ShelfSync
RetailAutomation

ShelfSync

n8n workflow automation for a 50-store retail chain

Duration

8 weeks

Team

2 engineers

Year

2024

Overview

A regional retail chain with 50 stores was drowning in manual processes. Inventory reconciliation took 3 staff members an entire day each week. Price updates required manually editing spreadsheets and emailing them to each store. Returns processing involved 7 handoffs between 4 different systems.

The Challenge

The client had invested heavily in their existing tools — Shopify POS, QuickBooks, a custom warehouse system, and three different vendor portals. Replacing any of them was off the table. The automation had to work with what they had, connecting systems that were never designed to talk to each other.

Our Approach
01

Mapped all 23 manual workflows across the organization, prioritizing by time-saved and error-reduction potential

02

Built a central n8n orchestration layer connecting Shopify, QuickBooks, the warehouse API, and vendor portals

03

Automated inventory reconciliation to run every 4 hours instead of weekly, with exception-only human review

04

Created automated price update propagation — one change in the admin panel updates all 50 stores in under 2 minutes

Results

The numbers tell the story.

Hours Saved120/week

Staff hours freed from manual data entry and reconciliation

Price Sync2 min

Down from 2 days to propagate price changes across all stores

Error Rate-97%

Inventory discrepancies virtually eliminated

Tech Stack
n8nNode.jsPostgreSQLShopify APIREST/Webhooks

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