Shopify Day-to-Day
Once your Shopify store is connected, the integration runs mostly on its own. This guide covers what happens during normal operation, how to handle products you don’t want on Shopify, and what to do when something goes wrong.
How inventory pushes flow
When you update stock in Sideboard
The moment you save a change to a card’s quantity or price in Sideboard — whether from receiving a buylist, doing a manual inventory edit, or a pricing rule update — Sideboard’s sync engine queues a push to Shopify. This typically reaches Shopify within a few seconds.
The update targets the specific variant matching that card’s condition, finish, and language. Other variants on the same product are not touched.
If you have hundreds of items updated at once (for example, after accepting a large buylist or running a price rule across a set), Sideboard batches the pushes rather than sending one request per item. Everything still goes through; it just takes a few minutes rather than seconds for the full batch to land on Shopify.
When a customer buys on Shopify
When a Shopify sale goes through:
- Shopify sends an inventory update notification to Sideboard (typically within 1–5 seconds of the sale).
- Sideboard finds the matching inventory item using the variant’s ID.
- Sideboard decrements the quantity and records the change.
- The update to Sideboard does not trigger another push back to Shopify — Sideboard knows this change came from Shopify and won’t bounce it back.
This entire sequence typically completes within 6 seconds of the sale. If your store sells on multiple channels simultaneously (Shopify + in-store + CardTrader), each channel’s sales flow through independently and all update the same Sideboard inventory item.
When new cards are added to the catalog
When Sideboard receives a new set release or catalog update for a game you have connected, new products are automatically pushed to your Shopify store. You’ll see new products appear in Shopify with $0 price and 0 quantity. When you add stock for those cards, the variants go live.
This auto-push runs after every catalog update, and also sweeps nightly at 5 AM to catch anything that was missed. You can also trigger it manually from Settings → Integrations → Shopify → Push New Products.
Products you don’t want on Shopify
Turning off auto-push for new products
By default, whenever Sideboard receives new catalog cards for a game you have connected, they are automatically pushed to Shopify. If you’d rather control this manually, you can disable auto-push:
Go to Settings → Integrations → Shopify and toggle off Automatically push new products.
With auto-push off, your existing mapped products continue to sync normally (price and quantity updates still flow). New unmapped products just won’t appear in Shopify until you trigger a push manually.
Removing a specific product from your Shopify store
There’s no per-product “exclude from Shopify” flag in the current integration. Your options:
- Set the product to Draft in Shopify. Shopify won’t show it to customers, but the mapping stays intact. Sideboard won’t change its status.
- Archive the product in Shopify. Same effect — hidden from customers, mapping intact.
- Disconnect the game inventory. If you want to remove an entire game from Shopify, deselect that inventory in Settings → Integrations → Shopify → Connected Inventories. This stops future syncs for that game but does not remove already-pushed products.
Connecting only specific game inventories
When you select inventories in the Shopify settings, Sideboard only pushes products for those games. If you connect your MTG inventory but not your One Piece inventory, One Piece cards will never appear in your Shopify store.
You can add or remove game inventories at any time from the Shopify settings page. Adding a new game triggers a push for all products in that catalog. Removing a game stops future syncing but leaves existing products in Shopify untouched.
Customers and store credit
Customer matching
When a customer creates an account on your Shopify store, Sideboard automatically links their Shopify account to their Sideboard customer record — matched by email address. If they don’t have a Sideboard record yet, one is created.
This matching runs in both directions. When you create or update a customer in Sideboard, that data is pushed to Shopify as well.
Store credit sync
Store credit you assign in Sideboard flows to Shopify automatically. When you pay out a buylist in store credit, issue a credit manually, or adjust a customer’s balance, Sideboard pushes the change to Shopify within seconds. Customers can use that credit at checkout on your Shopify storefront.
Sideboard is always the authoritative source for credit balances. Every 6 hours, Sideboard runs a reconciliation to ensure Shopify’s credit balances match Sideboard’s records. If there’s a discrepancy, Sideboard’s number wins.
Requirement: Store credit at Shopify checkout requires New customer accounts to be enabled in your Shopify settings (Settings → Customer accounts). Classic accounts do not support store credit redemption at checkout.
What to do when a sync goes wrong
Check the sync status panel
The Shopify settings page in Sideboard shows the status of recent sync runs. If a sync failed, you’ll see a red indicator and a brief error message.
Most failures are transient — a network timeout, a temporary Shopify API issue — and Sideboard’s sync engine retries automatically. You don’t need to do anything.
Run a manual reconciliation
If you believe your Shopify quantities have drifted from Sideboard’s quantities (for example, after a connectivity outage, or after manually editing quantities in Shopify admin), run a reconciliation:
Settings → Integrations → Shopify → Reconcile Inventory
Reconciliation fetches every inventory level from Shopify, compares it to Sideboard, and pushes corrections. This may take a few minutes for large catalogs. When it finishes, Shopify will reflect exactly what Sideboard has.
Remember: During reconciliation, Sideboard quantities always win. Any quantities you edited directly in Shopify admin will be overwritten.
The nightly safety net
Even if you never run a manual reconciliation, Sideboard runs one automatically every night at 3 AM. This catches any discrepancies that accumulated during the day — missed webhooks, failed pushes, anything. Think of it as a daily guarantee that by morning, Shopify and Sideboard agree.
If a product mapping breaks
Occasionally a product’s link between Sideboard and Shopify can break — most commonly if someone deletes the product in Shopify admin, or if variants are manually edited in a way that changes their internal IDs.
Symptoms: you update a card’s quantity in Sideboard, but nothing changes on Shopify for that card.
Fix: go to Settings → Integrations → Shopify → Push All Products. This re-syncs every product in your catalog and re-establishes any broken mappings. Products that were deleted in Shopify will be re-created.
When Shopify reports a product was deleted
Sideboard does not poll Shopify for deleted products on its own. The mapping simply stops working until you run a full push to re-create it. There’s no automated re-creation triggered by a deletion — Sideboard waits for you to push.
Webhook failures and recovery
Sideboard monitors all incoming webhooks from Shopify. If a webhook event gets stuck — for example, if the processing job was interrupted — Sideboard automatically retries it within 5 minutes. You don’t need to manage this manually.
If you see Shopify’s “webhook deliveries” logs showing repeated failures, verify that your Sideboard account is active and that no major errors are showing on the Shopify settings page.
What’s next
- Set up the integration: Shopify Setup
- Managing inventory in Sideboard: Managing Inventory
- How presale affects sync: Presale
- CardTrader integration: CardTrader Overview
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