Connecting your Shopify store

Shopify is the backbone of everything Ecom Forward shows you — orders, products, customers, inventory, discounts, refunds. Connecting is a one-minute OAuth flow. Here's exactly what happens and what permissions we ask for.

Connecting your first store

Open Settings → Stores from the sidebar.
Start the connect flow on the store card. (If you came in from the Shopify App Store, you're already most of the way there.)
When asked, type the full your-store.myshopify.com domain. If you have a custom domain (like yourbrand.com), still use the .myshopify.com version — that's Shopify's internal identifier.
You land on Shopify's permission screen. Review what we ask for (below) and click Install.
Shopify sends you back and the store shows a Connected badge.

Tip

A new account is walked through this with an on-screen guide — the integration walkthrough opens right on the Stores page and ticks each connection off as you finish it. You don't have to hunt for anything.

What permissions we ask for

Ecom Forward requests read-only access to the data we need and nothing else. We never ask for write access to your storefront, customers, or orders.

Orders — to calculate revenue, discounts, refunds, shipping, tax — and your customers, which come from the orders themselves.
Products & inventory — to show your catalog and compute per-product revenue, margin, and stock alerts.
Shopify Payments payouts — to sync your actual bank deposits into the Cash Flow tab.
Shopify Payments disputes — to track chargebacks (see Chargebacks).

Note

The AI Listings tab is the only place we write back to Shopify — and only for product title/description pushes you explicitly trigger. Everything else is read-only.

What happens after you connect

Connecting registers the live link and starts pulling fresh data — but it does not automatically reach back through your whole history. You pull history yourself with one click:

New orders start flowing in right away, and the nightly sync keeps everything fresh from then on.
Your products and inventory sync within minutes.
Your history (up to 5 years) is pulled by clicking Backfill data on the store card and picking how far back to go. See Backfilling your data.

Heads up

If your dashboard looks empty right after connecting, that's expected — run the backfill. It's the step that turns a fresh connection into years of accurate history.

FAQs

Does Ecom Forward make any changes to my store?

No, except when you explicitly push AI-generated product content via the AI Listings tab. Everything else is read-only.

Can I connect multiple stores?

Yes. Captain plan supports 2 stores, Crew supports 5, Fleet supports 10. Enterprise is custom.

What if my store uses a different currency than my reporting currency?

Ecom Forward converts everything to your reporting currency using ECB exchange rates (refreshed hourly). Original currencies are preserved for audit — nothing is lost.

I disconnected by accident. What now?

From the Stores page, click the store, then Reconnect. Your historical data is preserved; only the sync restarts.

Do I need to be the Shopify store owner to connect?

You need enough permissions to install a private app. Most operator roles have this; if not, ask your store owner to run the connection flow on their login.

If you see “Reconnect required”

This appears when your Shopify access token expires or the store is uninstalled. Visit the store on your Stores page and click Reconnect. Walk through the OAuth flow again — your data is preserved and syncing resumes immediately.

Connecting your first store

What permissions we ask for

What happens after you connect

FAQs

If you see “Reconnect required”

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