Xero Shopify Integration – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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Here at CloudCounting we have many eCommerce clients using the Xero Shopify Integration.  It is a free app that is downloadable in the Apps section of Shopify, and it works reasonably well.  Here is a recap of how the app works:

To set up the integration between your Shopify Store and Xero App, click here to watch a brief video from Shopify showing you the steps involved.

The Good

  1. The Xero Shopify app is free! Yes … FREE. Update (Feb/19) … well it was free – it is now only free when you have less than 30 orders a month.  For more than 30 orders, there is a tiered pricing plan that you must subscribe to.
  2. Shopify has a lovely integration, whereby each customer invoice is created in the Customer’s name, the Shopify invoice number is entered in the reference, and the payment reference is noted as the payment type (i.e. Paypal, Shopify, afterpay, eBay, etc..)
  3. Shopify also pushes in their fee associated with each payout, as a spend money transaction
  4. Shopify creates credit notes for customer refunds and other adjustments
  5. When tax rates are set up correctly in Shopify, the integration for BAS works very well
  6. You can map different payment bank accounts in Xero for the various payment options offered in your Shopify store.
  7. You are given the option to manually or automatically sync your orders from Shopify to Xero

The Bad

  1. There is no intelligence in Xero to match a bank deposit with a subset of Shopify invoices and the related payout fee.
  2. For Shopify stores that have more than 50 sales per day, the Shopify to Xero data could overwhelm Xero and matching could become time consuming
  3. There is no integration between Shopify and Xero for inventory – so a new add on solution would have to be introduced to track perpetual inventory in Xero
  4. Orders cannot be synced more than once to Xero, so if a change is made in Shopify, the change does not find its way to Xero

The Ugly

  1. Shopify does not offer a batched payment option, so for high volume stores (more than 50 invoices a day) the sync may not be an option
  2. There is no option to toggle payment on or off so all payments are synced to Xero
  3. Open (unpaid) Shopify orders are not synced to Xero, ever.

How to match unreconciled bank transactions with the Shopify Sync:

The process involved here requires some training, but once we show you how to match you should be able to do most of the data entry yourself.  Be careful not to code your bank transactions directly to sales, because if you do your revenue will show up as doubled – you must MATCH each bank deposit to the net result of the payout figure (individual invoices, less adjustments, and payout fees).

We offer remote training using Zoom to clients to show you how to bookkeep using Xero and Shopify, and after this we can coach you to answer questions, and assist you with BAS and Tax Returns.  Click here to book a session today.  We send you a video of the session so you can watch back in your own time and this saves you having to take notes during the session.  We specialize in eCommerce and work with clients all over Australia.