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How customers are imported from Shopify to Katana
How customers are imported from Shopify to Katana

There are three cases where customers are imported from Shopify to Katana

Dayvid Lorbiecke avatar
Written by Dayvid Lorbiecke
Updated over a week ago

Customers can be imported from Shopify to Katana in the following cases:

  • You can choose to import all your customers from Shopify to Katana during the initial integration connection.

  • If you choose not to import all customers, only those customers will be imported to Katana during the initial connection that appears on imported Sales orders. Read more

  • Later, when new Sales orders are synced from Shopify to Katana, then customers on those orders are imported Katana.

Customers cannot be synced from Katana to Shopify.

Creating and matching customers

Katana matches customers imported from Shopify to your existing customers in Katana.

  • If a match is found, a new customer is not created.

  • If a match is not found, a new customer is created in Katana.

This is how we identify whether a customer already exists in Katana:

1. Checking Shopify ID. When a customer is pulled from Shopify to Katana for the first time, a Shopify ID (hidden from the user) is added to the customer in Katana for future identification. If the same customer is pulled in the future, Katana matches the ID. This means that if you edit any information for this customer in Shopify (e.g. change the name or e-mail address), Katana will still identify it as the same customer. In this case, other information will be overwritten in Katana.

2. Checking e-mail addresses. If there is no match with Shopify ID, e-mail addresses will be compared to make the match. If there is a single match with e-mail addresses but the customer name does not match, the customer is matched and customer name in Katana is overwritten with Shopify value. If there are multiple matches with e-mail addresses, then a new customer is created in Katana.

3. Checking customer names.

- If there is no match with Shopify ID and the e-mail for the customer does not exist in Shopify, the customer name will be used to make the match. If a single customer name match exists in Katana, then the customer is matched. If there are multiple customer name matches or no matches, then a new customer is created in Katana.

- If there is no match with Shopify ID, the e-mail for the customer exists in Shopify but does not match with Katana, the customer name will be used to make the match. If a single customer name match exists in Katana and this customer does not have an e-mail address in Katana, then the customer is matched and the e-mail address added to this customer in Katana. If a single customer name match exists in Katana and this customer has a not matching e-mail address in Katana, then a new customer is created in Katana. If there are multiple customer name matches, then a new customer is created in Katana.

Customer data between Shopify and Katana is matched as follows:

Shopify

Katana

Comments

Customer name

Customer name

-

E-mail address

E-mail address

-

Phone number

Phone number

-

-

Comments

Will be left blank in Katana.

Default address

Billing address

-

-

Default shipping address

Katana will default to using shipping address = billing address.
​

-

Other shipping addresses
​

If Shopify customer has multiple addresses on the customer card then Katana will import 10 addresses as "other shipping addresses"
​

Editing or deleting a customer is not synced

Editing data in either Shopify or Katana for a customer that has already been imported does not reflect in the other system. Any changes to the customer name, e-mail address, phone number, addresses or comments are not synced.

Deleting customers in either Katana or Shopify does not delete the customer automatically in the other system.

Syncing new customers when the integration is already enabled

After you have enabled the Shopify x Katana integration, new customers created in Shopify or Katana are not synced to the other system automatically.

New customers are imported from Shopify to Katana only if:

  1. The customer is included in a Sales order that is synced from Shopify to Katana.

  2. The reconfiguration flow for Shopify integration is completed in Katana and you select to import all your customers. Read more here.

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