Epos Now Magento: 4 best connectors and 1 optimal solution

Integrating Epos Now with Magento 2 offers numerous advantages. Here are several compelling reasons to consider this combination:

• Unified data ecosystem: Integration of Epos Now with Magento helps you centralize all your data. Simply put, when you make a sale or update stock levels, customer details, and other important information, everything will automatically be updated on different platforms. 
• Instant inventory control: The integration quickly adjusts stock levels in real time as soon as a customer places an order. You and your customers always have an instant view of what’s available, thus reducing losses related to overstock and boosting customer satisfaction. With the live data, you can:
  • Ensure customers see accurate stock levels, and you can minimize disappointment from out-of-stock items
  • Follow inventory across numerous locations to guarantee you have the right products in stock for your target audience
  • Minimize overstock situations and associated storage costs
  • Use real-time inventory data to inform purchasing and marketing strategies
• Seamless omnichannel customer engagement: Epos Now integrates with Magento to ensure your customers get the same online or in-store experience. Share customer data like purchase history and preferences across platforms to do personalized marketing and deliver better service.
• Automated operational efficiency: The integration automates specific tasks and processes. You can monitor inventory levels remotely and view sales performance reports all in one place. This saves you a lot of time going to each store and physically doing these things.
• Real-time reporting insights and analytics: With real-time reporting, you can instantly view insights and analytics across all your locations. For example, you can see a live dashboard of your highest-selling menu items by location. This helps you realize that your chicken parmesan is killing it at your downtown restaurant, but it’s one of your lowest-selling items at your suburban location. From there, you can tweak your menu strategy by featuring it more prominently or decreasing the price at that lower-producing location.
• Customer relationship management: Magento can manage customer information well with a powerful toolset that works with customer accounts. However, Magento doesn’t come with a loyalty program by default. Integrating Magento Epos Now allows you to leverage the power of these software systems to manage customer information, track purchase history, and create loyalty programs.
• Employee engagement: If you have more than one store and have an Epos Now Adobe integration, you can set up store competitions. Offering a prize to the best performers will encourage them to work harder and give better customer services.

While Epos Now has direct integrations with some eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, the story is slightly different if you’re a Magento user.

There’s NO direct integration between Epos Now and Magento 2. Therefore, if you want to connect them, you must purchase a 3rd-party connector or use an integration service. We’ll go into detail below!

When integrating Epos Now with Magento, choosing the suitable connector for optimum performance is essential. Here’s a guide to help you decide:

• Ease of use: Assess the user interface and technical knowledge requirements to set up and maintain the integration.
• Compatibility: Check if the connector supports your current Epos Now and Magento versions.
• Features: Find connectors that offer you specific functionalities going to be used between Epos Now < – > Magento, such as:
  • Real-time inventory syncing
  • Order management
  • Customer data synchronization
  • Product information updates

• Integration complexity: If your business process requires data from multiple sources or real-time updates, you might need a more feature-rich connector to handle large data volumes.
• Cost: Compare the pricing models of the Epos Now Magento integration. These connectors may have lower upfront costs, but consider how much maintenance and updates will cost you in the long run.
• Data sync needs: Decide if you need real-time data sync or if batch processing is sufficient.
• User reviews and reputation: Merchants should look for user reviews about different connectors to know how reliable and competent they are. Solutions that have positive feedback usually mean a smoother integration.

Integrating Epos Now Magento can help you work better, improve the customer journey, and increase your profits. Still, as with all best-laid plans, some pre-planning and know-how are needed to achieve a successful integration. We’ve pulled together our top 9 tips to help make your Epos Now Magento 2 integration go without a hitch.

1. Set clear goals for your integration

Before you begin the integration process, you must articulate your objectives and set expectations. What business processes do you want to streamline with this integration? Inventory, orders, customer interactions?

2. Pick the correct connector for the job

Research and choose an integration solution that fits your business needs. You’ll want a solution with the right features and functionality, including synchronization capabilities, customization, and ongoing support.

3. Match up your data and workflows

Map the data flow and workflows between Epos Now and Magento. Determine which data points (products, inventory levels, orders, customers, payments) are essential to you and how they move data between Epos Now and Magento.

4. Clean up and organize your data

Before integrating, it’s essential to ensure data is clean, accurate, and standardized between both platforms. However, retailers typically don’t do this process manually. Instead, the iPaaS solutions often automate data standardization between Magento and the EPOS system (like Epos Now). They usually provide the following:

• Data transformation capabilities to standardize formats
• Mapping tools to align fields between systems
• Cleansing features to handle inconsistencies

While some initial setup may be required (like defining mapping rules), the ongoing data standardization and cleaning process is automated. You’ll need to review and approve certain data reconciliations, and the integration platform typically handles the rest of the work.

5. Test everything carefully

Before launching the integration, it’s vital to check how well the systems are integrated. You have to test different scenarios like updating a product, processing an order, adjusting inventory, and interacting with customers so you’ll be able to verify that data is correctly synchronized and workflows are adequately executed. If you choose an iPaaS like Zapier or Appy Pie, you can follow their list of triggers and actions to test the processes.  

6. Get your staff up to speed

Offer your staff training on how to use the integrated system effectively. Ensure they understand new workflows, processes, and tools and can provide ongoing support and guidance.

7. Keep an eye on how it’s working

Merchants should regularly monitor the performance of the integrated system on a fixed schedule. Some key metrics that must be tracked are order fulfillment times, inventory accuracy, customer satisfaction, and sales performance, as they’ll provide an opportunity to understand how well-integrated processes are.

8. Stay in the loop with updates

Keep informed on any updates or releases from Epos Now and Magento, especially their APIs. Any new features, improvements, patches, or platform maintenance can affect the integration.

9. Back up your precious data

Frequently backing up your Epos Now and Magento data is crucial. It protects you from problems like system outages, data corruption, or accidental deletions and helps keep everything running smoothly.

As we’ve discussed, Epos Now doesn’t offer native integration with Magento. To connect the two, you need to rely on 3rd-party connectors. This can sometimes lead to data sync issues and, in some instances, integration bugs, as detailed below:

Why not use a Magento Epos Now connector?

• Unstable connections: Since merchants must integrate Epos Now with Magento via a 3rd-party connector, no data is directly transferred between the two systems. If the connectors have bugs or outages, this can create issues related to data not syncing, missing information, and mismatched data.
• High total cost of ownership: By connecting Epos Now to Magento through a connector, you’ll pay extra for a workable POS that links with Magento to share data. The pricing components of your Epos Now for Magento solutions are as follows:
  • Monthly fees for Epos Now software is £325/ month
  • Subscription fees for the connector increase based on your order volume and product count, which could be expensive in the long run.

→ Now, let’s count. If you use Epos Now software and subscribe to Zapier’s Professional plan of $19.99/month, equivalent to £17.95/month, you’ll have to invest £342.95/month or £4,115.4/year.

• Multiple points of contact: With an Epos Now Magento connector, you have two vendors and two systems to operate and maintain, including troubleshooting when things go wrong. This multiplied effort can add unnecessary complications and delays.
• Increased errors and manual work: Despite the promise of automation, connector-based integrations often require manual data reconciliation for specific processes like customer record matching or financial transaction alignment. This manual intervention increases workload and the potential for errors.
• Limited Magento support from Epos Now: One thing to be aware of is that Magento integration isn’t a central focus of Epos Now. Their website and documentation mostly talk about their relationships with Shopify and WooCommerce. The lack of dedicated Magento support can make troubleshooting and optimizing more difficult for Magento merchants like you.
  

Magento-native POS: Best Epos Now alternative to sync data between Magento and physical stores

As you can see, integrating Epos Now Magento via connectors would be risky and costly work with many synchronization errors and hidden fees. But there’s a more ideal approach to get the best of both worlds.

Our solution is a Magento-native POS like Magestore POS with NO middleware, meaning your data directly flows between 2 systems. You don’t just sync data but also use Magento power in your brick-and-mortar stores. 

Everything is real-time. And you’ll save much more in the end because we don’t charge per order, transaction, or staff account. We only charge once for the POS license, and it’s up to you to grow.

The comparison between Magestore POS and Epos Now shows why it’s worth your reading time. Let’s explore a better product for Magento retail with a fully integrated omnichannel. 

Read more: Magestore vs Epos Now

Throughout this Epos Now Magento integration article, we’ve discussed everything related to Epos Now Adobe Commerce with benefits, top connectors, and how to make integration easy and effective. However, as good as the POS system Epos Now is, Magento users struggle with integration because there’s no native connector.

When considering an Epos Now Magento integration, it’s crucial to:

• Carefully evaluate your business needs and long-term goals
• Analyze the overall costs, including the connection fees and possible hidden charges
• Assess the complexity of data sync and possible manual reconciliation effort
• Weigh the good and the bad in working with the integration suppliers for critical business processes

Suppose you’re a Magento merchant and want something a bit easier to manage. In that case, investing in a Magento-native POS like Magestore POS is worth every penny. This POS integrates directly with your Magento ecosystem and syncs your data between online and physical locations in real time, with NO middleware needed.

To learn more about how Magestore retail POS can transform your Magento Retail, you can:

1. Request a FREE custom demo to see the system in action
2. Talk with our Magento POS experts to discuss any specific requirements