Connecting Shopify to Bigin Premier using Make.com

Claire Davis

If you use Zoho Bigin as your CRM, you may already know that the native Bigin-to-Shopify connection doesn't work. (Written June 2026, hopefully they fix it) I was annoyed enough to fix it for us, and I hope my workaround helps someone!

To automatically push new Shopify orders directly into your Bigin CRM pipeline as a job card under a stage of your choosing, you don't need a software developer or complex custom code.

This step-by-step tutorial is designed for absolute beginners with zero technical experience. It will help you launch a fully automated integration using Make.


Before Anything Else…

To link your systems, you only need to grab one single number from your active Bigin dashboard. An ID number in Bigin is a long, continuous sequence of exactly 19 digits with no spaces, dashes, or letters. Ex: 1234567890123456789

How to Find Your Master Pipeline ID:

  1. Log in to your Bigin by Zoho dashboard in your computer's web browser and click directly into your target team pipeline workflow board.
  2. Look at the very top of your browser window at the long web address link (the URL). It will look something like this sample layout:
    https://zoho.com
  3. Look inside that web address link for the text pipeline=.
  4. Copy the 19-digit number sitting directly after that equals sign.
    (In our fictional sample address above, the Pipeline ID is: 1234567890123456789).
  5. Save this number in a temporary notepad on your computer so you have it ready to copy later.


This is what we will end up with:
Step-by-Step Build Guide

We are going to build a smart, branching automation pipeline that checks if your customer exists, bundles up their ordered items, and hands a clean receipt/description of the order straight over to Bigin. 

Step 1: Access Make and Create a New Scenario Workspace

  1. Go to make.com in your browser and log in.
  2. On your main dashboard, look at the top right corner and click the purple button that says Create a New Scenario. This opens your blank visual canvas.


Step 2: Add Module 1 — The Shopify Trigger

  1. Click the large white circle with the plus sign (+) in the center of your canvas.
  2. Search for Shopify and select it. Then, choose the trigger named Watch Orders.
  3. In the settings panel that opens, configure it exactly like this (You may need to toggle on Advanced Settings at the bottom):

    Connection: Click Add to securely link your Shopify storefront & follow prompts to connect.
    Watch by: Select Creation date.
    Order limit: We chose to leave it at 250, but type how many orders you want it to pull max at a time. 
    Output line items: Select the purple dot for Yes. (I want to see everything that was ordered.)
    Line items limit: We entered 250 because we sell a lot of small items, and occasionally get an order with 50+ things. Choose what’s right for you.
    Output product variants: Select Yes.
    Output customer details: Select Yes (Crucial for passing customer data).
    Output shipping lines: Select Yes.



  4. Click Save.

  5. Stop the Historical Backlog: Right-click your green Shopify module circle, select Choose Where to Start, click From now on, and hit Save. This forces Make to ignore your past sales and only run when fresh orders happen moving forward. If you do not do this, it will pull EVERY order you've ever done on Shopify and possibly burn through all of your free credits.

    Step 3: Add Module 2 — Search Contacts & Route the Order 

    This will search for an existing contact in Bigin so that at the end of this you aren’t creating duplicates if someone places multiple orders.

    1. Click the small plus sign (+) on the right edge of your green Shopify module. Search for Bigin by Zoho CRM and select the action named Search Contacts. 

      1. Email: Click into the field and map the green Shopify bubble named Customer: Email. Click Save.

    2. Next, click the plus sign on the right of your Search module to add another module, but search for Router (it's a native Make tool). A silver circle will appear, splitting your automation into two separate pathways. This Router will be the split in the path to either create a new contact in Bigin if this is a new customer, or move forward to creating the job in Bigin if the contact exists already.

    Step 4: Create a Contact in Bigin

    1. Hover your mouse over the right edge of your Router module and click the small plus sign (+) that pops up to create a new module. 
    2. Search for Bigin by Zoho CRM and select the action named Create a Contact.
    3. Link your Bigin account connection and fill in your customer form blocks by clicking into each text field and selecting the green Shopify variable bubbles that drop down:

      1. Last Name: Map the green bubble named Customer: Last name.

      2. First Name: Map the green bubble named Customer: First name.

      3. Email / Phone / Address: Map your corresponding customer shipping and contact details down the rest of the form. Ours is included here to give you some insight on what might work for you.

    4. Click Save.

    Step 4.5: On that path leading from the Router to Create a Contact:

    1. Click the little wrench icon on that path to set a filter named Contact DOES NOT EXIST (set the condition to ‘Total number of bundles’ is ‘Equal To’ ‘0’). This checks if the email search returns 0 results. Click Save

    Step 5: Add Module 3 — The Iterator (First of Two we will make)
    Make another module connected to the second router path called Iterator
    Click the plus sign, search for Iterator, and open it.

    1. Array: Toggle Map to be on, and the click into this box and select the green Shopify bubble named Line items[].



    Step 5.5: On the path between the Router and the Iterator:
    Create another filter.

    1. Click the little wrench icon on the new path to set a filter named Contact EXISTS (set the condition to ‘Total number of bundles’ is ‘Greater than’ ‘0’).
      This checks if the email search returns at least 1 result, therefore that customer exists. Click Save


    Step 6: Add The Text Aggregator
    Do this if you want line items or other data from the order to appear in the Description box on Bigin. For us, we wanted line items of ordered product.

    1. Click the plus sign directly to the right of your Iterator and select the module named Text Aggregator and then toggle on the advanced settings. 

    In the settings panel:

    1. Source Module: Select your Iterator from the dropdown menu. This is where it will pull data from. Make sure the Source Module is referencing your Iterator you just made.
    2. Row Separator: Select New row.
    3. Group by: Leave this completely blank! (If you put anything here, your text will black out).
    4. Anything in green in the image below is a bubble you can select from the menu that pops up when you click in the box.

      These are the choices that worked for us, because we needed a product name, what variation they chose (color/type), and the quantity. Type it how it looks here and use the bubbles to fill in data you need. This is just what we chose, you can experiment with what works for you.


      Settings above will output info in Bigin like below:
      Yes, that’s a real item title. Go buy one of our stickers, they’re cool.

    Step 7: Create a Pipeline

    Wait... we’re making a job not a pipeline right? For some reason in the Make/Bigin connection, they have named this ‘Create a Pipeline’ and not ‘Job’. Maybe they’ll fix that later but as of today (6/12/26), Pipeline = Job for this purpose. You’re looking for Create a Pipeline.

    1. Click the small plus sign (+) on the right edge of your Text Aggregator module, or your Iterator, if you chose to skip the Text Aggregator.
    2. Search for Bigin by Zoho CRM and select the action named Create a Pipeline.
      Again "Create a Pipeline" is simply the backend database name Zoho/Bigin uses for creating a new card. It will not overwrite your pipeline layout; it just adds a new entry.
    3. Configure the flat form fields. Here is how ours look:
    4. We have extra date columns that are required on other pipelines… I chose to enter the same date formatting in all of them.

      Potential Name: Click into the box and map your green Shopify 1. Name bubble (This automatically outputs your customer-facing order number string like #1081).

      Closing Date: Enter {{formatDate(now; "YYYY-MM-DD")}}
      Unfortunately, that will set the closing date to that same day… but for now, it works. There’s an add days variable function that I haven’t touched yet. If I do, I’ll add it in. Copy paste that code abode into the box and you’ll get this:
      **IF you have other pipelines with custom date entry options, they’re going to show up here. I chose to just repeat the same code in those boxes. See image.

      Stage: Click the dropdown arrow on the right side of the field and select your target column from the list (e.g., Order Placed).

      Contact ID: Look at the right side of this field row. Click the toggle switch labeled Map to turn it on (it will turn purple). This opens a text input box. Click into it, find your Bigin: Create a Contact step headers, and select the dark green Contact ID or ID bubble.

      Sub_Pipeline: Click the dropdown arrow on the right side of the field and select your active sub-board layout from the list (e.g., your standard sales pipeline name).

      Amount: Click into the box and map your green Shopify 1. Total price set: Amount bubble directly into the box.

      Description: If you want, you can bring the line items or other information  from the order into this space. I chose to use 1.Line items from the shopify menu to pull the ordered items into the description.

      Pipeline ID (At the very bottom): Scroll to the absolute bottom of the module settings panel. Click inside the Pipeline ID text box and type your 19-digit parent pipeline tracking number directly into the box. This is the number you went to find at the very top of this post before we started anything else.
    5. Click SAVE


    That’s it for the Contact Exists path!

    On the Contact DOES NOT EXIST path…

    1. Right click the Iterator you made on the Contact Exists path and select Duplicate. Drag the new module over to the right side of the Create a Contact Module on the Contact DOES NOT EXIST path to that there is now an Iterator to the right of Create a Contact. You shouldn’t need to change anything inside the Iterator, it will still pull Line Items.

    2. Duplicate the Text Aggregator in the same way and pull that up to the right side of the new Iterator. Click on it to open it. You want to change the top box that says Source Module to say the Iterator that we JUST created. It will default to connecting to the other iterator because of the duplication step. The little numbers to the right of each module name on your map will tell you which one is which. Mine is numbered 46.

    3. Duplicate the Create a Pipeline Module from the other path. Click on it to open it. One small difference between my two paths is where the Contact ID is pulled from.

      Contact Exists: this box says ID
      Contact DOES NOT EXIST: this box says Contact ID
      Gonna be real… I’m burnt out at this point and I can’t remember why I did it this way, but this is working.
    4. Click Save. 

       

    5. At the bottom of the page/your Make.com Scenario, click Run Once to test. 

      I suggest making draft orders for yourself in Shopify, clicking the payment due later button so you can create an order without payment, and then run testing. You’ll have to do this again after every test if you need to keep testing, because this set up only checks for orders placed since the last test.

      1. No errors?: Great! Next step. 

      2. Didn’t work: Honestly, I recommend sending some screenshots of where it breaks to the shopify sidekick… it’s surprisingly helpful and may be able to answer where the breakdown is.
        **Remember to go into the content section of your website and delete screenshots you share with the sidekick or they’ll sit there forever taking up space.




    Optimizing Your Credit Budget

    Every background scan Make.com runs against your storefront counts as an operation credit. Running a check every 15 minutes (the default schedule) will consume 2,976 credits a month, passing the 1,000 credit free tier limit in days. Each module needs one credit to run. If module 1 runs and doesn’t find a new order, that’s one credit used. If it finds a new order, it will run the other modules until it either finishes or hits an error, which is a maximum of 6 credits used per order with this set up.

    What we did to maximize our 1,000 free monthly credits:

    1. Click the text that says “every ___ minutes” sitting next to the purple Run Once button at the bottom of your workspace in Make.
    2. Set Run scenario to At regular intervals and change the Minutes field to 30.
    3. Expand the Advanced scheduling toggles and restrict the execution hour range to match your operational business hours (I set ours to 09:00 to 16:00 (4pm), Monday through Friday, no weekends or after-hours checks).

      With that schedule our credit use looks like:

      Total Background Check Cost: 374 credits used monthly on checking for new orders (17 checks × 22 business days).

    Credits Preserved for Sales: 626 credits left over in the budget (1,000 total − 374 checks). These will only end up being used if we have a purchase. I burned through a hundred or so testing my scenario over and over.

    Maximum Orders Supported: 208 complete transactions per month (626 available credits ÷ 3 credits consumed per successful order).


    Slide the main scenario power toggle switch next to the text that now says “every 30 minutes” at the bottom left corner of your canvas from OFF to ON, close your browser, and enjoy your new, automated pipeline assistant! 


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