Connecting your web shop to your bookkeeping

The first month of a web shop, you type the orders into your bookkeeping by hand and it is fine. By the time it is not fine, you have a backlog and a quarter to close.

Connecting the two is one of the few automations that pays for itself immediately. It is also one of the easiest to get subtly wrong.

Decide which system is the truth

Before any connection, answer one question: where does a customer's order officially exist?

For almost every small shop the answer is the shop — it is where the payment happened and where the customer looks. The bookkeeping is then a downstream copy, and the flow runs one way. Say this out loud before you start, because two-way syncing between systems that both think they are right is how small shops end up with duplicate invoices.

What actually needs to flow

Less than people assume. Four things:

• The order, as an invoice or a receipt with its number
• The payment, matched to that order
• The refund, when there is one
• The VAT rate per line, which is the one that goes wrong quietly

Customer records usually do not need to flow. Copying every buyer into your accounting package creates a second pile of personal data to secure, keep current and delete on request, in exchange for very little.

The four things that break it

VAT rates. Different rates per product, or cross-border sales, and the mapping has to be explicit. This is the single most common cause of a connection that "works" until the accountant reads it.

Refunds and partial refunds. Many setups sync the sale and forget the reverse, so the books slowly drift upwards.

Payment fees. What lands in your bank is the order minus the provider's fee. If the connection books the gross and the bank shows the net, nothing reconciles.

Order numbering. Two systems generating their own sequences is a problem you only notice at year end.

Do this before you automate

Close one month by hand, deliberately, and write down every decision you made: which date you used, how you handled a refund, where the fee went. That list is the specification for the connection, and it is the thing that makes the difference between an automation you trust and one you check every week.

Then ask your accountant to look at the first automated month. Once.

Keep it boring

A connection that moves four things in one direction, with VAT mapped explicitly and refunds handled, will run for years. Anything cleverer than that is usually solving a problem you do not have yet.

And know how you would notice a silent failure — the most common outcome is not an error, it is orders quietly not arriving for eleven days.

Related: the general version of this decision is when a connection is worth building at all. If your shop is still on a standard theme and you are wondering whether to change that, start here.

Frequently asked

Should customer details sync to my accounting package?

Usually not. An invoice needs a name and, if you ship, an address — not your whole customer list. Copying every buyer creates a second store of personal data you must secure, keep accurate and delete on request, in exchange for very little.

Why do my shop totals not match my bank?

Almost always payment fees. What arrives in the bank is the order minus the provider's fee, so if the connection books the gross amount and the bank shows the net, nothing reconciles until the fee is booked as its own cost line.