Modern Retail POS Integration Guide
1 Purpose and scope
This guide explains how a POS or ERP company can integrate with Modern Retail to connect its retailers to Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Unilog, and Elastic Path. It is intended for the business, product, engineering, and implementation teams deciding what to build, how data should move, and how the finished integration will operate.
Modern Retail connects the POS to the commerce platform and provides a consistent integration model for products, inventory, pricing, transactions, and customer identity. The objective is to build a reusable POS connection that can serve multiple retailers and supported commerce platforms, with configuration and additional development where particular workflows require them.
There are four practical approaches:
POS provider API: Modern Retail calls the provider's API to retrieve data and submit transactions through supported operations.
Modern Retail API: The provider calls Modern Retail's API to send updates, retrieve transactions, and confirm processing.
File exchange: The systems exchange scheduled files, normally through SFTP, with agreed import, export, and confirmation processes.
Hybrid: Different data flows use different interfaces, such as files for the initial catalog and APIs for ongoing updates and transactions.
The best approach is the one that supports the retailer's required workflow, uses dependable capabilities on both sides, and has clear development and operating ownership. An API is useful only when it exposes the operations the integration actually needs. A reliable file process can be a sound integration when its timing and controls meet the business requirement.
The common foundation consists of products, transactions, and customer identity. Products include selection, stable identifiers, prices, and available inventory. Transactions include the required sale or order representation, returns, and processing confirmation. Customer identity connects the online shopper to the correct POS customer record.
Completed sales are typical for B2C transactions paid online. Open orders are often needed for B2B and for workflows in which the POS controls work before completion. The choice must follow the business process. It is separate from the choice of API or file transport.
Platform coverage
The platforms covered by this guide are:
Shopify
BigCommerce
WooCommerce
Magento
Unilog
Elastic Path
The existence of a platform connection does not mean that every module, product type, fulfillment action, or B2B feature is available in every configuration. During discovery, Modern Retail and the provider must agree on the capabilities needed for the selected platform and retailer.
How to use this guide
Core requirements describe the common integration behavior. Implementation decisions identify choices to settle for a particular POS and retailer. Recommended controls describe practices for reliable delivery and recovery; they are not assertions that a particular API already supplies those mechanisms.
Business field names in this guide describe the information to exchange. The implementation specification must separately define exact endpoints, file columns, payload properties, validation rules, and supported versions. Use real samples from the selected interfaces before finalizing that specification.
2 Responsibilities and data ownership
The integration crosses three main operating environments: the POS, Modern Retail, and the commerce platform. Retailer decisions determine how those environments work together.
Participant | Primary responsibility |
|---|---|
Retailer | Select products for online sale, maintain POS data, merchandise the website, approve mappings, and operate fulfillment and customer service. |
POS or ERP provider | Supply reliable product, inventory, price, and customer identities; accept the required transactions; implement the provider side of the chosen interface. |
Modern Retail | Connect and normalize the systems, route data and transactions, preserve cross-system identities, and provide the agreed integration and order management functions. |
Commerce platform and website team | Operate the storefront, merchandising, checkout, and the applicable payment and fulfillment configuration. |
Product and merchandising ownership
The POS is the source of truth for inventory and selling prices. It generally also supplies the product's stable operational identifier and UPC. Modern Retail preserves the relationships among the POS item, its integration record, and the commerce product.
Retailers typically merchandise products directly on the commerce platform. They can improve names and descriptions, organize categories or collections, add images and videos, and decide when products are ready to publish.
Initial product creation and ongoing synchronization therefore have different responsibilities. A basic name or description from the POS may establish the initial record, while subsequent operational updates maintain price and inventory without replacing the retailer's merchandising work.
Data | Typical authority | Integration behavior |
|---|---|---|
Product Integration ID | POS | Preserve the stable identity and return it on transaction lines. |
Available inventory | POS | Send current quantities using agreed location and allocation rules. |
Selling and sale prices | POS | Maintain the agreed online selling prices and promotion changes. |
UPC | Usually POS | Keep separate from the Integration ID and handle approved changes. |
Website content | Retailer in commerce platform | Protect names, descriptions, images, and other merchandising after creation. |
Website navigation | Retailer in commerce platform | Manage categories, collections, menus, and tags in the website process. |
Online transaction amounts | Commerce transaction | Preserve the prices, tax, discounts, and charges on the accepted transaction. |
POS customer ID | POS | Retain the resolved identity for repeat purchases. |
Fulfillment status | System performing fulfillment | Report the actual operational event through the agreed path. |
Any exception to this ownership needs an explicit field mapping. For example, if a retailer wants a specific POS attribute to remain authoritative online, record that decision without making every descriptive field continuously POS owned.
Payment and transaction ownership
For purchases paid online, the commerce platform and its configured payment services handle collection. The POS records that external payment through an agreed tender or equivalent representation without collecting it again.
For account or credit workflows, identify which system owns the customer account, approves credit, records receivables, and applies payments. An open POS order and an externally paid completed sale have different accounting consequences even when they originate from the same website.
Modern Retail normalizes transactions for the POS integration. The provider should not need to reproduce the raw order schema of each platform, although platform-specific business behavior still needs to be reflected in the agreed mapping.