A guide to integrating your Brightpearl system with a 3rd party ...

A guide to integrating your
Brightpearl system with a 3rd
party warehousing or fulfilment
solution
Version 1.0

The scenario
Your staff use Brightpearl for CRM, Accounting and Sales Order Processing. You don’t carry
any stock on-site; it’s all managed by another fulfilment company who are using their own
system. You place Purchase Orders with your suppliers, and the stock is delivered direct to the
fulfilment house.
● You need to tell the fulfilment company what to ship to customers on a regular basis
● They ship the goods and need to give you confirmation and tracking information
● You need to know how much stock you have available in order to process sales
effectively
● They need to communicate with you when items arrive from supplier
Integrating with Brightpearl
Let’s break this up into 4 communication lines; Inventory, Sales, Purchasing, Corrections
1. Inventory
The warehouse should have their own strict processes for inventory management. Your team
also need to know what’s in stock and what’s available. Both their systems AND your
Brightpearl system should stay in synchronisation if processes are followed correctly. Your
sales and accounts teams work with the Brightpearl database, which will make all the
accounting transactions automatically for you.
Inventory levels are simply the sum of Purchase Orders (goods in) and Sales Orders (goods
out), along with any corrections that may have been made along the way. Once opening
balances are entered into both systems, it’s really important to keep data input as up to date
as possible! Automation of the systems really helps.
All of Brightpearl’s inventory control is available over our Warehouse API.
2. Sales
The Brightpearl sales order screen lets you “fulfil” the sale, which creates one or more “goodsout
notes” (sometimes called packing notes or delivery notes). The Goods-out note is the
carrier of information between sales and warehouse; it’s the document that says “ship
products A, B, C to customer X”.
The reason that you use Goods-notes to communicate with the warehouse is that there is a
strict process around printing, picking, packing and shipping that prevents duplicated
processing. Once a goods-note has been marked as printed (or picked, packed) then
Brightpearl won’t let you run that process again. You’d need to “unprint” and then reprint. It’s
also impossible to edit the contents of a goods-note; so no mistakes when a salesperson
changes an order once it’s been sent to the warehouse.

In the scenario where you want to add further items to a sales order once you’ve fulfilled
(created the goods note), you just add extra items and then re-fulfil to create a second goods
note for the same order.
You need to get the Goods-notes to the warehouse quickly and accurately via a method that
their systems can understand.
1. API : a 3rd party solution could query the Brightpearl servers directly using a
combination of the Goods-Out note SEARCH and the Goods-out note GET message,
and extract a selection of Goods-notes in JSON format. This would need to be
translated into a format that the warehouse system understands, and would require that
you engage your own developer. Once translated from the Brightpearl format the
Goods-Out notes would be injected into the warehousing system automatically.
Tip: Your integration should query Brightpearl using the search to find all goods-out
notes that have not yet been printed (or picked). When your warehousing solution has
imported the goods-out note successfully, you can mark it as printed (or picked) in
Brightpearl, so that next time you search for goods notes the imported ones are not
given.
2. CSV : export of Goods-out notes as a CSV file is not currently supported from
Brightpearl, but we’re working on it.
3. Email : You can email PDF or HTML goods-notes to the warehouse using the print icon
on the goods-note listing screen. Once you’ve sent them, we suggest you mark them as
“printed”; you can’t mark them as printed again unless you unprint so you have a
method of preventing double shipments. The email will contain a CSV copy of the
Goods-Out note too.
Printing paperwork for sales / goods notes
Brightpearl has powerful templating facilities that you might want the warehousing company to
include in with the package. They will no doubt have their own paperwork too. If you email a
PDF or HTML goods note then they can print and include this for you. You could even give
them a login to your Brightpearl system so that they can process goods notes autonomously.
Updating stock
When the order has shipped from the warehouse, it needs to communicate this to Brightpearl.
1. API : your developer can build code to interface with the warehouse solution and use
the Goods-Out note PUT message to mark the goods note as “shipped” in Brightpearl.
This will remove the items from stock and make any accounting entries required. You

can also add the tracking reference to the Goods note over API.
2. Manual update : your warehouse sends a list of all goods-notes shipped, which you
manually mark as “shipped” on the goods-note listing screen in Brightpearl. You can
enter the tracking reference in the Brightpearl interface too.
3. Purchases
When you place a Purchase Order with your supplier, you should send a copy to the
warehouse too so that they have a record to match against the goods when they arrive.
Currently you can send it by HTML or PDF from the email/print screen, or else filter the
Purchase Order detail report to show just one Purchase Order and export it to Excel.
You could also build a system to query Brightpearl over API for the new Purchase Order, using
the Order GET message.
The warehouse will load this Purchase Order into their system, and send you notification when
the goods arrive:
1. API : Your developer can use the Goods-in note POST to record items on a Brightpearl
Purchase Order as received. This requires that you have the Brightpearl information
from the original Purchase Order available too (since the POST message needs to send
the Brightpearl PurchaseOrderRowId) - you can collect the Purchase Order from
Brightpearl using the Order GET message. Accounting transactions will be made
automatically for the goods’ asset value if you’re using Cost of Sales accounting
(Goods-in = an increase in asset value on your Balance Sheet)
If there are more items received than on the original Purchase Order, you’d need to use
the OrderRow POST message to add further rows to the PO before receiving the goods.
You can’t currently remove or edit row quantities on Purchase Orders over API.
Alternatively you can mark the Purchase order as received, and then make a stock
correction for the difference, using the Stock Correction POST message.
2. Manual : Find the Purchase Order in Brightpearl and mark the stock as received. You
can amend the Purchase Order items to match those actually received if required.
Accounting transactions for the asset value will be made if you’re using Cost of Sales
accounting.
4. Corrections
When an adjustment is made to inventory levels in the warehouse, the warehouse team need
to tell you in order that you can update Brightpearl too.

1. API : Stock corrections can be made automatically in Brightpearl using the Stock
correction POST message. Accounting transactions will automatically be made for the
cost value of the stock if you’re using Cost of Sales accounting. This means your
accounts and Balance Sheet will be up to date all the time. When you POST a stock
correction into Brightpearl, you need to know the cost price paid to ensure correct
inventory valuation. Stock corrections to remove inventory will use the FIFO mechanism
within Brightpearl to remove the oldest stock first.
2. Manually : you can use the in-app screens to make one-off amendments (accounting is
done for you), or even use the CSV inventory import tool to run a complete stock take
across meny items at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Brightpearl staff do the integration work for me?
No - you’ll need to engage your own developer to work with our API. We provide clear
documentation online, and can be contacted on api@brightpearl.com for any additional help.
Do you have any other users that may have the same needs?
Certainly. Many of our users have 3rd party fulfilment companies, but they are not all running
the same software. We’re trying to get to a stage where you can talk to each other to share
development resources and ideas. The design of Brightpearl is to provide generic data that can
be consumed by any 3rd party system.
How much will this cost me?
It depends on the system that you’re going to integrate with. It could range from a few hundred
dollars to a few thousand.
Can you recommend any developers?
We have a number of clients that have successfully connected their warehousing solution to
the Brightpearl back-office using the API. We can’t vouch for the quality or efficacy of the
integration, but we can pass you the developers details if you’re interested. Please email
design@brightpearl.com and we’ll get back to you. If you’re a developer, then get in touch on
the same email address and we can connect you to customers that need development
services!
Can Brightpearl provide “webhooks”?
Webhooks are typically used to notify a warehouse system when events happen, so that they
can query the database over API and collect the latest data. An example would be when
Goods-out notes are created. We don’t currently have any support for webhooks, so you will
need to poll the Brightpearl API on a regular basis using the SEARCH messages to get the IDs
of resources that have recently been created or updated.