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There are often multiple paths to the same destination and this holds true with Shopify and your bookkeeping in Quickbooks Online.
This post is intended to give you an alternative to the Shopify Quickbooks Integration.
Many small business owners are using Shopify to sell tangible items and it seems to be a pretty solid ecommerce solution. Bookkeeping can get tricky due to a number of factors such as: currency conversions, returns/chargebacks, and Shopify’s fees.
I recently discovered that Shopify has an app that integrates with Quickbooks Online. Since I have a few clients who are using Shopify I thought I’d see how the Shopify app may save me time vs. how I have been handling things.
My Two Cents on the Shopify app for Quickbooks Online
Pros:
- It has the ability to create customers and attach sales receipts to specific customers.
- Sales are recorded by Product. Shopify will create new products as needed. You’ll have to edit the income accounts (in Quickbooks) after Shopify creates the QB products if you want to keep track of the sales by Product.
- It can be set up to export sales from Shopify and import into Quickbooks Online automatically or manually.
Cons:
- Currently only available for Shopify users in the US, UK, Australia and Canada
- Based on user feedback and questions there seems to be issues with sales taxes (be aware that there are other issues with Shopify collecting the proper sales taxes which are not related to the app)
- Returns go back into the same income account as the sale originally went into (most business owners typically want to track returns separately on their Profit & Loss).
Things to Consider: Will the Shopify app will make your bookkeeping more efficient?
- Do you need to track sales by customer and / or product in Quickbooks or can you just pull up the information in Shopify if the need arises?
- Do you need to track returns separately on the P&L? You could also edit those specific transactions after they are imported but it’s extra work.
- Do you have Shopify Stores that are not in the US, UK, Canada or Australia?
Potential Concerns with the Shopify app for Quickbooks:
- It would be very easy to not map out the accounts properly at the time of setup. Enuf’ said?
- The level of transaction detail could be very useful. However, the more detailed things are in QBO the greater likelihood for errors which means there will be more time needed to manually review reports for accuracy.
- The Shopify Holding account could accidentally (or intentionally) be used in error during the course of other day to day bookkeeping which could cause multiple problems (it shouldn’t be used by anything other than the app).
- How does it handle currency conversions (I didn’t get to test this out)?
All in all the app seems pretty solid and it is worth considering if you need a high level of detail.
Another Path To The Same Destination
You may want to consider this alternate method of recording Shopify sales, returns, and associated fees if you don’t need a high level of detail.
The method shown in this video tutorial is a quick and easy way to record sales and returns in a way that won’t require a lot of manual time to review the accuracy of data because it’s not tracking sales by Product and there is no “Shopify Holding” account that could accidentally be used or you have Shopify stores that are not supported by the app.
NOTE: Sales Tax is NOT addressed in this video as I run sales tax reports from Shopify once a quarter.
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Notice: We cannot and do not guarantee results and we take no liability in relation to how the information in this post and video are utilized by the end user.