TradeCentric alternative: PunchOut built into your store and ERP

What TradeCentric does well

TradeCentric connects supplier stores to buyers' procurement systems as a managed service. Its pages state support for 75+ eCommerce platforms and 220+ ERP and eProcurement systems, and a product set that covers the full order cycle:

The format work is TradeCentric's. Its knowledge base publishes standard payloads in cXML, EDI and JSON for purchase orders, invoices, ship notices and acknowledgments, and EDI purchase orders are delivered over AS2, HTTP or SFTP. For Shopify it describes the integration as fully managed, with regular updates and 24/7 monitoring, and no custom code on the supplier's side. Billing is per buyer with no transaction fees, and the platform lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications and a certified Peppol access point.

Statements about TradeCentric on this page come from tradecentric.com and the public payload articles on help.tradecentric.com, read on October 3, 2026.

What an integration through TradeCentric asks of your store

TradeCentric sits between the buyer and you. The buyer's procurement system sends its setup request and its orders to TradeCentric, which translates them and delivers them to your endpoint. For a store that receives the standard JSON, the knowledge base sets the contract:

• Setup request. Your endpoint accepts a JSON body with pos (the session ID), operation (create, edit or inspect), return_url, the buyer's contact and a shipping address, and answers with HTTP 200 and a tokenized start_url. An error is answered with HTTP 400, an error start_url and a message.
• Return cart. Your store posts the cart server to server to the return_url. Each line carries supplierid, quantity, unitprice, uom, classification with classdomain UNSPSC, and a description. The total is required, and TradeCentric notes that every eProcurement system recalculates it.
• Purchase order. Your system accepts a PO JSON with po_order_id, po_order_type (new, update or delete), ship_to, bill_to and lines, authenticated by a shared_secret, and returns a success or error response.
• Follow-up documents. The order_request_id in each PO, 12345678 in TradeCentric's example, has to be included in every invoice, ship notice and acknowledgment for that order.

So the store side still needs a session start that signs the buyer in from a token, a PunchOut mode that replaces checkout with a cart transfer, a unit code and a UNSPSC code per item, and an order intake that handles updates and cancellations. What TradeCentric removes is the per-buyer format work: one JSON contract instead of a cXML or OCI dialect per procurement system.

Where the documented limits are

TradeCentric is explicit about who it is built for and how it is sold. These are its own statements:

The scope is the line between the buyer and your store. TradeCentric's Shopify page describes contract pricing and inventory pulled from the Shopify catalog during a session. How the ERP's contract prices, price levels and stock reach that catalog in the first place is not part of what the pages describe. That is separate work, and a session can only show a contract price that is already in the store. The Shopify side of that work is on Shopify PunchOut.

What a custom integration does differently

We build one integration that speaks cXML or OCI directly with each buyer's procurement system and is connected to your store and your ERP at the same time. The differences, against the table above:

The documents themselves are explained on cXML PunchOut and the first message of every session on the PunchOutSetupRequest. The PunchOut flow as a whole, from catalog to invoice, is on the PunchOut catalog integration page.

Moving a buyer from TradeCentric to a direct connection

A move goes one buyer at a time, which fits how TradeCentric packages and bills. For each buyer, the PunchOut URL and credentials stored for your connection change, either in the buyer's procurement system or in your account on the buyer's supplier network, so the date is set with the buyer. Before the switch, the new connection is tested end to end in the buyer's test environment: setup request, cart return with the right unit codes and UNSPSC codes, and a test OrderRequest.

Orders that arrived through TradeCentric are finished through TradeCentric, because their invoices and ship notices have to carry its order_request_id. Orders that arrive after the switch carry only the buyer's own order ID. Both paths run side by side until the last invoice for a TradeCentric order has gone out, and then the TradeCentric package for that buyer can end. The checklist for a supplier's side is on the PunchOut supplier checklist.

Tell us which buyers asked for PunchOut and which procurement systems they use, and you get a fixed price for a direct integration with your store and ERP.