WooCommerce e‑invoicing and DATEV export, no plugin needed

How the WooCommerce integration works

Rechnungskit links two data sources: the WooCommerce order and the payment at your payment provider, meaning Stripe, PayPal, Mollie or Unzer. The order supplies line items, tax rates, discounts, shipping costs and the shipping status. The payment supplies the amount, the fee and later the payout. Together they become an e-invoice in ZUGFeRD format: a PDF with embedded XML that consumers can read and that business customers' accounting software can process. Customers with a Leitweg-ID (the routing ID German public bodies use), such as authorities or universities, get the same invoice as XRechnung 3.0.

Before an invoice goes out, Rechnungskit checks the mandatory details under § 14 Abs. 4 UStG (German VAT Act), the tax rate per country, the sequential invoice number and the EN 16931 schema. The invoice is then stored unchangeable, with a checksum, in the GoBD archive. If you want, it is emailed to the customer in your name.

Setup in three steps

1. In WooCommerce, create a key with Read/Write access under Settings → Advanced → REST API.
2. In Rechnungskit, enter the shop URL, the consumer key and the consumer secret under Connections. Rechnungskit creates the webhooks itself.
3. Connect your payment provider and run a test order in the free test mode. Billing only starts at go-live; prices are on the pricing page.

The WooCommerce help page covers shop URL, redirects and permissions.

Which WooCommerce status triggers what

Rechnungskit reads the order statuses you set in WooCommerce. You do not need an extra interface for shipping.

New and changed orders arrive by signed webhook. On top of that, Rechnungskit reconciles the orders of the last 24 hours every four hours. If a webhook goes quiet, Rechnungskit reactivates it in the shop and pulls orders every 15 minutes in the meantime, so none go missing even on days with hundreds of orders.

Connecting WooCommerce to DATEV

WooCommerce has no DATEV export of its own, so the route goes through the invoice. Rechnungskit writes every document into the monthly DATEV export, an EXTF booking batch with revenue and payments kept separate. Fees from Stripe, PayPal and Mollie and their payouts appear as bookings of their own, and the documents are attached via document link. Your tax advisor collects the export through their own access. EU sales to consumers also land in the OSS export. The guide WooCommerce DATEV export explains the general routes from a shop to DATEV and what the booking batch has to contain.

Prepayment straight from WooCommerce

Offline payments also work without entering anything twice. With direct bank transfer, the order first sits at "On hold". Once you have checked that the money arrived and set the order to "Processing", Rechnungskit recognizes the prepayment. At "Completed", the already paid invoice is created. The full flow is on WooCommerce prepayment.

Post-purchase upsells: a second payment, a document of its own

Upsell plugins such as FunnelKit (UpStroke) add items to the same order after checkout and collect a second payment for them. The order grows after the fact, and the first invoice no longer matches the order total. Rechnungskit detects this and creates a supplementary invoice (Nachtragsrechnung) for exactly the added items. The first invoice stays unchanged in the archive, the supplement gets its own number, and each payment is matched to its document, in the DATEV export and for later refunds too. The flow with shipping costs and refunds is on upsell and supplementary invoice.

Matching direct PayPal payments

If you run PayPal directly and not through Mollie, one detail matters: the WooCommerce PayPal plugin writes the order number into the PayPal field invoice_id. That is where Rechnungskit reads the link to the order. Check in the plugin settings that the Invoice Prefix is set. Every direct PayPal payment is then matched automatically, including fees from the PayPal integration.

Why not another WooCommerce plugin?

Plugins run inside your shop and share its risks: updates, conflicts, load time. The invoice archive then also depends on your hosting. Rechnungskit runs outside WordPress and only reads data through the API, so your shop stays lean and the documents are stored apart from it. The guide creating WooCommerce invoices compares the other routes: a PDF plugin, Germanized Pro or an external service.

Using another tool for your WooCommerce invoices today? The comparisons with easybill, Billbee, FastBill and Pathway Solutions show where the differences are.