Before you touch your real store, you can build and test your whole Qoblex setup against a staging or development store, including a trial import of products and orders. This article covers moving off that staging store once you’re ready to go live, and the two ways to clear any test data the rehearsal leaves behind.
Rehearsing is optional. If you’re connecting your production store straight away, you can skip this article: the store you connect while you set up Qoblex is your production store.
Rehearse before go-live
Everything in Set up Qoblex before you switch works exactly the same against a staging or development Shopify store. So you can build and test your whole setup, including a trial import of products and orders, before you touch your real store.
When you’re ready to go live, you have two options for moving off the staging store:
| Option | Use it when | What it clears |
|---|---|---|
| Connect production before disconnecting staging | You want to keep your setup and only swap stores | Nothing. You clean up rehearsal data yourself. |
| Reset the account | Your rehearsal left test data you don’t want anywhere else in the company, not just in Shopify, and you haven’t built your real catalogue or connected production yet | Essentially everything, and every integration is disconnected. The company starts fresh. |
That happens even though the Clear account dialog you see during a reset (Option 2) says your online store won’t be affected. It’s intended behaviour, not a bug, so don’t be caught off guard by the email.
Option 1: Connect production before disconnecting staging
Connecting production first is the safer order. If your Qoblex subscription is billed through Shopify, disconnecting the only paying store ends that billing.
- Connect your production store and choose its sync settings, including its own matching strategy. See Set up Qoblex before you switch.
- Pause its inventory sync with Do not sync straight away, before you save or import.
- Run the production store’s one-off product import, before cutover day rather than on the day (see below).
- Once production is connected and correct, click Disconnect store on the staging store.
Do the production store’s connection and its product import before cutover day itself, not on the day. A completed product import also queues that store’s open-order import (see Bring in open sale orders). Getting it out of the way early keeps it separate from your cutover-day sequence.
What disconnecting staging does
You disconnect the staging store the same way as any other. This only removes that one connection:
- it revokes the store’s credentials;
- it doesn’t touch your Qoblex products, contacts, or any other data;
- it doesn’t clean anything up.
Clear your rehearsal data before cutover
The rehearsal transactions you created while testing stay in Qoblex exactly as they are, and will keep reserving or moving stock after you connect your production store:
- rehearsal sales orders and allocations;
- imported purchase orders and GRNs;
- stocktake adjustments.
Cancel or delete that rehearsal data yourself before cutover.
Its batches stay at their test quantities and show up, prefilled, in your cutover template. So:
- count each batch you’re keeping at cutover;
- zero out any test batch you don’t want with an ordinary stock adjustment first, because listing it at
0in the import is ignored. See Count batch and serial stock.
Reset account is not a cleanup option at this point. It also disconnects your production store and deletes your catalogue.
Option 2: Reset the account
If your rehearsal left test data you don’t want anywhere else in the company, Reset account clears everything and starts the company fresh.
It’s a start-over, not a cleanup. Do it before you build your real catalogue and connect production, or expect to redo all of your setup afterwards.
- In your Account settings, open the Company Information page.
- Click Reset account. A dialog titled Clear account opens.
- Type RESET ACCOUNT in the confirmation box.
- Confirm with Yes, clear account to start the reset.
A reset is a much bigger action than disconnecting a store:
- it deletes products, orders, purchases, adjustments, contacts, and accounting records;
- it force-disconnects every integration, not only Shopify.
Only use it when you genuinely want the whole company cleared, not just the Shopify connection swapped.
After a reset
Your products are gone too. To rebuild:
- Connect your production store the safe way described above: pause its inventory sync with Do not sync before you import.
- Run its product import.
- Bring in everything your store doesn’t sell, such as raw materials and components, by CSV. See Product imports and bulk edit.
Leave batch-tracked stock until cutover day. The batch CSV import is a stocktake that corrects each batch’s quantity at one location and creates an adjustment. Use it as your count for batch-tracked products when you bring in opening stock, not straight after the reset. See Import or update batches by CSV stocktake.
You can still upload a few batches during the rehearsal itself to test the import. Then count with the real figures at cutover.
See Generate Demo Data for the same control from the trial-data side.
WooCommerce staging stores
The same staging-store approach works for WooCommerce, with its own Disconnect store button. There are two differences:
- a WooCommerce product import doesn’t queue an open-order import;
- a new production WooCommerce connection sets its own cutoff for already-completed orders when its first product import finishes.