With leaps and bounds in its emergence, Magento is a world-class platform for an e-commerce site, which has left no stone unturned to come up with the latest features, community-bases and updates. No wonder, the most celebrated organizations are up, using it prolifically.
But as of necessities, Magento is not said to be a complete system and it generally requires other subsystems for tasks that it is not programmed for. For instance, if you run an e-commerce store on Magento, you would almost mandatorily need some third-party plug-ins or connectors such as:
- Accounting systems such as QuickBooks
- Point of Sale (POS) system such as Lightspeed Retail
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system such as MS Dynamics NAV
- Shipping systems
- Tax Management System etc.
And for all these to be integrated well, you need the assistance of expert magento website designers to serve the purpose.
However, do you ever consider that just the connection of these third-party systems on your magento store is not enough? In fact, important is the smooth running of these systems, with a proper flow of information, so that no junk data is created which requires manual correction.
For this, here are a few key elements which you should keep track of while connecting the third-party plug-ins with your magento store :
Document Number:
One of the major concerns is to connect Magento with the back-office systems, as both these- Magento and the Back Office Systems, possess their own document number. These include legal documents such as Invoice, sales order, shipment and Credit Memo etc.
As an alternative, you could choose an option from the following :
- Use magento’s document number and this is to be maintained in back office systems as well
- Use back office system document number and in this you need to hide magento’s document number
Document Type:
This too is a major concern and is related to many factors. Magento entails document types such as Credit Memo, Invoice, Sales Order and Shipment etc, but the third party systems may have other documents such as Sales Order, Reserve Invoice, Delivery and Down payment invoice etc.
For efficient performance, you need to look at the type of documents and follow best practices to ensure integrity.
Online Payment:
For online payment, it is essential to offer multiple alternatives. Some of the best practices involved in this are as follows :
- Make use of payment gateways for magneto, in order to execute pre-authorization of credit cards.
- Keep track of credit card info in magento and transfer the information to the back office system
Shipment Formalities:
Magento makes use of single entity for shipping cost and shipping type. In comparison, the back office systems may also use a duo of entities, including freight charges and shipment methods.
While integrating the third-party system, you need to keep track of these minute details for no discrepancies in the shipment methods.
Magento development and integration of the third-party system requires some essential considerations as aforementioned. Ensure to keep track of all the details, so that you magento store runs utmost smooth, even when there are a number of plug-ins integrated to it.