Shopify: Deferred Revenue and Fulfillment Based Revenue Recognition
Available for entities on the Advanced Plan or higher
Bookkeep's Shopify integration provides seamless connectivity between your Shopify store and accounting platform. This integration includes an Ecommerce journal entry feature that automatically records daily sales data from the previous day into your accounting system. This ensures that your financial records are always up-to-date and accurate, without the need for manual data entry.
For more complex entities, booking sales prior to fulfillment does not meet their accounting revenue recognition requirements. This led to the development of Bookkeep's Shopify Fulfillment Revenue Recognition Journal Entry. This entry supports entities that require revenue recognition upon fulfillment of an order.
Below, we will explain how this process of financial data flow operates. You will need the Ecommerce entry and Fulfillment Revenue Recognition entry working in parallel to capture the deferred revenue first and the revenue once fulfilled:
The Ecommerce Journal Entry
This entry captures all sales, discounts, refunds, and categorizes payments based on tender type. It also accounts for pending payments, which may result in accounts receivable. Below is an example mapping:
For entities recognizing revenue upon fulfillment, this journal entry should have the GROSS SALES, DISCOUNTS, AND SHIPPING INCOME lines mapped to a deferred revenue account.
The Fulfillment Revenue Recognition Journal Entry
This entry captures fulfilled orders, moving gross sales, discounts, and shipping income from deferred revenue to their respective accounts once an order is completely fulfilled. Below is an example mapping:
Ensure the deferred revenue account used in the Fulfillment Revenue Recognition entry is also used in the Ecommerce entry for consistency.
The fulfillment revenue recognition template does not capture refunds. Refunds, both fulfilled and unfulfilled, are captured in the ecommerce template. Adjust gross sales for any fulfilled refunds.
Verifying the Fulfillment Revenue Recognition Journal Entry
- Export orders from Shopify for the desired period. Learn more about exporting orders here.
- Filter the Fulfillment Status column to Fulfilled and use the "text contains" filter for the Fulfilled At column for the date you wish to review.
- Sum the subtotal and discount amount columns to calculate gross sales for the day based on fulfilled orders.
- Sum the shipping column for shipping income and the discount amount column for total discounts.
This will allow you to verify everything ties out correctly. If you have any questions, contact [email protected].