level in Epos Now.

How It Works​

Here is a visual guide to how it works at a high level.

Order Management​

WooCommerce​

We recommend using WooCommerce for your fulfilment process. The WooCommerce App for iOS and Android is used by many of our customers to manage their orders in-store without staff needing to login to the WooCommerce admin panel. It also alerts them when an order comes in so that they can process it ASAP.

We recommend retail businesses use this app for order fulfilment.

Epos Now​

When the integration syncs the order from WooCommerce to Epos Now:

Our integration relies on knowing which WooCommerce product links to which Epos Now product so that it can keep stock in sync.

When orders sync from WooCommerce to Epos Now, it checks these links so that it can tell Epos Now exactly which products sold, so that Epos Now can deduct the stock from the correct product.

When you first setup the integration, if you have products on both platforms, you can use our product linker to do the initial matching. If you have the same SKU/Barcode or any other identifier in common on both platforms, then the product linker will be able to find matches for you. It is also really easy to manually link any products where the link cannot be found automatically.

Once the initial matching is done, our product sync takes care of new links automatically when it syncs products.

If you only have products on one platform, you can select that platform as the master platform for products and our integration will sync those products into the other platform for you, no linking needed.

You will not need to use the product linker after the initial setup if the product sync is ON in normal operation. You'll only need to check it if there is an issue with one or more of the existing links and you will be notified.

warning

If there is even one product in the order that is not linked, then the whole order is not able to sync to Epos Now. You will get a notification email and once the link is fixed, the order will be able to sync when the integration automatically retries.

You can always see the current product links on the product linker on our dashboard and you may find this a useful reference: How to use the product linker

Stock Management​

Epos Now is the master for stock so whenever the stock level changes on Epos Now, the integration will sync the stock level to WooCommerce.

Epos Now​

Epos Now allows you to set a stock level per location. Make sure the stock levels are set correctly for the location(s) that are linked to WooCommerce.

WooCommerce​

For any products that require stock control, make sure manage stock is ticked on WooCommerce. For variable products, this should be at the variation level.

If manage stock is not ticked, WooCommerce ignores the stock updates we send to it.

Reference: Enabling Stock Management on WooCommerce

Negative stock levels​

Both WooCommerce and Epos Now allow negative stock levels:

  • WooCommerce treats this as the product being out of stock
  • Epos Now still allows the product to be sold on the till with the logic being that the customer has the product in hand at checkout

Products with no stock tracking​

There may be some products that you do not need to track stock for because they are always in stock. For these products, you can leave manage stock unticked and you can set if they are in or out of stock on WooCommerce manually.

Products where stock is tracked on WooCommerce only​

A good example for products where the stock level is managed only on Woo are drop ship products.

The stock levels for drop ship products are not usually tracked in Epos Now, but the stock levels are managed on WooCommerce directly so manage stock needs to be ticked. This is usually from a product feed the dropshipper provides which then updates the stock levels in WooCommerce. For these products, Epos Now should not update the stock levels.

To achieve this, you can tick the ignore stock update option on the WooCommerce product (or set it via our product linker) and this will make sure we do not send any stock updates for this product to WooCommerce even if manage stock is enabled on that product in WooCommerce.

Product Types​

WooCommerce​

Simple products​

Full support for simple products in WooCommerce.

Variable products​

Full support for variable products in WooCommerce. The Epos Now product links to the variation in WooCommerce.

We recommend leaving manage stock unticked on the top level variable product in WooCommerce as it does not have a stock level so your customers may see it as out of stock until they select a variation.

manage stock should be ticked at the variation level in WooCommerce.

Bundle & Kit products​

Our integration has support for the following official WooCommerce plugins for bundles and kits:

For all of the above, our integration syncs the stock levels for the individual products that make up the bundle/composite/mix-match and the plugins work out the stock availablility at the bundle level.

When these products sell on WooCommerce, the plugins record the individual products that make up the bundle and our integration syncs this to Epos Now so that the correct stock levels are deducted.

Epos Now​

Standard products​

Full support for standard products in Epos Now.

Weighed and measured products​

Full support for weighed and measured products.

You can sell with different units online and instore and our integration handles the conversion. For example, sell per gram in Epos Now and per kilo in WooCommerce and our integration will set the correct stock levels after conversion.

Master and child products​

Our integration has full support for master and child products in Epos Now and automatically calculates the stock level for child products based on the stock levels of the master products they are made up of. For more details on this, have a look at: Master and child products in Epos Now

Customers​

If customer sync is enabled, the integration will try to link the WooCommerce customer to the correct customer in Epos Now when the order syncs.

If customer sync is not enabled, the order is synced against your default sync customer on Epos Now instead.

Customer Types and Discounts​

If you use customer sync and the linked Epos Now customer has a customer type with a discount, Epos Now can apply that discount automatically when the WooCommerce order is created.

To keep the WooCommerce and Epos Now totals aligned, we sync the Epos Now customer types and discount percentages into our database. When the order syncs, we then adjust the prices we send to Epos Now so that the automatic Epos Now customer discount does not reduce the order twice.

This only applies when customer sync is active. If customer sync is off, the order uses your default sync customer instead.

You may also see this reflected in the transaction details on Epos Now, including the Epos Now customer discount percentage and a note that the unit prices were adjusted.

Shipping and Rounding​

When a WooCommerce order includes shipping, we sync that to Epos Now as a product line on the transaction.

For most accounts this uses a dedicated shipping product on Epos Now. Some older accounts may not have this enabled yet. If you would like a dedicated shipping product for your online orders, please contact support and we can enable it for you.

Where needed, we also adjust shipping and item prices to account for any Epos Now customer type discount so that the order total stays correct.

WooCommerce and Epos Now do not always round in exactly the same way, especially when unit prices are split across quantities or discounts are involved. To handle this, we recalculate the order total as part of the sync and, if needed, add a balancing line to keep the Epos Now transaction total aligned with the WooCommerce order total.

Order Printing and KDS​

If you use Epos Now for preparing online orders, the synced WooCommerce orders can feed into your Epos Now order printing and Kitchen Display Screen (KDS) workflows.

Printer and kitchen routing is handled by Epos Now based on your product and category setup.

To make sure new WooCommerce orders reach us as quickly as possible, we recommend having WooCommerce cron running every minute. This helps the webhooks and scheduled actions process quickly so that the order can sync to Epos Now as soon as possible.

For more details, have a look at:

Transaction Details​

Sending transaction details from WooCommerce to Epos Now is an optional setting.

If enabled, useful information from WooCommerce is stored against the transaction in the Epos Now back office.

These transaction details also print on the order prints, which can be useful for fulfilment in-store.

If you need specific information from the WooCommerce order to appear there, our support team can customise the transaction details for your account.

Reporting​

WooCommerce orders sync to Epos Now so that Epos Now contains all sales data for both online and in-store sales. This makes the reporting in Epos Now much more powerful as you see your sales data as a whole across online and in-store.

Orders sync with full price and tax data exactly how it sold on Woo. It does not matter if it sold at a different price or tax rate, the integration syncs it exactly as sold on WooCommerce so that you have accurate sales data in Epos Now.

In the Epos Now reporting, you can see the online orders by filtering for the WooCommerce device or the eCommerce device type. All online orders will also sync to Epos Now with the tender type set as website payment so that is another way that you can filter for online orders.

Taxes​

When the WooCommerce order syncs to Epos Now, the integration checks to see if the online tax rate already exists, and if not, it will create one. All tax rates from WooCommerce will have the WC_ prefix and will contain the tax percentage and the country that it applies to as set in your WooCommerce settings.

For example, if you have the WooCommerce tax rate set as 20% for the UK (country code is GB), then the tax rate name on EN will be WC_20_GB.

Payments​

Payment Gateways​

You are free to use any payment gateway you like on both WooCommerce and Epos Now. We do not provide any payment services.

If you want to use the same payment gateway online and in-store, please speak to your current payment provider (including if you are using Epos Now Payments) to see if they have a payment gateway for WooCommerce too.

For more details have a look at: WooCommerce Payment Gateways

Unpaid order payment methods​

If needed, specific WooCommerce payment methods can be treated as unpaid when the order syncs to Epos Now instead of being completed with the normal website payment tender type.

If you need this for invoice or pay later type payment methods, contact support and we can set it up for you.

Locations​

Single location on Epos Now​

You choose which Epos Now location should be used to fulfill online orders during the onboarding. The integration will sync the Woo orders to that location, and Epos Now will then deduct the stock from that location.

Multiple locations on Epos Now​

If you have multiple locations in Epos Now, you can still select a single location that will be used for the online stock (for example the main store or warehouse location) and in this case this is exactly the same as the single location setup in the section above.

WooCommerce only allows a single global stock level, it does not have a feature for stock level per location and there is no official plugin from WooCommerce that enables this at the time of writing.

If you want to make stock from multiple locations in Epos Now available for sale on WooCommerce, then our integration can sum up the stock levels from the selected locations before syncing it to WooCommerce. WooCommerce will only see the single summed up stock level.

Learn more

For more details on how this works with examples, have a look at: Multi location stock aggregation

If your WooCommerce website allows users to select the location for their order then these orders can be synced to the correct location on Epos Now so that it deducts the stock from the correct location.

If you would like to use this, let our support team know which plugin you are using on WooCommerce for the location selection and we can take a look at the order data and setup the location mapping.