What the solution is
SparkLayer is not a storefront platform. It is a B2B layer placed on top of a store you already have, most often a Shopify store, giving it the features a business customer needs: login, their own prices, quantity entry, reordering and payment terms.
That makes the solution an unusual construction in the catalogue. You have three layers that have to fit together: the storefront, the B2B layer and Business Central. In return it solves a concrete and common problem, namely that Shopify is an excellent consumer store and a mediocre B2B portal, and that Shopify's own B2B requires the Plus subscription.
The integration is the Tinx SparkLayer Connector from Tinx-IT in the Netherlands, obtained from Microsoft AppSource. The same house stands behind the WooCommerce connector in this catalogue.
How the integration works
Product information synchronises automatically from Business Central to the storefront, and stock figures update within one minute. That last part is a concrete figure rather than a promise of real time, and it is worth noting: one minute is good enough for most B2B situations and documented enough to be held up against reality.
B2B orders from the storefront are imported automatically into Business Central and assigned to the correct existing B2B customer. That is the mechanism that most often fails in a Shopify setup, where a business order ends up as a new anonymous customer, and it is a real reason to choose this route over Shopify's own connector.
Like Tinx's other apps, the connector runs inside Business Central with no external servers. Only Business Central online is documented. Note that the Shopify side still has the documented limit of one store per Business Central company if you use Microsoft's connector alongside.
Prices, discounts and agreements
This is where the solution earns its place. Customer-specific price agreements and terms come from Business Central and are shown in the SparkLayer layer. The business customer sees their own price, and that price is the ERP's.
It is a transfer model, so the price is right until the next run, and the scaling trap of customers times items applies in principle. With an update interval of minutes, the risk of an outdated price is small in practice.
Campaigns and bundles belong in Shopify. That is the reason for the label about logic set up in two places, and for most it is an advantage: consumer campaigns can be run freely in Shopify while the business price comes from the ERP. It is a tidy division of labour if it has been decided.
The order and the finance function
The order is created in Business Central on the correct customer, and from there it runs in the ERP's own flow. Because the customer is right from the outset, credit limits, payment terms and statements work as they should, and that is often what a sales department misses in a pure Shopify setup.
Partial shipments, back orders and credit memos are handled in Business Central. VAT is decided by Shopify on open selling, and for business selling it should be settled concretely how VAT exemption on export is handled.
Reconciling the Shopify Payments settlement against the general ledger is still a separate job.
Who the solution fits
The solution fits a company that already has a Shopify store for consumers and needs to add business selling with agreed prices without changing platform. That is a very common situation, and it is what this combination is built for.
It also fits if the alternative is Shopify Plus. Plus costs considerably more per year than SparkLayer and the Tinx connector combined, and if B2B is the only thing you need from Plus, the calculation is worth doing.
The solution fits less well if you want as few vendors as possible. There are three parties in this setup, and three parties means three contracts, three support channels and three places a change can break something.
What to settle before you decide
Tinx's prices are public and fixed, starting around three hundred euro a month for the connector line and with no per-transaction or per-user fee. Ask to have that confirmed for the SparkLayer edition specifically, because the public figures cover the Shopify connector.
Count SparkLayer's own subscription and Shopify's subscription as well. The connector is the smallest of the three items, and a comparison looking only at it comes out wrong.
Ask to see a business order go all the way: from login in SparkLayer through a price from Business Central to a sales order on the correct customer with the correct credit limit. If that can be demonstrated in half an hour, the solution has shown what it needs to.