Integrated systems that sync sales, inventory, and financial data provide several benefits to ecommerce businesses.
Here, by integrated systems we mean connecting your online store with your accounting platforms.
If you’re already spending hours manually transferring your WooCommerce sales data into Xero, you’re on the right page.
In this article, we’ll explore how to eliminate hours of tedious data entry and reduce costly errors by setting up Woocommerce Xero integration with custom Xero app, API integrations and third party tools, like Webgility- offering extensions/plugins to make this entire process seamless.
Ready to get started with your Woocommerce Xero integration? Let’s dive-in!
WooCommerce works as an open-source ecommerce tool based on WordPress. It runs more than 20% of online stores worldwide. It is a reliable choice for small and mid-sized business owners who want to shape their store's experience their own way.
Xero is an online accounting tool that lets users handle tasks like invoicing, bank reconciliation, payroll, tax filing, and financial reports. Its intuitive interface and deep integrations make it ideal for online sellers.
WooCommerce Xero integration improves your business operations by automating critical data flows and ensuring consistency across your sales and accounting platforms.
Key functionalities include:
Automatically transfer WooCommerce orders into Xero as invoices. This includes:
Managing taxes, shipping costs, and discounts plays a key role in keeping finances accurate and compliant. This integration helps:
This integration ensures your WooCommerce stock levels are synchronized with Xero by automatically updating inventory when sales occur. It extends to product variations, bundles, and backorders and can also send alerts to reorder stock when it gets too low.
For businesses selling through multiple channels, the integration consolidates WooCommerce sales with other platforms like Amazon, eBay, or brick-and-mortar stores. This unified approach provides comprehensive financial reporting by aggregating all revenue streams in one location.
This WooCommerce Xero integration is designed for ecommerce sellers of all business sizes:
If you're a WooCommerce store owner experiencing an increase in order volume, product SKUs, or regional sales, managing your books manually becomes a growing burden. This integration can:
This also helps sellers who are stepping into new markets, juggling multiple shipping methods, or dealing with complicated financials during tax season.
Manual processes not only eat up billable hours but also increase the risk of discrepancies across clients. With WooCommerce Xero integration, accountants can:
This means better service for clients and more capacity for growth without increasing headcount.
Agencies and consultants working with multichannel sellers often struggle to recommend or manage reliable and scalable accounting solutions. Manual accounting introduces risk and inconsistency that can hurt client satisfaction.
This is where this integration helps multichannel sellers in ensuring:
In short, it equips consultants with the tools they need to deliver high-value services and simplify their operations.
You can integrate WooCommerce and Xero in several ways, each with different levels of complexity and features:
Xero's app marketplace offers integration tools to link the two platforms. These apps make the connection smooth and provide trustworthy features along with dependable support. However, the most tools on its App Store won't provide you advanced customization options.
Choosing the official method ensures support straight from Xero and keeps compatibility intact when updates roll out. On the downside, these options come with higher costs and standardized features instead of tailored ones.
To meet unique needs, businesses can use custom integration by combining APIs from both platforms. This option gives them full flexibility and helps create workflows that fit their exact processes. It may also handle tricky situations where standard solutions fall short.
However, choosing this integration method requires extensive developer expertise who understand both WooCommerce and Xero APIs. Moreover, it includes a high maintenance burden, no out-of-the-box features, and lacks dedicated support.
The WordPress plugin library includes various tools to connect WooCommerce with Xero, like Webgility. These tools let users adjust settings more and sometimes come with extra features missing from official apps.
Here are some popular plugin options:
This basic plugin from WooCommerce allows you to transfer order and payment data to Xero automatically. Features include generating simple invoices, setting up tax mapping, and syncing payment statuses.
However, this plugin is not an ideal fit for multichannel sellers with high-volume sales, as it offers standardized features, focuses on core order and payment syncing, and lacks advanced customization, multichannel support, and deeper automation options that complex or high-volume operations often require.
Webgility is a powerful tool designed to handle ecommerce accounting. It offers a plugin/extension that connects directly to your WooCommerce store, allowing it to download orders, sync inventory, and manage ecommerce data automatically.
It enables businesses to manage complex tasks like custom order, mapping, handling different currencies, managing partial payments, processing refunds, and gathering combined reports from various sales platforms.
This tool works well for agencies, accountants, and businesses aiming to grow while keeping operations precise and scalable.
Zapier allows users to create "Zaps" on its no-code automation platform. These Zaps move data between WooCommerce and Xero whenever certain actions happen, like making a new order or creating an invoice in Xero.
Not all integrations are created equal. Here’s what to prioritize:
Opt for tools that offer white glove onboarding, automatic mapping of data, and ready-to-use templates for invoices and accounts. Being able to sync everything in just a few hours instead of spending days is a big help when accounting teams or busy merchants are under pressure.
Webgility offers a no-code setup experience with white glove onboarding support to help you configure everything correctly from the start.
Your business processes are unique, and your integration tool should accommodate this reality. Custom workflows let the tool adjust to your system so you don’t have to change how you operate.
Mapping sales tax, discounts, and shipping fees into Xero makes reporting clear and accurate no matter where you do your business. This reduces manual work and helps you meet tax rules without headaches.
Modern ecommerce businesses often involve international sales and are surrounded with complex refund scenarios. A good integration tool takes care of these while keeping your financial records correct.
Pro tip: Unlike basic integrations, Webgility handles complex ecommerce scenarios like international sales, multi-currency transactions, returns/refunds and advanced tax mapping. This accounting automation platform also ensures that all relevant transaction data is accurately categorized and synced in real time.
Quickly connect WooCommerce to Xero using Webgility.
Webgility helps you automate your ecommerce accounting by connecting your WooCommerce store to Xero. Follow these steps to connect these platforms through Webgility:
Note: If this is the first sales channel that you are setting up, read the getting started process here.
Also verify that:
This integration offers much more than you can expect. Starting from syncing sales data, payments, and customer information between WooCommerce and Xero, its role expands beyond helping you access cash flow reports and tax-ready financial data.
The system also tracks the COGS automatically and can manage inventory levels by syncing stock data. This gives you accurate profitability analysis for each product, channel, and helps prevent overselling.
For most ecommerce businesses, the best way to integrate WooCommerce with Xero is through third-party tools for faster setup, deeper automation.
Unlike custom API builds, accounting automation tool like Webgility offers ready-to-go integration with robust features like real-time sync of orders, inventory, taxes, and payouts.
While official Xero apps are stable, they often lack customization and advanced workflows. Webgility gives you control over how your data flows, whether you want summary or order-level sync.
Witness how this integration is the simplest solution that meets your current needs, with room to upgrade as your business grows.
Book a demo or chat with our ecommerce experts today.