Shop and ERPare the same system.
In online retail the shop, the marketplace, the field sales team and the counter all sell the same stock – and it is synchronised by an interface that runs a few minutes behind. That is exactly where oversells, cancellations and a payment reconciliation that costs days every month come from. fabular connects B2B and B2C online retail natively with the ERP: stock, prices and orders run through a single system.
fabular. process chain
Real timeOpen orders
128
Batches today
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fabAI flagged batch L-2481: three days from best-before – FEFO suggestion created.
- No interface needed
- B2B terms per customer
- Self-service around the clock
- 100 %
- ERP integration without an interface
- 24/7
- self-service for B2B and B2C
- Real time
- stock and prices
- 25+
- years of experience in the DACH region
Three problems with separate systems
Shop and ERP are two worlds
Orders have to be transferred, stock and prices exist twice and are never fully in sync. That costs time every day and produces errors.
Every order lands in the system directly, stock and price are current.
Outdated stock leads to oversells
If the shop does not get its stock figures from the ERP in real time, customers order articles that are sold out. The cancellation costs more than the order was worth.
Stock in real time from fabular – no oversells.
B2B terms cannot be represented
In B2B every customer has their own prices, price breaks and product ranges. Generic shop systems cannot represent that cleanly.
Individual prices and ranges straight from the ERP, correct for each customer.
This page is for trading businesses that sell the same stock through an online shop, marketplaces and a field sales team – and where shop system, warehouse and accounting are currently held together by interfaces.
What is really difficult in online retail
The order is the easy part. Everything that happens afterwards takes effort – and so does everything that happens at the same time while the same goods are sold across several channels. A custom reporting dashboard for a single marketplace or campaign is not another shop plugin with its own data copy: it arrives as Vibecoding, built on the same dataset shop and ERP already share.
- The same stock is sold in parallel through the online shop, the marketplace, the field sales team and the counter, but it is only reserved at order picking.
- Load peaks cannot be planned: a newsletter, a promotion or a change in the weather multiplies the order volume within a few hours.
- In B2B every customer organisation has its own prices, price breaks, range approvals and ordering permissions – in the same shop where end customers buy as well.
- Pick, pack and ship depend on batch and best-before date. With fresh produce you cannot simply take what is nearest.
- A return creates three transactions at once: goods receipt, quality decision and credit note – often weeks after the sale and rarely documented across the original payment method.
- Reconciling payments across payment service providers, card, invoice and direct debit means collective credits that have to be broken down into individual orders and fees.
The interface is the real bottleneck
Between shop and ERP a job synchronises every few minutes. As long as nothing fails, that works. If it fails, the shop keeps selling – and nobody notices until the cancellations go out.
The contribution margin sits in the shipping
Package size, weight, zone and return rate decide the result per order. If you do not carry these costs on the order itself, you calculate at product range level and only find the losses in the annual accounts.
Returns run as a follow-up
If the return is recorded outside the order transaction, the link to batch, payment method and shipping costs is missing. The credit note is then correct in amount, but not in the analysis.
How fabular handles it
Online shop & portal
- 1.Online shop, B2B platform and member portal as standard.
- 2.Pricing logic, availability and delivery date from real-time data.
- 3.Roles and approvals per customer organisation.
- 4.Order history and repeat ordering in self-service.
Because there is no second system, there is no interface that can fail.
Campaign & communication
- 1.Newsletters and campaigns from the same data set.
- 2.Segments based on real order and turnover data.
- 3.Order confirmations and status messages automatically.
- 4.Invoices and documents in the customer account.
Warehouse & fulfilment
- 1.Mobile order picking, with batches and best-before dates.
- 2.Shipping handling with carrier connection.
- 3.Structured returns with a credit note.
- 4.Automatic payment reconciliation per payment method.
From incoming order to credit note
Because shop and ERP are the same system, this is not an exchange of data between stations but one continuous transaction.
- Step 01
Incoming order and check
in real time
The order is created directly in the system, with the price and the availability that applied at the moment of ordering. Credit standing, payment method and delivery address are checked before the order goes to the warehouse.
- Step 02
Reservation and order picking
warehouse, captured on mobile
Stock is assigned to the order and picked on a mobile device. Batches and best-before dates control the withdrawal according to FEFO, and the posting happens at the scan, not in an overnight run.
- Step 03
Packing and shipping
dispatch point
Package, weight and shipping method are created during packing. Label and consignment data go to the carrier, the shipping confirmation to the customer – from the same record.
- Step 04
Invoicing and payment reconciliation
accounting, up to date daily
The invoice is created from what was actually delivered. Incoming payments per payment method are reconciled against the open items, and deviations and fees remain visible as a difference instead of disappearing into a collective posting.
- Step 05
Return, inspection and credit note
returns station
The return is assigned to the original order. After the inspection it is decided whether the goods go back into sellable stock, and the credit note goes back through the same payment method.
What online retailers ask us
How do we prevent oversells when we sell across several channels?
Oversells almost always come from the time lag between two systems. In fabular the shop, the sales office and the counter all access the same stock, so there is no second stock figure that has to catch up. Reservations from open orders are taken into account immediately. That removes the most common cause of cancellations, not just its symptom.
How does fabular represent different B2B terms in the shop?
Prices, price breaks, range approvals and payment terms come from the customer master data in the ERP, not from a shop configuration. Every customer organisation therefore sees its own range at its own terms. Roles and approvals within an organisation can be represented, for example when the people who order and the people who approve are separate. Order history and repeat ordering are available in self-service.
How does order picking work for articles with a batch and a best-before date?
Withdrawal is controlled by FEFO, that is by the earliest expiry date. Warehouse staff receive the instruction on the mobile device and confirm it at the scan. This keeps it traceable which batch went to which customer – the precondition for informing people specifically rather than across the board in the event of a complaint or a recall.
How does payment reconciliation work with several payment methods?
Depending on the payment method, payments arrive as individual postings or as a collective credit from a service provider. fabular reconciles them against the open items and assigns them to the orders. Anything that cannot be assigned unambiguously stays open as a case for clarification instead of being posted silently. Which payment methods and service providers are connected in your case is clarified during the project.
What happens during load peaks in a promotion week?
The operational bottleneck is rarely in taking orders, but in order picking and shipping. Because there is no reconciliation between two systems, at least the error source of orders getting stuck in a queue does not arise. For staff and capacity planning, order volume and picking performance can be analysed in the system. We look at your specific peak load in advance.
How are returns handled?
The return is assigned to the original order and therefore also to the batch, the payment method and the shipping costs. After the inspection it is decided whether the goods are sellable again. The credit note is created from the inspected scope. This keeps return rate and return costs analysable per article and channel, instead of knowing them only as a total credit amount.
Companies working with fab4minds
A selection from our customer base – businesses with comparable requirements for traceability, batch management and reporting obligations.
- etepetete
- Isarland Ökokiste
- ADAMAH BioHof
- Querbeet
Let us talk about your stock synchronisation
How often does the shop stock differ from the real one? We use that to show what a shared data model changes. For our consulting engagements the same applies: if the result does not help you, we refund the fee.