Plex and Walmart Marketplace integration

What moves between them

Sales order items and pricing from Plex flow into Walmart Marketplace as inventory listings and price updates. Inventory quantity from Plex syncs to Walmart Marketplace on a configurable schedule (5- to 15-minute intervals recommended) to keep stock levels current across the channel and prevent overselling. Completed orders from Walmart Marketplace are pulled back into Plex at the same polling interval as sales order records, mapped to Plex customer accounts and GL accounts for revenue recognition and inventory tracking. Reconciliation reports from Walmart Marketplace, containing settlement amounts and payout dates, are also pulled into Plex for financial reconciliation.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both Plex OAuth credentials (client ID and secret) and Walmart Marketplace credentials encrypted, and obtains Bearer tokens from each platform on a scheduled interval or when a token expires. Plex's polling requirement means ml-connector queries the Plex REST API on a configurable interval filtered by modified_date to catch new sales orders, inventory changes, and pricing updates. On the Walmart Marketplace side, ml-connector can either subscribe to webhooks for instant order and inventory notifications, or poll the Walmart Marketplace API for orders, returns, and reports if webhooks are not enabled. A critical gotcha on Walmart Marketplace is the non-standard header WM_SEC.ACCESS_TOKEN instead of the Authorization header, and the 15-minute token expiry means tokens must be refreshed before every batch of requests. Plex imposes role-based permissions, so the integration user must have sufficient roles to read sales orders, inventory, and GL accounts, or queries return empty results. Inventory quantity from Plex is mapped to Walmart Marketplace ship nodes based on a configurable mapping, and pricing is synced with an awareness that Walmart Marketplace has a 100-updates-per-hour rate limit for single-item price changes, so bulk price feeds should be used instead for large updates. Every order, inventory adjustment, and reconciliation pull carries a full audit trail and can be replayed if a downstream posting fails.

A real-world example

A mid-sized discrete manufacturer in automotive components runs Plex for production, procurement, and finance, and sells components to distributors and direct buyers through Walmart Marketplace. Before integration, the sales team manually entered orders from Walmart Marketplace into Plex after extracting them, and inventory updates were delayed or manual, causing stockouts and overselling. With Plex and Walmart Marketplace connected, new orders flow into Plex automatically each time the sync runs, inventory quantities are updated in near real-time on Walmart Marketplace whenever stock is received or allocated in Plex, and the finance team has a clear audit trail of all marketplace orders for revenue recognition at month-end close.

What you can do

• •Sync part inventory quantity from Plex to Walmart Marketplace to keep online stock levels current and prevent overselling across channels.
• •Push pricing changes from Plex to Walmart Marketplace, using bulk feeds to avoid API rate limits on high-volume price updates.
• •Pull completed orders from Walmart Marketplace into Plex as sales orders mapped to the correct customer and GL accounts for revenue recognition.
• •Retrieve Walmart Marketplace reconciliation reports and settlement data for financial reconciliation and payout tracking against Plex revenue records.
• •Authenticate both Plex and Walmart Marketplace with OAuth 2.0, handling token expiry and the non-standard Walmart Marketplace token header automatically.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Plex and Walmart Marketplace?

The primary flow is from Plex to Walmart Marketplace: inventory quantity, pricing, and product information sync regularly to keep Walmart Marketplace listings current. Orders and reconciliation reports flow from Walmart Marketplace back into Plex as sales records for invoicing and financial reconciliation. Plex inventory adjustments trigger updates to Walmart Marketplace within the polling interval.

How does ml-connector handle Plex's polling-only architecture and Walmart Marketplace's optional webhooks?

Plex does not offer webhooks, so ml-connector polls the Plex REST API on a configurable interval (typically 5 to 15 minutes) using modified_date filtering to catch new or updated sales orders, inventory, and pricing. Walmart Marketplace supports webhooks for instant notifications on orders and inventory, but ml-connector can also poll the Marketplace API for orders, returns, and reports if webhooks are not enabled or preferred.

What is the critical gotcha with Walmart Marketplace OAuth tokens?

Walmart Marketplace OAuth tokens expire after 15 minutes and are presented in a non-standard header WM_SEC.ACCESS_TOKEN instead of the Authorization header, which is different from most OAuth flows. ml-connector automatically refreshes the token before expiry and presents it in the correct header, but developers integrating manually must account for this non-standard behavior. Additionally, single-item price updates are rate-limited to 100 per hour on Walmart Marketplace, so bulk price feeds should be used for large updates.