What to connect before launching ecommerce in Colombia: ERP, payments, inventory and shipping

Launching an online store is not about publishing a nice catalog. It is about connecting the place where you sell with the place where your operation already lives: the ERP that holds your products, prices and inventory; the payment method that confirms the money came in; the electronic invoice that has to go out; and the carrier that takes the order to the door.

If those pieces do not talk to each other, the store works on screen and breaks in the back office: someone keys orders in by hand, inventory does not add up, and a customer asks about a package nobody shipped. This guide is for owners and sales teams who want to know what to connect, in which order, and how to check it is really connected.

Think about the journey of a single order. Each step depends on the one before, and almost all of them depend on the ERP, the system where inventory, orders and finance live.

• Catalog and prices: they flow from the ERP to the store. If a price is changed in two places, sooner or later the two stop matching.
• Inventory: the ERP or the warehouse says how much there is; the store shows only what can be sold. If you also sell in a physical store, on marketplaces or over WhatsApp, every channel draws from the same stock.
• Order: it comes in through the store and reaches the ERP without anyone keying it in again, with customer, products, taxes and shipping address.
• Payment and reconciliation: the payment method confirms the transaction, and that confirmation has to be tied to the order so accounting can match what was sold with what reached the bank.
• E-invoice: once the order is confirmed, your invoicing system issues the electronic sales invoice, which DIAN (Colombia’s tax authority) validates before it counts as issued.
• Shipping and tracking: the order goes to the warehouse and the carrier, the tracking number comes back to the order, and the customer gets it to follow the shipment.
• Returns: the returned product goes back into inventory, and the refund shows up in the payment record and in the invoice, with its credit note.

When one of these connections breaks, the work does not go away: a person does it by hand, with more room for error.

Not everything gets integrated on the same day. A sensible order follows the dependencies: first, whatever feeds everything else.

1. Master data in the ERP. Before connecting anything, decide who owns each piece of data: products, prices, customers and inventory. If the ERP and the store disagree, one of them has to win, and that is settled before launch, not in the middle of a complaint.
2. Catalog, prices and inventory to the store. This is the foundation. Without it, the store sells what you do not have, or at the wrong price.
3. Orders to the ERP. As soon as the store makes a sale, the order enters the ERP with the same information it would have if your team had keyed it in.
4. Payments and reconciliation. Every approved, declined or reversed payment is tied to its order. That way you do not ship an order whose payment was declined, and you do not hold stock for a payment that never arrived.
5. E-invoicing. It depends on the order and the payment. Decide when the invoice is issued (on payment or on shipping), who issues it, and what happens if validation fails.
6. Shipping and tracking. With the order confirmed and invoiced, it goes to the carrier, and its status flows back to the store and the customer.
7. Returns and reversals. Design them from the start, even if they are used less. Left for later, they get handled by hand and throw off inventory and accounting.

• Overselling: the store sells units that were already sold on another channel. You end up calling a customer to cancel their purchase, which is a poor first impression.
• Orders keyed in by hand: someone copies every store order into the ERP. It holds up with a few orders; with more, quantity, price or address errors appear, and one person becomes the bottleneck.
• Unreconciled payments: accounting sees money in the bank and cannot tell which order it belongs to, or orders marked as paid that were never collected.
• Late or wrong invoices: if the invoice depends on someone issuing it by hand, it runs late or goes out with data that differs from the order.
• Delivery promises you cannot keep: the store promises a lead time that the warehouse and the carrier do not know about. The customer cannot tell an integration failure from a bad experience with your brand.

For your customer, none of these risks is technical. It is a purchase that went wrong.

This is a list you can ask your provider, or your own team, to walk you through before the store opens to the public. You do not need to understand the code; you need to see the tests.

• End-to-end test: a test order comes in through the store, reaches the ERP, gets paid, invoiced and shipped, and shows its tracking. Ask to see the whole flow, not just the pieces.
• Every payment method tested: not only approved payments; also declined, pending and reversed ones.
• Inventory that adds up: after selling in the store and on another channel, ERP stock and store stock show the same number.
• A validated test invoice: in your invoicing provider’s test environment, with the same customer, product and tax data as the order.
• A complete return: the product goes back into stock, the money is refunded and the credit note is issued.
• Who answers when something does not match: a name, a channel and an agreed response time, on your side and on the provider’s side.
• What happens if the ERP goes down: orders are queued and retried, or they are lost. Ask to see where pending orders wait and how they are reprocessed.
• What happens if invoicing does not respond: how the contingency is handled and who transmits the invoices once the service is back.
• Alerts: if a sync fails, someone finds out the same day, not when the customer complains.
• Access and documentation in your company’s name: credentials for the ERP, the payment gateway and the invoicing provider, plus a document that explains how everything is connected.

• E-invoicing: under DIAN Resolution 000165 of 2023 (now compiled into Resolution 000227 of 2025), DIAN runs a prior validation of the electronic sales invoice before it counts as issued. The store does not invoice on its own: the invoice comes from your invoicing system or technology provider, and the integration has to feed it correct data.
• Local payment methods: besides cards, many buyers pay with PSE (a direct debit from their bank account), with wallets such as Nequi or Daviplata and, since 2025, with Bre-B, the instant payment system run by Colombia’s central bank. Which ones you offer depends on your gateway and your customers; what matters is that each one reconciles with its order.
• Carriers: each one creates tracking numbers and reports statuses in its own way. Before promising lead times in the store, check what information your carrier returns and how it reaches the order.
• Multichannel inventory: if you sell in a physical store, by catalog, over WhatsApp or on marketplaces, inventory accuracy depends on every channel drawing from the same place.
• Consumer rights: Colombia’s Consumer Protection Law (Ley 1480 of 2011) provides a right of withdrawal for distance purchases (article 47: five business days from delivery of the goods to withdraw, and up to 30 calendar days to refund the money, with exceptions) and payment reversal in certain cases (article 51). Both affect returns, inventory and reconciliation, so the integration should plan for them.

In B2B or wholesale, you add customer-specific prices, credit and payment terms. That logic usually lives in the ERP, and the store or portal has to reflect it. If that is your case, add it to the checklist above: test customer-specific prices, credit limits and payment terms with a real customer account before launch.

What needs to be integrated before launching ecommerce in Colombia?

At a minimum: catalog, prices and inventory from the ERP; store orders into the ERP; payments reconciled with each order; electronic invoices validated by DIAN; and shipping with tracking. Returns should be designed from the start too.

Can I launch first and connect the ERP later?

You can, but in the meantime someone keys in orders and adjusts inventory by hand. If you go that way, decide how many orders that process can handle, who does it, and a date to integrate.

Who should own inventory: the ERP or the store?

Usually the ERP or the warehouse system, because that is where stock coming in and going out is recorded for every channel. The store shows what is available and deducts each sale from the same stock the other channels use.

What happens to e-invoicing if the ERP or DIAN fails?

It depends on where the failure is. If the ERP goes down, orders should be queued and invoiced once it is back. If the technical failure is on DIAN’s side, Resolution 000165 of 2023 (now compiled into Resolution 000227 of 2025) provides for delivering the invoice without prior validation and transmitting it to DIAN within 48 hours, counted from the day after the service is restored. Your provider should show you how each case is handled.

How do I know my provider left everything connected?

Ask for an end-to-end test (order, payment, invoice, shipping and return), see how an order is reprocessed when something fails, and confirm who answers when a number does not match. If they cannot show you, it is not ready to launch yet.

At Somos Gente Digital we listen, build and stay with you until the business grows. In ecommerce, that means mapping your chain from the ERP to the customer’s door, closing the missing link, and staying on after launch so the operation stays connected. We will not promise that nothing will ever fail; we do promise people close to you, a clear method, and someone who answers when something does not add up.

If you are still shaping the project, start with ecommerce that matches your business or our ecommerce hub. When you are ready, tell us where your chain breaks.