Managing Recurring Payments using WooCommerce QuickBooks Integration

WooCommerce business owners require bookkeeping software to manage their finances. QuickBooks provides compelling financial management tools that align well with their recurring payment workflows. But the problem is, there’s no way to directly connect QuickBooks with WooCommerce.

Reliance on external apps and plugins is needed. Fortunately, SubscriptionFlow helps bridge this gap in the most efficient way possible. SubscriptionFlow deals with recurring payments, and syncs billing data with QuickBooks automatically. In this way, it becomes a powerful connector between your WooCommerce store and QuickBooks’ accounting solutions.

Let’s find out how this connection works.

The Recurring Payment Challenge for WooCommerce Merchants

WooCommerce doesn’t help with recurring payments natively. It encourages businesses to use its WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin for that. However, that plugin doesn’t offer any direct connection with QuickBooks—a must-have accounting software for merchants.

And the recurring payment model amplifies this challenge. That’s because recurring payments are routine tasks that merchants have to perform. Each recurring payment advances the billing cycle, bringing in more revenue to be sorted.

The more subscribers a business has, the more payment cycles it needs to deal with. And it’s certainly going to have more complicated finances to manage.

If a direct link cannot be formed with QuickBooks, businesses have no choice but to manually enter their payment data in there. This can be risky; as even minor typing errors can distort a customer’s billing record.

These pain points call for automated accounting, that can be unlocked by syncing payment data with QuickBooks in real-time. And that requires smart middlemen like SubscriptionFlow.

Why Relying on WooCommerce & QuickBooks Alone Isn’t Enough

WooCommerce helps handle subscription products, and its native Subscriptions plugin helps with recurring billing processes. What it lacks though is the payment-data syncing functionality. Meaning, it can’t push data into QuickBooks on its own.

QuickBooks, on the other hand, is an effective accounting solution. However, for the accounting system to be truly effective, it needs to be fed error-free billing data continuously. Since WooCommerce, doesn’t allow that, it leads to these pain-points:

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• Manual data transfers

Each invoice’s data has to be typed in QuickBooks manually. Employees need to double check all their typed information to verify its accuracy. This increases their workload, and becomes more time-consuming than it needs to be.

For stores dealing with 1000+ customers, feeding invoices to the accounting system by hand is not feasible. Plus, manual entry of huge data quantities every billing cycle can be pretty frustrating too. 

• Delayed invoices

If WooCommerce store owners count on QuickBooks for their invoice generation as well, they may have to frequently deal with delayed bills. Because their subscription renewals aren’t linked with QuickBooks, triggering no invoice creation when any renewal date arrives.

In the absence of automation, invoicing flows have to be carried out in QuickBooks manually. This can lead to delayed invoice creation, further leading to delayed customer payments. What’s more, with a lot of customers to deal with, it’s easy for you to overlook some renewals, and create payment confusions.

• Mismatched records

Mismatched records are one potential accounting error that manual data handling causes. Inconsistency between financial records is created when manual payment reconciliation is attempted. Such inconsistencies are bad for audits.

And when payment reconciliation is delayed due to manual data exports and verifications, inaccurate revenue reports are generated.

• No real-time visibility

Businesses using QuickBooks for monitoring their KPIs and reporting can’t get access to real-time data. If their customers churn, they can’t access the updated churn rate right away. The same goes for their revenue trends, payment failures, and so on.

SubscriptionFlow Becomes the Central Integration Layer

SubscriptionFlow offers integration with both WooCommerce and QuickBooks. This means that WooCommerce merchants can use the SubscriptionFlow plugin for recurring billing, and for aligning their payment cycles with QuickBooks’ accounting tools.

They can link their subscription products with plans in SubscriptionFlow. Alternatively, they can also first create the subscription products in SubscriptionFlow, and sync them with WooCommerce. In any case, they tie their products with recurring payment cycles, so when any of their product is purchased, it activates recurring billing in SubscriptionFlow.

And when QuickBooks is brought to the mix too, it ensures that the billing data doesn’t stay in SubscriptionFlow only. Rather, it smoothly flows from the billing system into the accounting platform automatically.

Thus SubscriptionFlow essentially acts the central integration layer, making possible your WooCommerce store’s connection with QuickBooks. Here’s how this tech-stack assists:

• Syncs payment information in real-time

When a customer renews their subscription, their payments and invoices are posted to QuickBooks immediately. No time lag in between. So a payment appears in QuickBooks immediately when it is received from the customer and recorded in SubscriptionFlow.

It is then categorized as deferred revenue in the accounting platform, and is converted to earned revenue as the customer’s subscription cycle progresses. When data is synced in real-time like that, it helps businesses keep pace with their operations, and ensures that they don’t receive their most important updates late.

This means that they can also access those reports in QuickBooks that reflect real-time data, such as their balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

• Automates billing and reconciliation

SubscriptionFlow carries out billing automatically. It doesn’t need manual authorization each time a payment is due. As soon as it generates a customer’s invoice on their due date, this invoice is recorded in QuickBooks as well. The invoice’s due amount is reflected in the accounts receivable, and the invoice status is labelled as unpaid.

This greatly helps merchants track their invoice statuses (paid and pending), and reconcile their accounts. It means that they can match their received payments with what’s recorded in their billing and accounting systems to ensure that there are no inconsistencies.

When an invoice is paid, its payment recorded in the system, and received in the merchant’s account, it is marked as reconciled.

• Carries out payment retries to minimize failures

SubscriptionFlow allows merchants to retry their failed payments. It gives them the flexibility to set up the payment retry schedule of their choice. The billing system then carries out all the payment attempts following the schedule, automatically.

This increases the chances of successful payment collection, and speeds up the process too. Without the retry option, you have no choice but to entirely rely on the customer, and wait for them to pay.

While SubscriptionFlow carries out payment retries, QuickBooks ensures that each retry is documented along with its timestamp, and payment method. This assists in maintaining a transparent audit trail, and also assists merchants in examining the payment history of a customer.

For instance, they can tell whether a customer often creates failed payment situations, and how many retries it typically takes to retrieve their payment. Moreover, until the customer’s payment is recovered, their invoice status remains open in QuickBooks, ensuring that no false payments are recorded.

What You Get with WooCommerce + SubscriptionFlow + QuickBooks Integration

If you’re a WooCommerce merchant needing access to accounting with QuickBooks, SubscriptionFlow is a compelling option for you. It serves as an intermediary between your store and QuickBooks, and ensures that your payment information automatically lands into QuickBooks in real-time. These are some core benefits this integration provides:

• End-to-end billing & accounting automation

SubscriptionFlow not only automates complex billing cycles, but also shares payment data with QuickBooks seamlessly. This does away with manual data entries, allowing the accounting system to fetch data and categorize it under the right accounts automatically.

• Better cash flow visibility & data accuracy

You get a bird’s eye view of all your finances, including your accounts receivable, deferred and earned revenue, open and closed accounts, and more. What’s more, all your financial statements are always error-free. Since your billing data flows into QuickBooks directly from SubscriptionFlow, there are no data errors caused by faulty typos.

• Effortless compliance

When you have accurate financial statements, as well as a well-documented audit trail in QuickBooks, compliance becomes pain-free. The SubscriptionFlow-QuickBooks alliance has you prepared for audits, at all times.

Looking to manage your recurring payments with WooCommerce QuickBooks integration? Sign up with SubscriptionFlow, and build your dream billing & accounting tech-stack.