Connect Clover POS

#Before you start

You need a Clover Merchant ID and a merchant-specific API token with permission to read inventory. Confirm whether the merchant is in North America, Europe, Latin America, or Clover Sandbox before connecting it.

CMS Max reads Clover products, categories, category assignments, and item stock. It does not create Clover orders or change Clover data in this release.

#Connect CMS Max

1. Install and activate Clover POS from Plugins. Only one POS connector can be installed on a site.
2. Open eCommerce > POS Sync > Settings > Credentials.
3. Select the Clover API environment that contains the merchant.
4. Enter the Merchant ID and API Token.
5. Save. CMS Max validates product access and stores the token securely.
6. Open eCommerce > POS Sync > Dashboard, select Check POS Status, and confirm that Products, Categories, and Inventory all pass.

A token rejected with HTTP 401 is invalid, expired, revoked, or belongs to a different Clover environment. HTTP 403 normally means the token is missing inventory permission. If Clover rate-limits the validation request while credentials are being saved, CMS Max keeps the submitted credentials rather than blocking unrelated configuration. Run Check POS Status after the retry window to confirm that the environment, Merchant ID, token, and read permissions are correct.

#Review mappings and rules

Clover uses these starting mappings:

• Clover item ID → CMS Max SKU and stable POS identity
• Clover code → GTIN
• Clover name → Name
• Clover price → Price in cents
• Clover item stock → Inventory

You can change the visible CMS Max field mappings before applying products. The stable relationship to Clover continues to use the item ID.

After fetching products, Suggest with AI can profile real catalogue values and propose merchant-specific mapping improvements for review. Clover's documented selling-price, inventory, item-type, and tax-rate semantics remain guarded; suggestions are most useful when a merchant uses name, onlineName, description, code, or sku differently from the defaults.

An item can belong to multiple Clover categories. For a new product, CMS Max uses the first mapped Clover association as its primary category and attaches the remaining mapped associations as additional categories. On later synchronizations, CMS Max keeps the current primary category while Clover still associates it with the item; if Clover removes it, the first remaining mapped association becomes primary. This avoids changing primary categories merely because Clover returned the same associations in a different order.

Clover subcategories retain their parent-child hierarchy in CMS Max. If Clover removes a category or subcategory, the next successful category scan retires its imported mapping and applies the normal category archive rules.

When Category Assignment is Sync, Clover's mapped associations are authoritative: CMS Max removes additional categories that are no longer attached in Clover, including manually added CMS Max categories, and clears all additional categories when Clover returns none. Select Don't change when CMS Max category assignments should remain manually controlled.

Clover items marked unavailable remain in the catalogue and are synchronized as out of stock. Product inclusion is controlled through the imported POS product and category mapping screens.

When a product is configured to use LiquorMax but has no usable GTIN, CMS Max still creates and publishes the product according to its product rules. It remains visible in the missing-liquor-data dashboard until a GTIN is supplied or the product is excluded from LiquorMax; Central enrichment is skipped until then.

#Run the first synchronization

1. From More sync options, select Fetch All Products from Clover.
2. Review POS Sync > Categories, mappings, exclusions, and representative products.
3. Select Apply Fetched Products to Site.
4. Confirm prices, GTINs, categories, stock, and public visibility on several products.
5. Resolve every record under Needs Attention before enabling automation.

Clover inventory is initially read from the complete item-stock collection after products are staged. Products omitted from the item-stock response retain their previous quantity, while an item's unavailable flag still marks it out of stock.

#Schedule updates

Use Product Updates (includes inventory) for routine catalogue reconciliation and Additional Inventory Updates when stock needs a different frequency. Either schedule can run at an interval or daily, weekly, or monthly. After the initial snapshots, routine runs ask Clover only for products and stock modified since the last safely completed boundary, with a small overlap to avoid missing changes at the edge of a run. CMS Max also performs complete daily product and inventory audits. A failed run does not advance either boundary.

Clover runs are safe to repeat: source pages are staged idempotently, incremental runs request deleted products as well as active changes, and only a complete successful product snapshot can reconcile products that have disappeared from Clover. A completely successful category scan is authoritative and retires omitted Clover categories; a failed scan leaves existing categories and the product cursor unchanged. Temporary network failures, server failures, and rate limits retry automatically.