Spark Shipping has 2 different types of integrations. Simple and custom coded integrations in addition to the free pre-built integrations that we offer. This article will cover the simple integrations. This type of integration can help you automate: The Product Catalog, Inventory, and order sending.
A simple integration is a connection where Spark can connect up to your vendor to retrieve their product catalog and inventory stock quantities and send an order acknowledgment.*
*The caveats are that your vendor must support sending these files in a format that Spark can process. They must also be willing to accept orders by email if you want the order acknowledgment piece.
-This type of integration has no custom code to integrate to your vendor, so there are some limitations such as no order acknowledgments, or other custom code behavior.
-It is most likely to be used for product catalog data and inventory quantity updates.
-Our customers can set this up via a DIY vendor for free. Spark provides a good system of processing these files that someone can do. It's a little bit of a process but works well.
-If you don't feel like doing this yourself, you can have Spark do it for you for $99 per vendor (rates are always subject to change-pricing current as of 1/28/2021)
Visit here for the latest pricing: https://sparkshipping.com/pricing
What are the steps to see if I can integrate a vendor?
1. Reach out to them and ask them if they support sending their product catalog and inventory stock quantity updates.
2. Ask them if they will accept orders via email? If so, this covers the order acknowledgment piece.
What data needs to be in these files?
Product Catalog- A file that contains your products SKUs, titles, description, image links, dimensions, etc. (Note: We must have image links in the same file for the pictures to display).
Inventory File- A file that contains the SKUs and quantity on hand.
-We are able to accept CSV/flat files, HTTP, XML, etc.
-Our customer has a self-hosted FTP or we can point to any FTP that you may have
-If sending these files via a URL link, we would need a public link, to where Spark could automatically pull the file from the vendor without logging into the customer's account.
Any additonal questions, please email us at support@sparkshipping.com