WooCommerce FreshBooks Installation and Configuration

Editorial Team January 11, 2019 4 min read

WooCommerce FreshBooks plugin allows you to automatically create your new customers in WooCommerce as Clients in FreshBooks. This plugin automatically sync your WooCommerce store and FreshBooks invoice numbers. You can link your WooCommerce Products to FreshBooks items so that each product sale generates an item sale in FreshBooks. With FreshBooks integration, you can automatically or manually create invoices with a single click from the “Orders” page for every order in your WooCommerce shop.

WooCommerce FreshBooks Requirements

This woocommerce integrations requires your FreshBook classic account. If you’re new to FreshBooks sign up for FreshBooks before configuring your account.

WooCommerce FreshBooks Installation

First log in to your woocommerce account and download this extension to your desktop/laptop
Now go to Plugins > Add New > Upload and select the downloaded ZIP file
Click on Install Now, and then
Activate the plugin
Navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > FreshBooks to setup and configure the plugin

FreshBooks Setup and Configuration

Setup

For settings go to WooCommerce > Settings > FreshBook.
In this step you have to enter your API URL. To get freshbooks classic API, login to your Freshbook classic account and go to My Account > FreshBooks API.
Now you need to enter API token. With the above similar way you can collect your API token i.e., My Account > FreshBooks API.

Now Save this information.

Extension Settings:

When you’ll enter into extension settings, you’ll see a screen like the following:

API Settings

API URL: The URL provided to you in your FreshBooks account. To get this follow the above Setup guideline.
Authentication Token: You’ll get this Token from your FreshBooks account.
Debug Mode: If you face any issues then Enable this, otherwise keep this disable this unless you are having issues with the plugin.

Invoice Settings

Default Client: You can select a client to create all invoices under. If you want to create a new client for each customer, you have to select “None”.
Default Language: Choose the default language which you want to use for your invoice.
Send Invoices By: Select whether you want to send invoices via Email or Snail Mail. If you choose “Snail Mail”, you must have enough stamps in your FreshBooks account.
Use Order Number as Invoice Number: If you enable this you can use the WooCommerce order number as the invoice number. Disable will allow FreshBooks to auto-generate the invoice number.
Invoice Number Prefix: You can enter a invoice number prefix for invoices. You can also keep it blank if you don’t want to use a prefix. Please note that, the maximum character of Prefix will not exceeds 10.
Display Link in Recent Orders: To display a “View Invoice” action in the “My Orders” list for customers, you can enable this.

Invoice Workflow

Automatically Create Invoices: You can enable this to automatically create invoices for new orders. If you disable this you have to create invoice manually.
Automatically Send Invoices: To automatically send invoices after creation enable this. Disable will allow you to leave created invoices as drafts.
Automatically Apply Payments: Keep this enable to automatically apply invoice payments for orders that have received payment otherwise, disable this to mark these manually in FreshBooks.

Payment Type Settings: For each WooCommerce payment gateway, select how this should be recorded in FreshBooks as the payment type.

Usage

Link FreshBooks Items to Products

If you have items created in FreshBooks, you can link them to your WooCommerce products. Each time that product is purchased, it will be documented in FreshBooks for upgrade reporting on item sales.

Under a Product Data for the product you’d like to link to your FreshBooks item, look at the bottom of the “General Tab”. You’ll see a new “FreshBooks item” setting option. Choose the FreshBooks item this product represents, then save your product. Any time your customer will purchase this product, FrshBooks will record this product as sale.

Order and Invoice Numbers

If you’ve prompted to have your WooCommerce order numbers reflected as FreshBooks invoice numbers, each invoice number will be the same as the corresponding WooCommerce order number.

Synchronizing Orders and Invoices

If all invoices created automatically, then each time an order is placed, a new invoice will be created. Having a set of default client, all invoices will be assigned to that default client. For no default client, each new customer will be created as a client in FreshBooks.

New orders can have two types of invoices named as “Draft” or “Sent”.

When you will create new orders, you can also save invoices as drafts.

You can send drafts orders via the Edit Order screen with the new FreshBooks order options.

For easy viewing and management, orders will also have a link to the corresponding invoices in FreshBooks.

If you finish changing any order details, you can then send these changes back to the FreshBooks invoice to ensure that the order and invoice data is completely synchronized. Finally, you can edit the order, and send the changes for the invoice:

You can also send or create bulk invoices from the Orders page by selecting the appropriate orders and using the bulk order actions:

Manual Orders Invoice

You can use the bulk options as discussed above, or use the new “Create & Send Invoice” button that will be available for order that do not currently have an invoice. This is also a useful option for those who want to create invoices manually:

Syncing Payments

Optionally you can sync payments for invoiced orders between FreshBooks orders and WooCommerce. If you enable “Automatically Apply Payments” under the FreshBooks settings, any orders that have been paid via WooCommerce will be marked as “Paid Invoices”. Similarly, if you’ve sent an invoice to customers and they’ve paid the invoice via FreshBooks, the invoice will be marked as paid in WooCommerce:

Other Options

In addition of bulk invoice creation and payment application options, you can also filter orders by invoice status:

Taxes and Shipping

You can add all taxes and shipping costs as line items to your invoices. All taxes will be displayed as individual line items with the appropriate tax codes and corresponding shipping costs will also be added as a line item in your invoice:

Support WooCommerce Subscriptions

WooCommerce FreshBooks support WooCommerce Subscriptions — settings that apply to new orders will also apply to renewal orders as well.