System Integration Consultant, Canada

EFT, pre-authorized debits and Interac receipts

Banking integrations in Canada involve several payment types, and each moves through a different route. The design covers them one by one:

• EFT supplier payments. The ERP builds a payment file in the layout your bank requires, which is then uploaded through the bank's business portal. I specify the file, the approval steps before upload, the handling of rejected payments and how payment confirmations return to the ledger.
• Pre-authorized debits. Recurring customers authorize you to collect from their accounts. Agreement status, collection schedules, returned debits and their reasons all need a path back to the customer account in the ERP. Your bank and advisor confirm the rules you must follow for agreements and notices.
• Interac e-Transfers. Many smaller customers pay this way, and the payment often arrives with a sender name and a short message rather than an invoice number. I design matching rules and an exceptions queue so receipts are applied quickly instead of piling up as unapplied cash.
• Card and gateway settlements. Batches settle net of fees and refunds, sometimes in USD, so each payout is broken down into gross sales, fees and adjustments and then matched against the deposit.

Changes to supplier banking details are restricted to named roles, confirmed by a call back to the supplier and logged. Your bank validates each file layout in advance, and real payments go through a parallel run that finance approves.

POS, Shopify and Amazon with provincial tax on every sale

Sales channels create two flows that need separate designs. The order flow carries customers, items, quantities, discounts and tax into the ERP for fulfillment and inventory. The settlement flow carries the money, which arrives later, in batches and net of fees.

Canadian sales tax adds a layer. A sale shipped to a customer in another province may attract different tax from a sale made at your own store, and online channels must apply the right combination of GST/HST, PST or QST to each order. The ERP and the channel need to agree on that treatment, or the tax accounts in the ledger will not match what the channel collected. Your accountant confirms the treatments; I make sure the integration carries the tax detail needed to post and reconcile it, line by line.

Other design points I settle with you:

• Whether each online or POS sale posts individually or as a daily summary per store or channel.
• How Shopify and Amazon SKUs, bundles and variants map to ERP items.
• How returns and exchanges at a store, against an online order, are recorded.
• How USD sales on US-facing storefronts or Amazon are converted and settled.

Some Quebec sectors, such as restaurants, face specific sales recording requirements that affect the POS and its connection to the ERP; check the current rules with your advisor before choosing equipment. For retail and online businesses, the Canada retail ERP page covers the wider process.

Payroll journals, customs brokers and cross-border logistics

Three more connections appear in many Canadian designs:

• Payroll. Payroll typically stays with a specialist provider that handles source deductions and year-end slips. The ERP receives a journal mapped to provinces, departments, jobs or cost centers. I specify that mapping, plus a check that catches new earnings or deduction codes before they post to a suspense account.
• Customs brokers. For imports, the broker needs commercial invoice data, tariff classifications, country of origin and values from your system, and sends back duty, tax and fee amounts. Those amounts need to land on the right receipts for landed cost and in the right accounts for recoverable taxes. The broker and your advisor own the declarations and classifications; I specify the data exchange.
• Carriers and warehouses. Shipping platforms and third-party warehouses need released orders, addresses and item data, and return tracking numbers, costs and stock levels. Shipments to US customers bring their own paperwork and carrier requirements, so I map those separately from domestic flows.

Suppliers to large retailers may also face EDI requirements for orders, ship notices and invoices through an EDI provider, with each trading partner treated as its own flow.

Each connection is written up with its trigger, direction, frequency, mapping, error conditions and business owner. Developers build from that document and testers test against it, and it remains the reference when a broker, carrier or payroll provider changes.

Choosing the method and designing for failure

No single method suits every flow, so I decide them one at a time:

Whatever the method, each flow must meet the same standards: records validated before they are written, retries with a limit, protection against duplicates when a message is sent twice, errors delivered to a named person and a daily check that counts and totals agree between systems. I also look at time zones, because a nightly job scheduled for Eastern time may run in the middle of a Pacific business day.

Before anyone relies on a native connector, I test it on your awkward cases: a USD order, an interprovincial sale, a partial return. The broader reasoning is on my ERP integration page, and data migration alongside integration is covered under ERP data migration.

Who builds, who signs off and who owns each flow

Integration projects stall when ownership is vague, so I write it down at the start:

• What I do: write the requirements and mappings, decide systems of record and methods, prepare test scripts, compare the delivered build with the design, organize test windows with banks, brokers, carriers and channel providers, and confirm readiness.
• What developers or the partner do: build, deploy and document connectors, middleware flows and custom code, and correct defects found in testing.
• What your team does: sign off each flow, reconcile during the parallel run and own the flow day to day after launch.

Testing follows full scenarios: an online order shipped to another province, partly refunded, paid out by the gateway, cleared against the deposit and visible in the tax accounts. Cutover is planned flow by flow, avoiding the days around payroll and tax filing deadlines, with closer monitoring through the first close.

All of this is delivered remotely, with sessions timed to overlap with your main Canadian time zone; site visits happen only by arrangement. For the sales side, see my CRM consultant Canada page; for wider ERP advice, the Canada ERP consultant page and the Canada overview. My general approach is described on system integration.