Executive Summary
If you sell the same product as single units, packs, and cases, your ERP and your online store can easily end up counting inventory differently. The result is phantom stock, overselling, and staff hours lost to manual fixes.
EcoProducts, a large supplier of sustainable packaging, ran into exactly this with BigCommerce and Oracle NetSuite. We built a custom middleware layer that aligned units of measure across both systems and automated order splitting. Their operations team now saves 30 to 45 minutes per order, every day, and stock numbers online match the warehouse.
At a Glance
EcoProducts
B2B packaging and distribution
BigCommerce (storefront), Oracle NetSuite (ERP)
NetSuite tracked inventory only at the single-unit level, while customers bought in units, packs, and cases
Unit-of-measure mapping middleware and an automated order-splitting mechanism
30 to 45 minutes saved per order, every day
Problem / Challenge
Most ERP systems, including NetSuite, SAP, and Dynamics, track inventory at one granular level: the individual unit. For many businesses that works fine.
B2B buyers don’t think that way. A distributor orders cases. A retailer orders packs. A plant orders pallets. When your storefront lets customers pick “pack” or “case” but your ERP only does math in units, you get a translation gap. At EcoProducts it showed up in four ways:
The website said “in stock,” but the sellable quantity in that unit of measure didn’t exist.
Painful in B2B, where customers place large, recurring orders and expect reliability.
Someone on the team fixed inventory mismatches by hand every day, and that habit doesn’t scale.
An order with mixed units (say, 2 cases plus 10 loose units) had to be split manually so each part went to the right warehouse.
Why the platform couldn’t solve it alone
This isn’t a flaw in BigCommerce or in NetSuite. It’s a gap between them. Out of the box, BigCommerce’s native inventory sync assumes one system of record and one unit of measure per SKU. It has no built-in way to understand that a SKU is also sold as a case of 12 and reconcile that against an ERP counting only single units. Nothing ships by default to translate between the two, so the translation has to be built.
Solution
We built a custom middleware layer that sits between BigCommerce and NetSuite and translates between them.
Units, packs, and cases are mapped in both directions, so a customer ordering “1 case” correctly reserves and deducts the right number of underlying units.
“In stock” online now reflects what is actually sellable in that unit of measure.
Mixed-unit orders are divided and routed to the correct warehouse automatically, with no manual sorting.
A related custom tool removed manual data entry when launching new products.
Business Outcome
✓ 30 to 45 minutes saved per order, every day, from automated order splitting.
✓ About 8 hours saved per product launch, from the custom catalog management tool.
✓ Accurate, synchronized stock counts between the storefront and the ERP, which means fewer oversells and fewer apologies to customers.
✓ Roughly $80,000 to $90,000 in estimated annual savings across the overall project, from avoiding the need to hire one to two additional employees.
Platform Considerations
A strong B2B storefront, but native inventory handling expects a single unit of measure per SKU. Selling in multiple units needs custom logic or an integration layer. Read more: BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus for hybrid B2B and B2C.
The same pattern applies to SAP, Dynamics, and similar systems. If your ERP counts in one unit and your customers buy in several, you need a mapping layer. See also: Shopify enterprise B2B and DTC NetSuite integration.
You generally don’t need to replace either system. The fix lives in the connection between them.
Where Folio3 Can Help
If your team is manually reconciling stock, splitting orders by hand, or apologizing for backorders that shouldn’t exist, we can help. We specialize in B2B eCommerce and ERP integration, including:
✓ Multi-unit inventory mapping between your storefront and ERP
✓ Automated order routing and splitting
✓ Catalog and product-data automation
✓ BigCommerce and NetSuite integration
Frequently Asked Questions
It happens when your storefront sells a product in several units (single, pack, case) but your ERP tracks inventory in only one. The two systems then disagree about how much you can actually sell.
Usually because the storefront and the ERP aren’t translating between units correctly. The site may count a case as available when the ERP only has a few loose units left.
It can display and sell multiple configurations, but keeping inventory accurate across them against an ERP typically requires custom logic or middleware.
No. In EcoProducts’ case, both BigCommerce and NetSuite stayed in place. The fix was a middleware layer that connects them.
When an order contains mixed units, the middleware divides it by unit type and routes each part to the correct warehouse or fulfillment path without anyone sorting it by hand.
No. Any ERP that tracks inventory at a different level than your storefront sells at can create the same problem, and the same mapping approach applies.
