A Guide to Setting Up WooCommerce Accounting
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform that can transform your WordPress website into an online store. Since it doesn’t exactly offer accounting features, store owners have to search for effective ways to manage their financial records. In this article, we’ll explore how to navigate WooCommerce accounting and also how to integrate some popular accounting plugins or software.
Benefits of running proper WooCommerce accounting
WooCommerce offers many useful features such as order tracking, various payment methods, inventory management, shipping management, store analytics, etc. But it doesn’t provide functionality for store accounting.
However, you can do proper WooCommerce accounting by using automation tools. They help to streamline the entire process, save lots of time and money, and provide valuable data about your business. Below are some of the benefits of automating your accounting in WooCommerce.
- Keeping accurate business records
Accounting software eliminates the need for manual data entry and calculations. This helps to minimize human error and increase the accuracy of your business’s financial records.
- Saving time and money
Bookkeeping and accounting are some of the most time-consuming tasks for businesses. But automating these processes saves you time and money and allows you to focus on other business needs instead.
- Managing assets and inventory
Automated accounting for WooCommerce enables you to manage your assets and inventory more efficiently. This is most helpful for those who keep large amounts of inventory.
- Monitoring financial KPIs
The status of your business is often reflected in financial statements such as balance sheets, profit or loss statements, and income and cash flow statements. You can use automation to help you prepare financial statements easily.
- Getting access to real-time data
Accounting software puts you in charge of your business data. You can track product orders, failed and successful transactions, payroll and vendor payments, etc. It helps business owners to see what goes on in real time.
- Making more informed decisions
Proper accounting for WooCommerce ensures that all your financial records are accurate and organized. You can easily analyze your reports so you can make better business decisions.
- Handling taxes properly
Businesses need to pay taxes to be compliant with state or federal laws. Accounting software can help to review your financial records for a certain period and determine how much sales tax your business needs to pay.
Some popular WooCommerce accounting software
Accounting software helps to automate manual accounting tasks, ensure data security, and make it easier for you to scale your business. Let’s discuss some accounting software that businesses can integrate with WooCommerce.
QuickBooks Online is an accounting software that helps business owners with bookkeeping. It’s excellent for tracking customers, income, payroll, expenses, inventory, and overall sales transactions. WooCommerce easily integrates with QuickBooks and allows store owners to sync inventory, sales, budgets, and taxes. They offer a range of pricing plans starting at $26 per month with a free 30-day trial.
Xero is another accounting software that allows businesses to manage their finances without stress. Integrating WooCommerce with Xero lets you sync your orders, sales, and inventory in real time. Xero is easy-to-use, offers good reporting tools, multi-currency accounting, and allows you to add unlimited users at each membership level. Their plan starts at $13 per month with a free 30-day trial.
FreshBooks is a great accounting app that you can use to handle your company’s finances. It helps to manage invoices, expenses, time tracking, and reports. Although FreshBooks is better for businesses that provide services, you can integrate it with your WooCommerce store. Once an order is placed on your site, the app will automatically generate invoices, and there are different payment methods to choose from. The smallest plan costs $15 per month with a free 30-day trial for new users.
How to integrate WooCommerce with Quickbooks?
QuickBooks is also known as a small business accounting software. It can help WooCommerce users manage their income and expenses as well as track transactions. There are two ways to connect QuickBooks to WooCommerce. Let’s check them out below.
This is a powerful plugin that allows you to integrate WooCommerce with QuickBooks Online. It’s easy to set up, offers seamless data sync, and gives you complete control of your data. It’s available in the WooCommerce marketplace for $99 per year.
This is a customizable and robust integration for syncing your WooCommerce accounting with QuickBooks. It helps to save time, increase accuracy, and automate your accounting. For example, this plugin syncs your data almost every 5 minutes. You can get started for free.
How to integrate WooCommerce with Xero?
Xero is an accounting solution that offers a variety of helpful features and functions for businesses. It provides real-time access to your finances and business performance. Let’s see how to integrate Xero with WooCommerce.
This extension helps to sync data automatically between WooCommerce and Xero. Once you install and activate it, accounting for WooCommerce becomes easier as all your sales data will be sent to your Xero account, and the necessary invoices will be generated. You can get started at $79 per year.
How to export WooCommerce accounting reports?
Every business needs to prepare accounting reports. They provide useful information about your business and sales performance. Some types of accounting reports include profit and loss statements, balance sheets, income, cash flow statement reports, etc. They help to show what your finances have been like. Accounting reports are very difficult to create manually, but you can use software to generate them.
Ways to export WooCommerce accounting reports
There are a few ways to export accounting information from WooCommerce. Here’s how to use them:
WooCommerce Reports
The Reports page in WooCommerce provides sales information for different timeframes. There are also graphs and charts to visually represent your store’s performance.
- Under the WooCommerce section on the WordPress menu bar, you can find Reports.
- On the Reports page, you’ll see the Export CSV button. Once you click on it, your data will be downloaded.
WooCommerce Analytics
The Analytics page on WooCommerce is a new reporting and data analytics tool that offers extra reports, complex filtering, segmenting tools, and a customizable dashboard.
- Navigate to Analytics and click on Revenue to view your sales data.
- On the Revenue page, scroll down to the section below and click Download.
Once you do, you’ll see a message that says, “Your Revenue Report will be emailed to you”.
WooCommerce Accounting Plugins
Accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero allows users to manage their finances and generate reports. You can export your data directly from your accounting app. They allow users to export to either PDF or CSV.
The native functionality in WooCommerce is great for basic reports. However, you can create better, richer, and more customizable reports using other options. For example, a data integration tool such as Coupler.io can export detailed reports from WooCommerce and load them directly into a spreadsheet tool.
Automate WooCommerce accounting reports
Just like accounting for WooCommerce, reports are better with automation. You can generate them much faster and reduce major errors. It increases productivity and allows store owners to effortlessly gather data for analysis. It’s also useful for those who need frequent reports.
For example, you can automate with Coupler.io – an easy-to-use no-code solution that can help you import data to your destination from a variety of sources. It is trusted by thousands of users, including business owners, accounting and finance experts, data analysts, etc.
With a few clicks, you can automatically export your WooCommerce data to a spreadsheet or workbook on a custom schedule. You can use this tool to connect WooCommerce to Google Sheets or send from WooCommerce to Excel.
Now, let’s see how to do this.
Export Woocommerce data with Coupler.io
First, create an account or log in to Coupler.io. Then follow the steps below to set up the importer for your accounting reports.
- On the homepage, click the Add Importer button. Select a Source and a Destination. And click Proceed. We’ll pick WooCommerce and Google Sheets.
- Connect your Source account, choose the Data entity, specify the Period, and click Jump to Destination Settings.
- Connect your Destination account, choose a Spreadsheet, select a Sheet, and Jump to Schedule Settings.
- Enable Automatic data refresh and set up the schedule for your imports. Then click Save and Run.
Note that the schedule can be as frequent as every 15 minutes, every hour, or every day depending on what your reporting needs are.
- Here’s an example of a WooCommerce sales report in Google Sheets.
Automate accounting reports from Xero or QuickBooks
Once you’ve integrated WooCommerce with Xero/QuickBooks, you may find yourself in need of exporting the accounting data into a friendly spreadsheet format. Coupler.io supports data exports from both accounting apps. Here’s a quick rundown on how to automate them too.
- Set up the Coupler.io importer and put your accounting tool (QuickBooks/Xero) as the source app. See the example below:
- Continue to set up the importer and choose a schedule for automated reports. We’ve already covered this in detail in the Automate WooCommerce accounting reports section. Below is what a balance sheet daily report from QuickBooks looks like:
WooCommerce allows you to export data entities such as products, customers, orders with line items, sales reports, product reviews, and other store-related data.
Both QuickBooks and Xero allow for exporting raw data such as products, customers, invoices, and reports (P&L Summary, Trial balance, General Ledger, etc.)
As a business owner or accountant, you may find it useful to integrate all the data from both store and accounting tools into a spreadsheet for more robust reporting and analytics.
Recap: Setting up accounting for WooCommerce
Accounting for WooCommerce can be tough to navigate, but various third-party tools can help to streamline and automate your administrative tasks.
When it comes to exporting accounting reports, you can rely on the native functionality in your WooCommerce store. You can also use a data integration tool like Coupler.io to automate data exports from your store or accounting software.
