Cin7 Core Setup Tips for Startups
Setting Up Cin7 Core Yourself? Here's How to Do It Right.
So you've decided to give Cin7 Core a go, but you're not ready to bring in a partner just yet, and honestly, for a lot of startup product businesses with tight budgets, that's a perfectly reasonable call. If your product range is relatively simple, you're selling through a single connected platform (probably Shopify), and you're already running your books in Xero or QuickBooks Online, and learning as you trade does not pose an operational risk, you may be in a good position to get this off the ground yourself.
This guide is written for exactly that situation. We'll walk you through the four stages of a self-led setup:
Scoping
Configuring
Testing
Reviewing after go-live.
And if you hit a wall at any point, we're here to help. More on that at the end.
Before You Touch the Software
Scope It Out First
The biggest mistake people make with a new system is diving straight into the setup before they've thought through what they actually need. Spend an hour or two on this before you even set up trial accounts. It'll save you a headache later.
As a starting point, ask yourself:
How many SKUs do I have? And do any of them have variants (size, colour, flavour)?
Do I do any kitting or simple assembly? For example, bundling products together for sale, or combining components into a finished good?
How do I track stock? Do I use batch numbers or expiry dates? Or is it simpler than that?
Where does my data live right now? Spreadsheets? Your accounting file? Your own head?
What is my costing method? Cin7 Core uses FIFO as its main costing, but can also utilise special costing methods such as FEFO or Batch. If you want ‘Averaged’ COGS to hit your accounting system (which we’d argue is a bad idea anyway), Cin7 Core won’t do that.
What do I need to connect? For most of you reading this, it'll be Shopify for sales and Xero or QuickBooks Online for accounting.
If your answers are mostly "simple" — a manageable SKU list, no complex manufacturing, a supported costing method — you're in good shape to self-implement. If you find yourself answering "it's complicated" to most of the above, it might be worth a conversation with us before you start. Get in touch here.
Map Your Workflows
Next, sketch out how an order flows through your business. From the moment a customer buys something on Shopify, to picking and packing, to dispatching and invoicing, what happens, and who does what?
You don't need anything fancy. A simple diagram in Lucidchart (free for basic use) or even a pen and paper will do. This becomes your checklist when you're testing later.
Configuring Cin7 Core
Settings
When you feel like it’s time to start setting up Cin7 Core, create a trial account and begin familiarising yourself with everything in the Settings tab in Cin7 Core. Work through it methodically. These settings shape how the whole system behaves.
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Start by inviting everyone who needs access. Go to Users & Permissions > Invite New User. The key thing here is to think carefully about what each person actually needs to see and do. For example, your warehouse team probably doesn't need access to financial reports, and your accountant most likely doesn't need to raise purchase orders. The easiest way to implement permissions in a scalable way is by creating Roles and defining permissions that way. You then assign Users to that Role.
Make sure at least one other person has full admin access and knows where the permission settings are.
It’s also worth noting here that, should you ever need help from us (or another Cin7-certified partner), you can give access to Advisor Users here, too. An Advisor user does not count towards your subscription fee.
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This is the bit most people rush — don't. Work through every option in General Settings and treat it as an opportunity to set some ground rules for how you'll operate going forward. Things like your financial year, default tax settings, order numbering, and how you handle backorders all live here.
Some of these settings are hard to change once you've put live data through the system. Get them right now.
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Under Reference Books you'll find configurables like payment terms, tax rules, and your location/warehouse setup. If you're operating from one location, this is straightforward. You'll also set up the chart of accounts mapping here, which is especially relevant once you connect your accounting software (more on that below).
If you have more than a handful of SKUs, Product Categories will make your life much easier. It lets you filter and report by product group, which makes it much faster to get to the information you need. Go to Settings > Reference Books > Categories to set these up.
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Not the highest priority setup item, but pretty straightforward if you have existing templates that you can use as a guide. If you decide to tweak these, do so carefully — especially the default invoice template. Always create a duplicate to work on, not the original. More than a few businesses have accidentally broken their own invoice template and been unable to send invoices until it was fixed. If you're not confident with this, leave it alone or ask for help.
Cin7 Core document templates are driven by Microsoft Word .doc files, utilising merge fields to populate them with the information you need, so they’re very easy to create and manipulate.
If you only sell via eCommerce and your eComm platform already issues all the financial documents to customers when they purchase, you can probably skip this area for now. Make sure to revisit before you go live, just to make sure you’re not missing a template you’ll need for trading.
Your Data
Before you start processing any test orders or purchases, it's worth getting your data loaded. There are three main categories of data that you’ll need to clean up and import: Products, Customers, and Suppliers. Importing these records can be done via a few methods, each with its own pros and cons.
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For most startups, the product setup is the most time-consuming part — but it's also the most important.
If the product list is currently perfect in your eCommerce platform, there are options to sync it from there and save yourself a lot of time. But if you’ve not established your online store yet, and you’re like most other startups, your product data is probably living in a spreadsheet or two. You’ll need to spend a decent chunk of time ensuring your data is not only clean, but in the correct format so that it can be directly imported to Cin7 Core. Luckily, Cin7 Core lets you export a template to populate with your products.
To make sure everything is in tip-top shape, spend some extra time on the following fields:
SKU codes — make sure every product has a clear, consistent code. This is your inventory's source of truth. If it's messy going in, it'll be messy forever.
Variants — Cin7 Core handles variants (e.g. sizes or colours) cleanly. Set these up properly rather than as disjointed, separate SKUs for each variation where it isn't necessary.
Bill of Materials (BOM) — if you do any kitting or simple assembly (e.g. a gift pack made up of three individual products), set up your BOMs accordingly. For simple assembly, this is straightforward. Each BOM has its own identifier and tracks the cost of the components, so your COGS stays accurate.
Costing method — for most simple product businesses, system-standard FIFO costing is the right call. If you're unsure, ask your accountant before you set this. It's not something you want to change halfway through.
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Before you start processing any orders or purchases, it's worth getting your customer and supplier records loaded. It's not strictly mandatory — you can create records on the fly when you raise your first sale or purchase order — but having them set up in advance makes the whole thing a lot smoother.
You've got three ways to get them in:
Manually — fine if you have a handful of key suppliers and your customers will mostly flow in from Shopify anyway. Go to Sales → Customers or Purchases → Suppliers and add them one by one.
CSV import — the better option if you have a meaningful list to bring across. Download the import template from the Customers or Suppliers screen (there's an Import button at the top), fill it in with your data, and upload it back. Keep the column names and order exactly as they are in the template — Cin7 Core is fussy about this. You can import customer/supplier details, addresses, and contacts separately if needed.
Sync from Xero or QuickBooks Online — if your contacts already live in your accounting file, this is the quickest path. When you first connect Cin7 Core to Xero, it will pull in your chart of accounts, customers, suppliers, and tax rules in one go. There's also a "Treat all Xero contacts as customers" option if you want to bring in contacts that aren't yet tied to an invoice. Going forward, customers and suppliers you create or update in Cin7 Core will sync back to Xero automatically on the next sync — and vice versa. QBO works similarly.
What about Shopify customers? You don't need to pre-load these. When an order comes in from Shopify, Cin7 Core will automatically create or match the customer record for you. You can also manually download customers from the Shopify integration tab if you want them in before orders start flowing.
A couple of things to watch out for:
Cin7 Core matches contacts by name, so make sure your naming is consistent across systems. Duplicates caused by name mismatches are a common headache.
Each customer record needs at least one billing contact before you can email invoices to them — worth setting this up properly from the start.
Archiving a contact in Xero does not remove them from Cin7 Core. You'll need to deprecate them manually in Cin7 Core separately.
Integrations
Before you integrate anything to your Cin7 Core account, stop and answer this question:
Is the system I’m about to integrate being used for real transactions now?
If the answer is “Yes”, tread very carefully here. You may want to integrate the systems to perform an initial sync from the integrated platform to Cin7 Core, then disable the integration before you perform any test transactions. This is especially important with your accounting system, and often, we recommend using a separate trial account with the same Chart of Accounts setup for testing purposes. If you would like help with this, please drop us a line.
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If you're selling online, you’re probably using Shopify, and it is likely your primary sales channel — so getting this integration right matters.
Cin7 Core has a native Shopify integration. Before you connect them, make sure your products are set up in Cin7 Core first, with accurate SKU codes that match what's in Shopify. Mismatched SKUs are the most common cause of sync headaches.
Once connected, Cin7 Core will pull in Shopify orders automatically, which means no more manual data entry between your store and your inventory system. Stock levels will also sync back to Shopify, so your store reflects what you actually have on hand.
Test this thoroughly before you go live. Place a test order in Shopify and follow it all the way through Cin7 Core to make sure the flow works as you'd expect.
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This is the integration that really ties everything together — and it's also the one that can cause the most confusion if you're not careful.
A critical warning before you start: do not connect your live accounting file while you're still testing. You don't want test transactions flowing into your real Xero or QBO file. Instead:
For Xero, connect Cin7 Core to the Xero Demo Company for testing purposes. You'll need to contact Cin7 Support to enable this.
For QBO, use a sandbox or trial file.
When you're ready to connect for real, go to Integration > Xero (or QuickBooks) in Cin7 Core. Import your contacts first, then map your chart of accounts carefully. This mapping — which Cin7 Core accounts feed into which accounts in your accounting file — is something your accountant or bookkeeper should weigh in on. It's not complicated, but it has a big impact on your financial reporting.
Once it's connected and live, sales invoices and purchase bills will sync across automatically, which means your stock movements and your financials stay in step.
Testing Before You Go Live
Don't skip this. A few days of thorough testing now saves you weeks of untangling mistakes later. Grab your workflow diagrams from earlier and run real scenarios through the system using actual products from your range. Raise a purchase order, receive the stock, create a sales order, pick and pack it, dispatch it, and check that everything looks right in both Cin7 Core and your accounting file.
What to check:
Do stock levels adjust correctly when you receive and dispatch goods?
Is your COGS calculating accurately?
Are Shopify orders flowing in and updating stock?
Are transactions syncing cleanly to Xero or QBO?
If you have any kits or assembled products, do they behave correctly?
Test with a mix of different products — not just one SKU — to make sure the system handles your full range. And involve the people who'll be using it day to day. They'll spot things you won't.
Once you're happy, remove or deprecate your test data before you go live so it doesn't pollute your reports and integrated systems, then reactivate your integrations.
Stuck at this point? That's what we're here for. Even if you've done the whole setup yourself, sometimes you just need someone to sense-check it before you flip the switch. Book a one-off review with us — it's a lot cheaper than fixing things after the fact.
After Go-Live: Review and Improve
Unless you’re experiencing major problems, give yourself a month of live use before you do a proper review. That's usually enough time to have processed a decent number of orders and purchases, which gives you real data to work with.
Financial Reports
Start with Reports > Financial Reports. Run every report at least once and get familiar with what each one tells you. The inventory valuation report and the COGS report are the ones most businesses find most useful early on. Ensure they look right, and if anything seems off, dig into it while the data is reasonably fresh.
Revisit Your Mapped Workflows
Remember that process map you created in the beginning? Hopefully, you’ve not thrown it out. Now is a great time to bust those documents out and see whether what you’ve documented is how you actually operate in the system now that it’s up and running. Inadvertently (and sometimes without noticing), you’ll have made new process decisions because Cin7 Core does things differently from what you’re used to.
First off - that’s absolutely normal! Cin7 Core is a standardised MRP system, rather than an infinitely configurable ERP, so a big part of any implementation always involves unlearning what you have learned pre-Cin7 and incorporating new workflows.
The most important thing to do now is to make sure you document your new processes and workflows. Keep them up to date as things change and as your business scales.
Identify Knowledge Gaps
Nobody expects you to be a master of Cin7 Core in a matter of weeks. We’ve been doing this for 14 years, and we never stop learning and refining how we implement and train people in the system.
Self-assessing your strengths and weaknesses in the system is important, and should be done regularly across your entire team. And when you spot an area of the system you don’t quite have a handle on, do something about it immediately.
We’ve worked with countless clients over the year who have, for one reason or another, fumbled their way through fixing issues and then wonder why their SOH balance or their COGS is always incorrect. Here’s a hard truth:
Bad, untrustworthy data is rarely the fault of your systems. It’s usually caused by the people operating it.
If something isn’t right and you don’t know the right way to fix it, that’s a problem that will only snowball as the years roll by. Similarly, if you’re the person within your business who knows everything about Cin7 Core, you need to decentralise (and derisk) your knowledge.
The good news is, you’ve got several resources at your disposal to fill these gaps. Cin7 Core gives you complementary support with your subscription, though working with a partner like us will always give you tailored advice (with a faster turnaround time, too). There’s also a plethora of documentation and video content on Cin7’s website. Make use of everything at your disposal and always update your internal process maps and documentation to reflect your new capabilities.
When to Call In the Experts
We built this guide because we genuinely believe a lot of smaller businesses can get Cin7 Core up and running themselves, and that doing so is a great way to learn the system.
But there are moments when it's worth getting a professional involved:
You're not sure your setup is right, and you're about to go live
Something isn't syncing correctly, and you can't figure out why
Your business has grown and you need new capabilities, such as new locations, more integrations, or manufacturing
You've been live for a while and suspect your data isn't as clean as it should be
We offer a Cin7 Core Health Check for exactly these situations. It is a structured review of your setup that tells you what's working, what isn't, and what to fix.
And if you'd rather hand the whole thing over from the start, we do that too.
Either way, we're easy to reach. Drop us a line any time.
Waypoint are Cin7 Core specialists based in Melbourne and London. We help inventory businesses, from startups to established manufacturers, get the most out of their systems.
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