WooCommerce and FreeAgent: your three options
FreeAgent does not connect to WooCommerce out of the box. Its own help article, Record WooCommerce transactions, lists two routes: a paid third-party integration, or recording the sales yourself. A free plugin is now a third route. Here is how they compare.
Option 1: record sales by hand from your bank feed
Money from your store reaches a bank, Stripe or PayPal account. Connect that account to FreeAgent with a bank feed, or upload a statement, then explain each incoming payment against a sales category, or against an invoice if you create one.
- Cost: free.
- Good for: a handful of orders a month.
- Downside: each payout can cover many orders, so you lose the per-order detail (customer, products, VAT per line) unless you create invoices by hand.
Option 2: the paid FreeAgent extension on WooCommerce.com
FreeAgent's integrations page links to a paid extension sold on WooCommerce.com. According to its documentation it has two modes:
Summarised mode (their recommendation for larger stores): one invoice a day for the accumulated sales, grouped by tax, currency and sales type.
Detailed mode: an invoice and a contact for every order, with optional payment sync.
Good for: stores with many orders that want daily summary invoices.
Downside: a paid licence, renewed yearly.
Option 3: the free Skillmerc Sync for FreeAgent plugin
Skillmerc Sync for FreeAgent is free on WordPress.org. We make it. Each paid order becomes:
- a contact (matched by email, or created),
- an invoice numbered WC-(order number) with one line per product and fee, a shipping line, and the VAT rate WooCommerce charged on each line,
- marked as sent (no email to your customer), and
- a payment explanation in the bank account you choose, so the invoice shows as paid.
It retries in the background when FreeAgent is down, never creates a second invoice for the same order, and connects through your own free FreeAgent developer app, so no order data goes through a third-party server.
What version 0.1 does not do yet: refunds (record credit notes by hand), orders in a currency other than your FreeAgent company currency, and daily summary invoices.
- Cost: free.
- Good for: stores that want one FreeAgent invoice per order without paying for a licence.
- Setup: step-by-step guide.
Which one should you pick?
- Very few orders and you already use bank feeds: option 1.
- Hundreds of orders a day and you want one summary invoice a day: option 2.
- You want each order in FreeAgent as a paid invoice with VAT, for free: option 3.
A note on payment fees
Stripe and PayPal take their fee before paying out. If you explain payments in your Stripe or PayPal account in FreeAgent, record the fee as a separate bank charge so the account balance matches.
More WooCommerce and FreeAgent guides
Using Sage Accounting instead? See WooCommerce to Sage Accounting sync.