Magento Xentral: Connect ERP and Shop Without Double Maintenance

Xentral is an ERP system for small and mid-sized companies that is operated as a cloud service. Article master, stock, customers and orders lie here, and documents, shipping and invoices are processed from here. Sales channels such as shops and marketplaces are connected to the system and report orders to it.

For Magento Xentral that means: the shop becomes a sales channel of the ERP. Articles, prices and stock come from Xentral into the shop, orders and new customers go from the shop into Xentral, and shipping and invoice status come back. The advantage is obvious: your employees keep working in the familiar interface and do not have to enter orders anew.

As with every ERP the implementation depends on the setup of your system. Some businesses use many modules and own processes, others get by with the standard. Magento Xentral therefore always begins with the question which modules you use, how orders are released with you and which processes must not change.

Many businesses have set up automatic processes, for example rules that release orders after payment receipt or prepare shipping labels. These processes are part of your way of working, and the integration must adapt to them: an order from the shop may trigger them only when all data is complete. We clarify exactly such peculiarities in the inventory.

Which data flows in Magento Xentral you define with us in the inventory. Typically there are five areas.

Not every Magento Xentral project needs all five areas. Often it begins with orders and stock and later grows by article maintenance and documents. This way you see results quickly and can use the budget in stages.

The table shows a typical pattern. In your business it may differ, and that is exactly what we clarify in the inventory.

With Magento Xentral a clear rule on data ownership prevents most disputes. Whatever can be changed in both systems leads to contradictions sooner or later. That is why we define exactly one leading system per type of data and describe the rule for the conflict case. Especially with variants, units and tax rates an assignment table that the department and the developers review together is worthwhile.

For Magento Xentral the vendor provides, according to its developer portal, a REST interface with more than 200 documented endpoints that works with personal access tokens. An access is created in the system as an API user, with exactly the rights the integration needs. The vendor also describes a platform for connecting shops that builds on this public interface.

According to the vendor, older versions of the interface are marked as deprecated and are in maintenance mode, and new functions only come in the current generation. Which version and which endpoints you can use, what your plan allows and how the interplay with your modules looks we therefore check before the quote and tell you openly if something is not possible or only to a limited extent.

We avoid direct access to the database wherever possible. With a cloud service it is not intended anyway, and it would bypass the rules of the software. If an interface is not enough, we first look for an official way before we build a makeshift.

For the connection of Xentral and Magento there are add-on products from third-party vendors and integration platforms. We did not find an official Magento module from the vendor in our research. Whether a third-party product fits your process we check honestly before a decision. If an existing product covers your requirements, it is often the more economical choice, and we will tell you so.

An individual development for Magento Xentral pays off if your processes deviate from the standard: special price rules, several warehouses, bundles and sets, own attributes or processes that a ready-made product does not know. It is more expensive at the start but fits exactly. Include the care as well: a ready-made product saves development time but causes license and update costs that count over the years, and an individual development needs someone who looks after it.

A middleware pays off if more than two systems are connected, for example shop, ERP, marketplace connection and shipping provider. The decision aid is in the guide to ERP integration.

On the Magento side we build the integration as its own module according to the standards of the system, without interventions in the core. The module uses the interfaces and queues of Magento so that transfers run in the background and the shop does not become slower for visitors. Orders are placed in a queue on arrival and processed there until the ERP has confirmed them.

Prices by customer group, tier prices and several warehouses are mapped by Magento with its own functions that the integration fills. Where possible we use these standard functions instead of inventing our own tables. That keeps the shop update-capable and lets other developers join in later.

In the admin you see what was transferred: a log shows date, record and result, with a filter for errors. For the peculiarities of Xentral we add settings in the admin, for example assignments of payment methods, shipping methods and tax classes, so that changes need no development.

With Xentral multichannel often comes into play: if you also sell through marketplaces, stock must stay consistent across all channels. Magento Xentral is therefore built so that the shop is treated as one sales channel among several and makes no assumptions that disturb other channels.

We see these points again and again in projects. They can be planned if they are known early.

• Variants and attributes

  The structure of variants in the ERP does not fit Magento one to one and needs a clean assignment.

• Several sales channels

  The stock is sold for marketplaces and shop at the same time, and overselling occurs.

• Unclear data ownership

  Prices or texts are changed in both systems and overwrite each other.

• Missing monitoring

  A failed transfer is noticed only after days because nobody looks at the log.

• Version change of the interface

  An outdated version of the interface is switched off or frozen, and the integration stays on the old state.

• Special cases

  Partial deliveries, returns, credit notes and foreign orders are missing in the concept.

An integration connects two systems with business data, so clear rules apply. The exchange runs encrypted, credentials do not lie in the source code but in the protected configuration, and the integration receives only the rights it needs. Access belongs to a separate service account, never to a private account of a person.

When testing we work with test data or anonymized data as far as possible. As soon as developers get access to personal data, for example customer accounts or orders from Xentral, an agreement on commissioned data processing is needed. We clarify that before the start so that you are legally well set up.

The log of the integration contains what is necessary for operation but no credentials and no unnecessary personal data. Retention periods are defined with you. These notes are not legal advice, the concrete arrangement depends on your company.

We keep the start deliberately short so that you quickly know whether and how the integration is feasible.

The following constellations are examples from the practice of Magento Xentral projects, not statements about particular customers. The first is a growing merchant who has so far worked with a simple shop and spreadsheets, introduces Xentral and switches the shop to Magento at the same time. Here the integration arises together with the ERP, and the biggest task is a clean data basis for article numbers, units and tax rates.

The second constellation is a business with shop and marketplaces in which Xentral keeps the stock for all channels. The challenge lies in the common stock and in how quickly the shop sees changes. We define early which rhythm is enough and which buffers against overselling make sense.

The third constellation is a business that switches from another shop system to Magento and keeps Xentral. Here the existing connection is the benchmark: what it achieves today the new shop should at least achieve. Part of the work is therefore the inventory of the old connection. How the switch itself runs is described on our page on migration.

An interface is not a one-off project but ongoing operation. After the start a log monitors every transfer: what was transferred when, what failed, what is repeated? Errors that cannot be fixed automatically are reported visibly so that nobody learns of them only through a customer complaint.

Updates change the situation. A Magento update, a new state at Xentral or a change of the vendor interface can affect the integration. Therefore the planning includes an agreement on how updates are tested and who approves them. Ongoing care can be regulated through a maintenance contract that covers monitoring, updates and error fixing.

Documentation is part of the delivery. You receive a description of the data flows, the assignments and the rules for special cases so that your team or another provider understands the integration and can continue it. Source code and access stay with you.

A flat figure for Magento Xentral would be unreliable because the effort depends on your constellation. It is determined by the number of data flows, the quality of the data in Xentral, the number of special cases with prices, warehouses and customers and the required timeliness. A data flow in one direction is built much faster than a synchronization in both directions with conflict rules.

We work with an open hourly rate of 30 euros net, without emergency surcharge. After the inventory you receive a written estimate that lists the data flows individually so that you can control scope and order yourself. For clearly defined packages a fixed price is also possible. All prices are on the page pricing.

Besides the development, include the running items: hosting, maintenance and, where applicable, licenses or fees for Xentral and for additional services. We show these items separately in the estimate so that you can compare quotes over several years.

An honest offer includes naming the limits. We do not sell a ready-made connector off the shelf but develop Magento Xentral project by project according to your processes. That means: we implement exactly what you need, but not in a day and not for a flat price that cannot be calculated beforehand.

We are a web agency in which fixed freelancers work together, all from home offices. We are not a large agency with a hundred employees and cannot take on every project at every time. We tell you early whether and when we have capacity. We name customers only with their consent, and in the first conversation we gladly talk about comparable constellations.

We give no legal advice. Questions about commissioned data processing, data protection and the license terms of Xentral you clarify with your legal adviser and the vendor. What is technically possible depends on version, operation and license of your system and is checked in the inventory.