How It Works
Connect Shopify once and Pricemaster keeps your storefront priced
Pricemaster connects directly to your Shopify store through the official Shopify Admin API. That single connection lets Pricemaster read your product catalogue, watch the market around each product, calculate new prices inside your margin rules, and write the new price back to the matching variant in Shopify. Because it writes straight to Shopify, the change is live on your storefront right away — there's nothing to publish, export or sync by hand.
It's a closed loop: read your catalogue → track competitors → recalculate within your guardrails → push the new price back to the variant. From then on it runs on a schedule, and you can send prices on demand whenever you want.
Direct to your store: Pricemaster updates the variant price in Shopify itself, so the new price shows on your live storefront as soon as it's sent. Selling on more channels than just Shopify? The
Linnworks integration is a single connection that reprices every channel at once.
What Syncs
What Pricemaster reads, and what it writes back
Imported from Shopify
Pricemaster pulls your products and their variants, and captures for each one:
- Product & variant title
- SKU
- Barcode / GTIN — used for accurate competitor matching
- Current selling price
- Cost per item — powers margin maths
- Stock quantity & availability
- Product image
Written back to Shopify
The only thing Pricemaster changes is the price:
- The new selling price on the matching product variant, pushed on a schedule (or on demand).
- Large catalogues are sent through Shopify's bulk operations, so many prices update reliably without hitting rate limits.
- Every change is logged with the rule that caused it, the old and new price, and the resulting margin.
Pricemaster does not touch your orders, customers, inventory levels, theme or listings.
VAT handled for you: prices are held internally on a consistent ex-VAT basis for correct margin maths. If your Shopify store displays tax-inclusive prices, the price is written back in the format your store expects, so what a shopper sees stays consistent.
Before You Start
What you need (and what you don't)
Connecting takes a couple of minutes. You'll need:
- An active Shopify store with your products set up.
- Admin access to your store, so you can approve the app or create an access token.
There are two ways to connect — pick whichever you prefer:
- Sign in with Shopify — approve Pricemaster on the Shopify screen and you're done. No keys to copy.
- Paste an Admin API access token — if you'd rather not use the sign-in flow, create a token from a custom app in your Shopify admin and paste it in. Steps for this are in the next section.
You do not need:
- Any CSV exports or imports — your catalogue imports itself.
- Developer work, or per-product setup.
Connecting Your Store
Link your Shopify store
1
Pick Shopify on the onboarding screen
From the onboarding "What platform are you using?" screen, choose Shopify.
2
Enter your store details
Give the site a name (for example Acme Shop), add your shop URL, and optionally upload a logo.
3
Connect Shopify
Either click Sign in via Shopify and approve Pricemaster (it asks for read & write access to products only), or enter your shop name — the bit before .myshopify.com in your admin URL — together with an Admin API access token, then click Complete connection.
4
Pricemaster verifies the connection
Pricemaster does a live check against your store to confirm the connection works (it reads back your product count), creates the site, and takes you straight to your products.
Creating an Admin API access token: in Shopify admin go to Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps → Create an app. Under Configuration, grant the Admin API scopes read_products and write_products. Install the app, then reveal and copy the Admin API access token. Paste that into Pricemaster along with your shop name.
After You Connect
What happens next
Pricemaster kicks off the first catalogue import in the background and walks you through the rest of onboarding:
1
Products import
Your Shopify products are pulled in with their variants, SKUs, barcodes, cost, stock and images. You can watch progress from the products area.
2
Match and select competitors
Each product is matched to competitor listings, primarily by GTIN. You then enable the competitors that matter for your market.
3
Set your rules and go live
Build your pricing rules — follow-the-market, undercut, flat markup, flash — always inside your minimum-margin and cash-floor guardrails. From then on, prices recalculate against fresh market data and write back to Shopify on a schedule. You can also trigger a manual send at any time.
Automated price pushing can be switched on when you're ready, and paused at any time — nothing is written to your storefront while it's paused. When cost prices change in Shopify, repricing recalculates on the new cost basis so your margins hold. Order and sales-history import for profitability analytics is on the roadmap for the next platform version.
Security & Control
You stay in control of the connection
- Pricemaster requests only what it needs: read your products, and update their prices. It does not ask for access to orders, customers or inventory.
- Access is via a token Shopify issues when you approve the app (or the Admin API token you provide). You can revoke it at any time from Shopify under Settings → Apps and sales channels — no need to contact us first.
- Price pushing can be paused per store at any time; while it's paused, nothing at all is written to your storefront.
- A suspended or paused account never pushes prices, regardless of any rule.
- Your Shopify store stays the single source of truth; Pricemaster reads from it and writes prices back.
FAQs
Common questions
- Will it change anything other than prices? No. It reads your catalogue and updates the selling price on your variants. Orders, customers, inventory levels, your theme and listings are left untouched.
- How fast does a price change show on my store? Straight away. Pricemaster writes to the variant in Shopify, so the new price is live on your storefront as soon as it's sent.
- How often do prices update? Competitor data is refreshed on a schedule and prices are recalculated and pushed automatically. You can also trigger a manual send whenever you want.
- Won't automated pricing undercut my margins? No. Every automated price passes through your minimum-margin percentage and minimum cash-margin floors before it is sent. If a rule would breach a floor, the floor wins.
- I sell on other channels too, not just Shopify. If you run Amazon, eBay or marketplaces through Linnworks, connect the Linnworks integration instead — one connection reprices every channel. For a Shopify-only store, connect Shopify directly.
- Do I need a developer or any CSVs? No. Sign in with Shopify, or create a custom-app access token in a couple of clicks — the catalogue imports itself.
- Which access does it ask for? Products only —
read_products and write_products. Nothing else.
