Shopify Stores Selling on Facebook or Instagram

Important things to know if you use Shopify to sell on Facebook or Instagram.

With your Shopify store you have to ability to use the Facebook & Instagram app on Shopify to sell goods.  Meta offers details here about the integration.

In working with our clients, we have noticed a few important things for the accountant or controller to know:

1. Sales tax is collected and paid by Meta for any sale though this channel.  You will want to verify this is the case to ensure you don’t double pay sales tax.  More below.

2. Meta occasionally offer coupons which will show up as type “Manual” in your payments but they deposit with your Shopify Payments.

3. This option from Meta will be going away and changing to Checkout with Facebook or Instagram.

Sales Tax

We have noticed for clients that sales on the Facebook or Instagram channel have adjustments completed at deposit time.  These adjustments have no notation other than that they are linked by order ID.

In the example below, an adjustment of a negative amount (money removed from the deposit) can be seen for 2 different orders.  The green lines show a charge and 2 adjustments for order #1721542.

But the deposit detail doesn’t explain what is happening so we need to go to the order and look at the notes.

When you go to the notes you see this for order #1721542:

This indicates that these taxes were withheld and paid so you want to be sure you don’t double pay this sales tax. 

Coupons

Additionally you see a positive adjustment for order #172542 in green of 10.32.  When we go to the order notes we see this:

What is happening here is that the customer is not paying the full amount of the order with Shopify Payments and Meta is providing the rest of the funds as a reimbursement to the seller.

Unfortunately for the accountant, these funds are deposited with your Shopify Payments but are marked on the sale as Manual payments.  See below:

This means you will need to filter to the Facebook & Instagram Channel in your Shopify Reporting at the end of the month and do an adjusting entry to transfer from Manual Payments Clearing to your Shopify Payments Balance account.

Our team is standing by to help with this or any other issues you encounter with Shopify.