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How it works

One order, from capture to contribution margin.

Nine steps. Four systems. The step numbers below carry a status, because parts of this flow run today and parts are still being built, and you should know which is which before a demo rather than after a contract.

Sales channels

  • Shopify
  • Amazon
  • Walmart (planned)
  • Marketplaces (planned)

TSmartConnect

Orchestration layer

  • Capture
  • Normalize
  • Match
  • Reconcile
  • Sync engine
  • Contribution margin

TSmart Warehouse

System of record for physical inventory

QuickBooks Online

System of record for accounting

Systems of record

Ambiguity here is the main reason buyers misread this category. Each system owns one thing, and no other system may assert it.

System Owns What that means
TSmart Warehouse Physical inventory The count of what is on a shelf. No other system may assert it.
Shopify Sellable inventory distribution What a storefront is allowed to sell, which is a policy result, not a physical count.
TSmartConnect Channels and synchronization Owns no source data. Orchestrates, matches and reports on records other systems own.
QuickBooks Online Accounting The ledger. Financial reporting resolves here, not in the orchestration layer.

The order lifecycle

Told once, in order, with the owner and the status of every step.

  1. 1

    Listing published

    Planned Owner: Provider

    Listings are created and priced in each provider today. Publishing a listing from the orchestration layer is not built.

  2. 2

    Order captured

    Live Owner: Provider

    Orders are read from every connected provider account. Shopify sends signed webhooks and duplicates are discarded on arrival; Amazon is read on a schedule.

  3. 3

    Order normalized

    Live Owner: TSmartConnect

    Provider orders are mapped into one shape with the source record kept, so a marketplace order and a storefront order sit in the same list without losing what the provider actually sent.

  4. 4

    Stock reserved

    Planned Owner: TSmart Warehouse

    Allocation is not built. Stock is reconciled and reported, but no quantity is reserved against an order and none is published back to a sales channel.

  5. 5

    Released to the warehouse

    Planned Owner: TSmart Warehouse

    The service-account link between the two systems exists. Releasing an order across it does not.

  6. 6

    Shipped

    Planned Owner: TSmart Warehouse

    Amazon shipment records are read for visibility. Fulfillment driven from this layer is not built.

  7. 7

    Invoiced

    Planned Owner: QuickBooks Online

    Ledger data is read into this system. Writing back is gated and switched off: the posting path belongs to the warehouse system today, and two systems posting the same invoice is the failure this design exists to prevent.

  8. 8

    Payout reconciled

    In development Owner: QuickBooks Online

    Payouts are available as a read-only cash-movement ledger on a transaction-date basis. Matching a payout against orders needs stored reconciliation state and is not built.

  9. 9

    Contribution computed

    Live Owner: TSmartConnect

    Gross sales, cost of goods and marketplace fees per sales channel on an order-date basis, reported with the share of sales whose cost is known.

Provider, account, storefront

These are three separate things, and collapsing them is what makes most integrations fail on the second store. A provider is the system you integrate with once, such as Shopify. An account is one seller identity on that provider. A storefront is one selling surface belonging to an account.

One Shopify integration serves as many shop domains as you run. One Amazon integration serves as many marketplaces as you sell in. Records are keyed by the connection that produced them, so a second account is a row, not a redeployment.

See the flow against your own accounts.

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