WooCommerce accounting: How to manage multiple payment methods
Kaci Carson
November 17, 2023
As an e-commerce store owner using WooCommerce, you likely want to offer customers various payment options at checkout. WooCommerce supports many popular payment methods, including credit cards, bank transfers, and digital wallets. However, with more payment options comes additional complexity in your accounting procedures.
To properly track funds and ensure accurate records of what was sold and paid for, you need to set up accounting methods that accommodate for each payment type. Understanding how different payment methods work is key to managing your WooCommerce accounting and keeping your store finances in order as you scale your business. In this article, we’ll explore tips and best practices for managing multiple payment methods.
Benefits of offering multiple payment options for your WooCommerce store
Customers have different preferences when it comes to paying for goods and services online. Some prefer the speed and security of credit cards, while others prefer digital wallets or bank transfers. As an e-commerce store owner, it’s a good idea to provide customers with choice by integrating a variety of payment gateways and options.
This could include major credit cards like Visa and Mastercard through a payment gateway like Stripe, popular digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, buy now pay later (BNPL) options like AfterPay, direct bank transfers, cash on delivery, and more.
Providing more payment options makes the checkout process easier for customers and increases your chances of making a sale and helps to diversify your payment options. In fact, a recent cart abandonment survey discovered that 8% of customers would exit at checkout if their preferred payment option wasn’t offered.
What is WooCommerce’s default payment method?
When you first install WooCommerce, you’ll have four payment methods available. These are Bank Accounts Clearing System (BACS), Check (or cheque) payments, Cash on delivery (COD) and PayPal. Woo also offers WooPayments which is a fully integrated payment solution.
To check what your WooCommerce default payment method is set to, go to WooCommerce > Settings > General and then scroll down to Default Payment Method. It is generally set to Check (or cheque) by default. You can change your settings here.
To view settings for WooPayments, go to Payments > Settings. From here, you can choose to enable Google Pay, Apple Pay or Link by Stripe. Other settings include where and when WooPayments will deposit into your bank account, fraud protection, multi-currency support and more.
What do I need to automate my WooCommerce accounting
To start, you need to choose what payment methods you want to offer. A payment gateway with automation features, like Stripe or PayPal, can make handling payments more efficient. Stripe offers “Instant Payouts” to automatically move funds to your bank account when they are cleared from credit cards. Stripe and PayPal also provide reports and tools to reconcile incoming payments efficiently.
To streamline your WooCommerce accounting, it is recommended using automation tools and software integrations. First, locate a cloud-based accounting platform that syncs seamlessly with WooCommerce, such as QuickBooks Online, Xero or MYOB. This will be used as your general ledger and your source of truth for all things accounting and finance.
Through Amaka, you’re able to integrate your WooCommerce store with your accounting software. The integration will sync sales data from across all payment methods from WooCommerce into QuickBooks Online, Xero or MYOB on a daily basis. Transaction fees, coupons, revenue from shipping, and adjustments are synced as well. This eliminates tedious manual data entry and reduces mistakes.
Maximizing automation is essential to simplifying your WooCommerce accounting and scaling your e-commerce business. With the appropriate tools and integrations, much of the accounting can run seamlessly without demanding hours of manual work.
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How does an accounting integration deal with multiple payment methods?
Amaka’s accounting integrations make it easy to offer multiple payment options through WooCommerce by supporting WooPayments, Stripe, PayPal and any other methods. We sync sales data every day and break it down by payment method. If you enable foreign currency, we can also break the data down by currency.
Clearing accounts are created for each payment method as well. These act as a temporary account in your accounting software to represent the payments that have been made by your customer but haven’t been deposited into your bank account by the payment processor. Clearing accounts also simplify the bank feed reconciliation process.
How to set up a WooCommerce accounting integration
Integrating WooCommerce with your accounting software is a simple process. You can choose from the Express, Guided or Advanced setup options. The Express option gets you up and running in just a couple minutes with default settings. For example, follow these steps to integrate WooCommerce + QuickBooks Online, using our Express setup option:
- Go to the Amaka dashboard.
- Click New integration and select WooCommerce + QuickBooks Online.
- Sign in to your WooCommerce account by clicking Connect new account and grant all relevant permissions.
- Ensure pretty permalinks are enabled in WooCommerce.
- Confirm that your WooCommerce version is 5.8 or higher, and your WordPress version is 4.4 or greater.
- Authenticate your QuickBooks Online account following the guided authentication process, then click Save + Continue.
- Follow the wizard to choose your preferred setup method, invoice breakdown, invoice format, mapping and scheduler options to complete the setup of the integration.
- Click Save + Continue to finish and activate the integration.
The Guided setup option allows you to schedule a 30-minute Zoom call with one of our Integration Specialists who can walk you through the entire process. Finally, the Advanced setup option is recommended for accounting professionals and allows you to customize your account mapping.
Key takeaways on managing WooCommerce payment methods
While adding additional payment gateways can become a tedious task, when you have an understanding of automation you’ll be able to apply new payment gateways with ease. Having these additional WooCommerce payment options is a game changer for your e-commerce store.