Selling G7th capos worldwide from one platform

A UK manufacturer selling directly into Europe carries a compliance problem that has nothing to do with ecommerce. Every consignment needs the right VAT treatment, the right customs classification and the right registration behind it, per destination country. Getting it wrong means parcels held at the border and customers charged twice for a £25 capo.

The business runs on Business Central, not on the website, so an order that stops at the storefront is an order somebody has to rekey — and G7th's order profile is high volume, low value and long tail, exactly the shape that does not survive manual handling. Pricing added a third problem: a capo has a price in pounds, a price in dollars and a price in euros, each set by the business rather than derived from yesterday's exchange rate.

One open-source core, with the ERP, the VAT service and the brand's own programmes hanging off it. Nothing in the order path waits for a person.

Technical highlights

• Orders post straight into Business Central — a scheduled export authenticates over OAuth2, matches the buyer to an existing customer record by email or creates one, then posts the sales order with its lines, discounts and accounting dimensions.

• Despatch closes the loop — the ERP calls a key-protected webhook when a consignment ships; the platform creates the shipment, attaches the tracking reference and marks the order despatched without anyone touching it.

• EU VAT settled before despatch — orders to any of the 27 EU member states are registered with the cross-border VAT service, carrying HS6 classification, warehouse country and seller registration, and the job is polled until the service confirms it processed.

• Prices published, not converted — each product carries its own price in each trading currency, resolved during price calculation rather than derived from a daily rate, so the euro price is a commercial decision. Tier pricing still applies on top.

• Warranty claims that outlive the record — a claim captures purchase source, fault and photographs, and snapshots the claimant's name and address at submission, so it still reads correctly after an address deletion or GDPR erasure; support resolves it by raising the replacement in the customer's own account.

• Artist roster and referrals, self-served — musicians register themselves, moderated before publication, with genres, capos played, videos and social links; referral orders validate the referrer, apply a product-scoped discount and log the referral for reporting.

Before

• Web orders re-entered into Business Central by hand

• EU VAT and customs dealt with after the sale, parcel by parcel

• Overseas prices converted from sterling at the day's rate

After

• Orders posted as Business Central sales orders on placement

• VAT and customs data registered before the parcel leaves

• A set price per currency, published by the business