WooCommerce Sage Integration: Your Options Compared

Option 1: a plugin or connector app

A plugin runs inside WooCommerce and sends orders to Sage as they come in. On WordPress.org, for example, Skillmerc Sync for Sage Accounting sends paid WooCommerce orders to Sage Accounting as a customer, a sales invoice with VAT on each line, and a payment. Third-party connector apps outside WordPress do similar jobs.

Suits: one shop, standard VAT, and orders in Sage as the main goal.

Check before you choose: how recently it was updated, how many sites use it, whether it handles refunds, and what it does when a sync fails. A connector that's cheap and fits your setup is a perfectly good answer.

Option 2: an automation tool such as Zapier

Zapier connects WooCommerce and Sage Accounting without any code. Its WooCommerce trigger fires on order events, and the Sage Accounting actions it lists include creating a customer and creating a sales invoice. Note that the WooCommerce trigger fires on order updates and deletions as well as new orders, so the setup needs a filter to only act on new ones.

Suits: low order volumes and a simple "new order, new invoice" flow.

Watch out for: Zapier's own running costs at your order volume (check its pricing page), and steps that fail without anyone noticing. Anything involving payments, refunds or mixed VAT gets fiddly quickly.

Option 3: a custom sync

A custom sync is built around your rules: how orders, customers, VAT, stock and payments should appear in Sage, agreed with your accountant. It costs more up front, but it does exactly what you need, it's yours, and failures are caught and flagged rather than quietly skipped. See Sage Accounting integration, and for prices, what a Sage integration costs.

Suits: several stores, mixed VAT, products that don't match one-to-one, stock managed in Sage, or payments that need reconciling against invoices.

What should map to what

Whichever option you choose, these are the connections that matter:

Agree the mapping with your accountant before anything is switched on, especially which ledger accounts sales and delivery charges go to, and how each VAT rate should be recorded.

Common problems

Duplicate customers. Guest checkouts, customers who change their email address and repeat buyers can each end up as a new contact in Sage. A good sync matches customers to existing contacts before creating new ones.

VAT that's a penny out. In version 3.1 of the Sage Accounting API, each invoice line carries its VAT amount, unless it's zero-rated, exempt or no-VAT. If the integration doesn't send exactly the figures WooCommerce calculated, the invoice in Sage can differ from the order by a penny. Sending WooCommerce's own line totals avoids it.

Refunds that never reach Sage. A refund in WooCommerce should become a credit note in Sage. Some simple setups only send new orders, so refunds have to be entered by hand, and your books and your shop slowly drift apart.

Failed syncs nobody notices. Sage limits how many requests an integration can make, a connection can need approving again, and a WooCommerce plugin update can break things. If a sync fails silently, you find out at month end. A good integration retries, logs every failure and tells you about the ones it can't fix.

Sage Accounting or Sage 50?

Sage Accounting is Sage's cloud software. It has an API (version 3.1, for the UK and Ireland) that integrations use to create invoices, contacts and payments. Everything above applies to it.

Sage 50 is Sage's desktop software. It connects to other systems differently, so the plugins, Zapier and API described above don't apply in the same way. There are connectors built for it, which suit Sage 50 users. Two examples:

• WooSage, by Vizulate, is listed on the Sage UK Marketplace. It connects WooCommerce to Sage 50 and syncs orders, stock, customers and prices.
• Zynk connects WooCommerce to Sage 50 UK. It runs on a Windows computer that has to stay switched on, and syncs every 15 minutes by default.

If you use Sage 50, tell me which version and how it's set up, and I'll advise on the options.

Before you connect anything

Make sure WooCommerce itself is working properly. Orders stuck on "pending payment", missing order emails or a checkout that fails sometimes will all carry their problems into Sage. If the shop needs sorting first, see WooCommerce fixes.

Using Xero rather than Sage? See Xero WooCommerce integration.

If you'd like a price for a custom sync, send a short spec by WhatsApp, text, email or the form: which Sage you use, how you take payment, and what you copy into Sage by hand now. See Sage Accounting integration for the details.