Visual Next integration for ecommerce

Stock exports can be scheduled to run every 15 minutes, hourly, or on-demand via API triggers. The cadence depends on your inventory volatility and multi-channel requirements. Higher-frequency syncs increase API load and cost but reduce oversell risk. iWeb typically recommends hourly for retail and every 30 minutes for wholesale.

Commerce platforms serve locally cached stock and pricing so the storefront remains live. New orders are queued and retried; checkout may reject credit limit checks as a precaution. Once Visual Next returns, queued orders are ingested and cache is refreshed. The fallback behaviour is designed during integration design and tested before go-live.

Visual Next pricing rules are extracted and flattened into a denormalized table (customer ID, product, tier, price, effective date). Commerce platforms download this table and cache it; customer login triggers a price override at checkout. Real-time Visual Next lookups are avoided because they slow checkout. Price changes in Visual Next trigger a refresh within minutes.

Yes. Orders from commerce platforms are transformed into Visual Next sales order format and imported via API or batch process. Order validation (customer exists, items are orderable, credit limit is sufficient) happens in Visual Next; errors are reported back to commerce so the order can be corrected or rejected. Acknowledgements are sent to commerce to confirm receipt.

Visual Next generates invoices and sends them via the integration to commerce; commerce displays them in customer accounts and optionally emails them. The invoice includes order line items, discounts, VAT, and payment terms from Visual Next. A delay of 15-60 minutes is typical between order closure and invoice visibility.

Visual Next holds tax codes, VAT rates and exemption rules mapped to product lines, customer regions and delivery addresses. During order import, Visual Next calculates VAT and assigns nominal codes. These are included in the invoice sent back to commerce. Finance reconciliation compares VAT totals between commerce and Visual Next; mismatches trigger exceptions.

During checkout, commerce platforms query Visual Next for the customer's credit status and available balance. If the order would exceed the limit, checkout is blocked and the customer is prompted to contact sales. The business rules (hard stop, warning, or approval workflow) are configurable. Credit limit changes in Visual Next take effect immediately on the next checkout query.

Returns initiated in commerce (or OMS) are sent to Visual Next as RMA requests or credit memos. Visual Next validates the return (order exists, return window is open, reason is valid) and creates a credit memo if approved. Stock is reversed in inventory, AR is adjusted, and the credit memo is sent back to commerce so the customer can see it. Refunds are applied based on the original payment method.

A reconciliation process compares invoice totals, line items, VAT and nominal codes between Visual Next and commerce. Mismatches (e.g., discount applied in commerce but not in Visual Next, or payment recorded in one system but not the other) are logged and sent to the finance team for review. Monthly reconciliation dashboards show invoice variance, write-offs and adjustments needed.

Yes. Visual Next can serve multiple commerce platforms, each with their own pricing, stock buffers and order workflows. The integration is designed to route orders, pricing and invoices to the correct destination. However, stock is typically shared unless you define channel-specific safety stock levels. Multi-channel planning and buffer management become critical.

Order validation includes: customer account exists and is active, all line items are valid products, quantities and dates are within acceptable ranges, and (optionally) the order value does not exceed the customer's credit limit. If validation fails, an error code and message are returned to commerce so the order can be corrected or rejected. Critical failures go to an exception queue for manual review.

Once an order is imported into Visual Next, cancellations and changes are handled via Visual Next workflows (e.g. sales order amendment, cancellation request). If a customer cancels via commerce, that request is sent to Visual Next; if approved, stock reservations are released and an acknowledgement is sent back to commerce. Changes are only allowed within a defined window before picking begins.

iWeb sets up dashboards and alerts for: stock sync lag (e.g. last refresh time), pricing feed freshness, order ingestion volume and lag, invoice generation volume, finance reconciliation variance, and exception queue depth. Alerts fire if stock is stale, orders are queued too long, or invoices cannot be matched. Escalation paths are defined for each alert type.

iWeb runs end-to-end test scenarios: place test orders (valid and invalid), verify they appear in Visual Next with correct status, check that invoices generate and return to commerce, test pricing rule changes, simulate credit limit hits, process returns, and reconcile invoices. Cutover is validated with production-like data volumes. Rollback procedures are rehearsed.