Connecting Ecwid with Katana
Katana is a direct-to-consumer (D2C) manufacturing & inventory management software for small and medium-sized businesses. It is a smart solution to help you track the availability of raw materials and finished goods, calculate operations costs, prioritize orders, and more.
You can connect your store to Katana, so your orders will be transferred from Ecwid to Katana, and you will know what goods need to be manufactured.
Connecting Ecwid store to Katana via Zapier
You can connect your store to Katana through Zapier, an online solution that allows you to connect different apps and services without coding. Zapier allows you to select a trigger (when something should happen) and an action (what should happen). As a result, you will have an automated task called “Zap.” For example, an order in Katana can be created automatically whenever a customer places a new order in your Ecwid store.
Before connecting Ecwid to Katana
Before you start connecting your Ecwid store with your Katana account, you need to create a Zapier account.
You also need to have an active Katana account. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial. After your trial expires, you can subscribe to one of Katana's paid plans.
Connecting Ecwid with Katana
For a D2C manufacturing business, the best way to use Ecwid/Katana integration is to create a rule for new orders. Let’s say you want to start manufacturing a product every time you receive a paid order from your Ecwid store. To do so, you need a new order to appear in your Katana dashboard every time a customer places a paid order in your store. That way, you can better plan your raw materials ordering and track costs for manufacturing.
To connect Katana with your Ecwid account and create a new order rule, you need to follow 3 steps:
Step 1. Creating a trigger
Step 2. Creating first action (Find customer)
Step 3. Creating second action (Create sales order)
Step 1. Creating a trigger
- Log in to your Zapier account or create a new one.
- In your Zapier account, click Make a Zap:
- In the upper left corner, enter a name for a Zap. For example, New order in Ecwid.
- In the App Event section, click on the Ecwid icon to choose it.
- In the Trigger Event section, select the event you need from the dropdown menu. In our example, it’s New Order. This will start the Zap every time a new order is created in Ecwid. Then click Continue:
- Click Sign in to Ecwid. A new tab will open, where you can log in to your Ecwid account. Once you logged into your Ecwid account, you will be redirected to the Zapier to continue set up. In the Choose account section, choose your Ecwid account and click Continue.
- Now you have to Set up Trigger for a new order by choosing Payment and Fulfillment statuses. In our example, it’s Paid and Awaiting Processing. Then click Continue.
You can also select only Paid status in the Payment Status field and leave the fulfillment status filter empty. That way, only paid orders will be imported, regardless of the fulfillment status. - Click Test Trigger to confirm that the right account is connected and your trigger is set up correctly. To successfully pass the test, you need to have an order with the selected statuses in your Ecwid store (it’s Paid and Awaiting Processing status in our example. You can create a test order yourself). Once the test is passed, click Continue.
Step 2. Creating first action (Find customer)
After the trigger event is set up, the next step is to choose an action for this trigger.
- In the App Event section, type Katana to the search field and select Katana MRP:
- In the Action Event section, choose an event from the dropdown menu. We recommend selecting Find customer as the first action. This will enable you to match customers in Ecwid to your customers in Katana and avoid creating duplicates. Click Continue.
- You need to connect your Katana account. Click Sign in to Katana MRP. A new tab will open, where you can log into your Katana account or create one.
Once you logged into your Katana account, you will be redirected to the Zapier site to continue setting up. In the Choose an account section, choose Katana and click Continue:
- In the Search by field, select E-mail address, Name, or Phone number. “Search by” is a field in Katana that is used for matching the customer from the order. This is typically a unique identifier for the customer. In our example, we are going to use the E-mail address.
- In the Search Term field, type “email” in the search field to select the Email:
- In case you want to create new customers in Katana for new emails, tick the Create Katana MRP Customer if it doesn't exist yet box. Then map the fields from Ecwid to respective fields in Katana. In the Name field, select Billing Person Name, in the E-mail Address field, select Email, in the Phone field, select Billing Person Phone.
- Click Continue.
- You can now test the action or skip the test. To skip the test, click Skip Test. To test, click Test & Continue.
After you create the Find customer action, every new customer from your Ecwid store will get a Katana Customer ID automatically. This ID is needed to create a sales order in the next step.
Step 3. Creating second action (create sales order)
Now you need to create another action to create a sales order. Note that since you’ve already created one action (Find customer), Zapier will ask you to turn your Zap on. You can turn the Zap on now and continue setting up or skip turning on for later.
- Click on the + sign to add another action.
- In the App Event section, select Katana MRP.
- In the Action Event, select Create Sales Order and click Continue:
- In the Choose account field, choose your Katana account and click Continue.
- To set up the action, you need to choose the customer ID that has been created automatically at the previous step. In the Customer ID field, select the Custom tab → Find or Create Customer in Katana MRP, and choose the Customer ID:
- In the Order Number field, choose an appropriate identifier from Ecwid fields. For instance, type Order Number in the search and select the Order Number:
- In the Location field, choose a Katana Location to which you wish to send all sales orders from Ecwid with this Zap. Clicking on the Location field will display the list of all existing Locations on your chosen Katana account. In our example, we choose Main location.
- In the Created Date field, type Create Date and select it from the list.
- You can leave the Delivery Date field empty and let Katana calculate it based on your default delivery settings or create your own calculation based on the Created Date field.
- In the Variant Sku filed, type Items SKU and select it from the list.
The Variant SKU for an item on a Sales Order line must already exist in Katana. If the Variant SKU does not yet exist in Katana, then the sales order (line) will not be imported to Katana. New items cannot be created in Katana via Zapier. For more information, contact Katana support team or read about SKU in Katana’s knowledge base. - In the Quantity field, type Items Quantity and select this attribute from the list.
- In the Price Per Unit field, type Items Price Without Tax and select this attribute from the list.
- In the Tax Rate Id field, specify the tax rate. You cannot map a Tax Rate from Ecwid to a Tax rate in Katana at a sales order or sales order line item level (if you have taxes enabled for your product). All sales orders and line items will be assigned the same chosen tax rate (from the list that includes all existing tax rates in Katana).
- Click Continue.
- To test all your settings, click Test & Continue. To skip the test, click Skip Test.
- Turn your Zap on if you haven’t done that yet by clicking on the Turn on Zap button. You can also enable toggle from Off to On to turn on Zap.
That’s it. Now all paid orders from Ecwid will automatically appear in your Katana dashboard. Note that there can be multiple actions but only one trigger, so you have to create different Zaps for different triggers.