Shopify PunchOut

What moves between the procurement system and Shopify

A PunchOut connection to a Shopify store has the same flows as on any store. The difference is how many of them Shopify can carry itself.

Everything on this page was checked against Shopify's developer and help documentation on October 3, 2026. The documents themselves are explained on cXML PunchOut and OCI PunchOut.

What Shopify offers and what is built around it

Signing the buyer in

A PunchOut session starts with the buyer already signed in as their company. Shopify's sign-in for new customer accounts sends a one-time 6-digit code to the customer's email. A buyer who lands on that page from a procurement system is asked for a code sent to an address they may not have access to.

Shopify has two ways to sign a customer in from outside. Multipass needs Plus, gives a token valid for 15 minutes that can be used once, and according to Shopify's documentation is no longer available to new stores. The current route is a third-party identity provider over OpenID Connect, also Plus only. Shopify identifies the customer by the email and sub claims of the ID token and creates the customer if none exists. Only one identity provider can be active on the online store, so it handles the sign-in of every customer, not just PunchOut buyers.

For a session that means: the setup request arrives at the integration, the integration opens a session for customer 10432, and the start URL leads through Shopify's sign-in to the identity provider, which recognizes the session and returns the buyer signed in, without a form. Regular customers signing in through the same provider get its normal sign-in page.

Prices per buying organization

Shopify B2B is on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Contract prices per customer depend on the plan:

Customer 10432 is a company in Shopify with one location, and that location gets a catalog with item 10482 at 9.60 USD where the list price is 12.50. On Plus that is a direct assignment. Below Plus, three catalogs shared over markets cannot hold a contract price per buyer, which is why the session then runs on a catalog the integration serves from the same products and the ERP's prices. Shopify's B2B plan overview has the full list.

From the Shopify cart to the PunchOut cart

The transfer button replaces the checkout button in the theme and is shown only in a PunchOut session. It reads the cart from /cart.js and hands it to the integration, which renders the form that the browser posts to the procurement system. A line of the cart of Bakker Installatie B.V., shortened:

{
  "currency": "USD",
  "total_price": 146875,
  "items": [
    {
      "sku": "10482",
      "title": "Duplex receptacle 20 A, white",
      "quantity": 120,
      "price": 960,
      "line_price": 115200
    }
  ]
}

What the integration does with it:

1. Prices are in cents. 960 / 100 = 9.60 for UnitPrice, 115200 / 100 = 1,152.00 for the line, and the total 146875 / 100 = 1,468.75 for Total. Check: 120 x 9.60 = 1,152.00.
2. sku becomes SupplierPartID. A variant without an SKU has no part number for the buyer and is held back with an error in the log.
3. title becomes Description. In OCI it has to fit 40 characters; this one has 29.
4. Shopify has no unit code on a variant. UnitOfMeasure (EA, PK) and the UNSPSC Classification come from metafields per product, filled once.
5. The integration stores the cart under its own reference and sends that reference as SupplierPartAuxiliaryID, so the purchase order can be matched to it.

The purchase order back into Shopify

The OrderRequest arrives at the integration, which answers it and creates a draft order through the Admin API. DraftOrderInput carries what the order needs:

The draft is completed into an order when its lines match the cart that was transferred. A price that differs from the cart is not completed silently; it stays as a draft and shows in the log. The Admin GraphQL API restores 100 points a second on the standard plans, 200 on Advanced and 1,000 on Plus, which is far more than one purchase order needs, but a bulk change of catalogs during the day shares the same budget. How those limits work is in Shopify API rate limits.

When it goes wrong

The same pieces on other platforms: Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. What a store needs in full is on the PunchOut hub. Tell us which procurement system your customer uses.