WooCommerce
Connect a WooCommerce store: orders arrive as sales orders, products and photos stay mapped, and the store always shows your available stock.
What it is
The WooCommerce connection runs your WooCommerce store from Cash Flow Inventory. Orders placed on the store arrive as sales orders with the customer, the shipping charge and the payment state. Products, variants, categories, images, customers and coupons come in from the store and stay linked to the store's own ids. Every stock change here is sent to the store, and price, name, description, category, photo and "shown online" changes follow. Several stores can be connected to one business.
WooCommerce is proven live: it runs against a real shop with real orders.
Who it is for
- Shops that sell on a WordPress / WooCommerce site and in person from the same stock.
- Online sellers who want orders, picking, delivery and invoicing in one back office.
- Businesses with more than one WooCommerce store.
Before you start#
- A WordPress user with shop-manager or administrator rights.
- Where you sell set to Online or In person and online in Settings › General.
- The integrations right in Cash Flow Inventory.
Step by step#
- In WordPress, open WooCommerce › Settings › Advanced › REST API › Add key, choose Read/Write and copy the consumer key and secret (the secret is shown once).
- In Cash Flow Inventory, open Integrations › WooCommerce › Connect and enter the store address (
https://…) and the two keys. They are checked with the store before saving and never shown again. - On the WooCommerce page, open Webhooks and press Register all (12 topics: orders, products, customers and coupons created, updated and deleted).
- Bring the catalogue in once: Integrations › Sync › Background imports & exports › Import (categories, then products, customers and orders), or link an existing catalogue with the products remapper.
- Check the WooCommerce page's health view says Healthy: webhooks active, items linked, nothing waiting or failed.
How stock works#
- The store shows your available quantity: on hand minus what open orders hold, never below 0, whole units.
- The screens that move stock send at once; a check every 5 minutes sends anything else that moved. A typical change reaches the store within seconds, at most about 5 minutes.
- A stock edit made in WordPress is not copied in; the next push puts the store back to the right figure. Integrations › Sync › Sync now › Sync stock sends everything now.
- A store order that took stock on the store (processing, on hold, completed) holds those units here too, even while it waits for approval. A pending or failed checkout holds nothing.
- With Allow pre-orders on in the product form, the store shows "On backorder".
Orders from the store#
- New orders arrive within seconds by webhook; while the app is open it also checks the store every few minutes.
- Processing with payment collected, on hold or completed → approved. Cash on delivery or unpaid → waiting, with no money recorded until it is collected. Cancelled, failed, trashed or refunded before anything was sent → cancelled, stock released.
- A store order completed on the store but not delivered here stays approved, to pick, deliver and invoice here.
- If the store cancels an order you already picked, delivered or invoiced, it is kept, its history says so, and it is listed for a person to resolve.
- One buyer is one contact: an account and a guest with the same e-mail never make two contacts.
Products, services and photos#
- A product created on the store arrives with its variants, price and stock (as opening stock at cost 0 — enter the real cost when you buy).
- WooCommerce's Virtual tick is the signal for services: a Virtual product arrives as a Service, a Downloadable one as Non-Inventory. A product with stock on hand here is never turned into a service.
- Photos: the first photo on the product form is the main photo and the store's featured image. The store gets each photo once, unchanged lists are not re-sent, and a photo removed here is removed from the store product. See Store sync health for photos the store could not download.
- SKUs link store products to yours. A store SKU equal to another product's code is refused and listed for you to correct.
How it posts to the books#
A store order posts like any sales order when it is delivered and invoiced. Shipping on a store order is income charged to the customer, never a supplier bill. A cancel on the store before anything was sent reverses a paid advance.
Limits and what is not there yet#
- WooCommerce delivers webhooks through WP-Cron, which runs when someone visits the store. On a quiet store, set up a real server cron for WP-Cron so orders arrive promptly.
- WooCommerce switches a webhook off after 5 failed deliveries in a row; a daily check switches this app's webhooks back on.
- WooCommerce keys cannot delete media. To clean old photos from the WordPress media library, connect a WordPress application password on the Health tab and use Find unused photos.
Questions#
An order did not arrive — what do I do?
Open Events waiting / failed on the WooCommerce page and retry it, check the webhooks are active in the health view, or run Integrations › Sync › Orders sync.
Why does the store show a different stock figure?
The store shows available stock, not on hand. Check open orders holding stock, or press Sync now › Sync stock.
Why is a new store product not linked here?
Usually a plugin prints something before the store's API answers. Press Sync to online stores in the product's row menu once to link it, and remove the plugin output.
Can the assistant connect my store?
No. Connecting, keys and webhook registration stay with you. The assistant can check health, retry events and start a sync.