Basic Woocommerce - User Guide

Basic Woocommerce - User Guide

For pricing and how to add to your website see at the bottom of the page.

Adding and Managing Products

Adding a product

Before adding your first product, let’s get familiar with how product categories, tags, and attributes work.

Product Categories

Product categories and tags work in much the same way as normal categories and tags you have when writing posts in WordPress. They can be created, edited, and selected at any time. This can be done when you first create a product or come back and edit it or the category/tag specifically.

Attributes

These can be added per product, or you can set up global attributes for the entire store to use (e.g., in layered navigation).

Product Types

With attributes and categories set up and stock management configured, we can begin adding products. When adding a product, the first thing to decide is what type of product it is.

  • Simple – covers the vast majority of any products you may sell. Simple products are shipped and have no options. For example, a book.
  • Grouped – a collection of related products that can be purchased individually and only consist of simple products. For example, a set of six drinking glasses.
  • Virtual – one that doesn’t require shipping. For example, a service. Enabling this, disables all shipping related fields such as shipping dimensions. A virtual product will also not trigger the shipping calculator in cart and checkout.
  • Downloadable – activates additional fields where you can provide a downloadable file. After a successful purchase, customers are given a downloadable file as a link in the order notification email. This is suitable, for example, for a digital album, PDF magazine, or photo.
  • External or Affiliate – one that you list and describe on your website but is sold elsewhere.
  • Variable – a product with variations, each of which may have a different SKU, price, stock option, etc. For example, a t-shirt available in different colors and/or sizes.
  • Other types are often added by extensions. For example, WooCommerce Subscriptions adds new product types as does WooCommerce Bookings.
SKU

SKU, or Stock Keeping Unit number, is a unique number assigned to a product for, amongst other things, the purpose of keeping track of inventory.

The SKU field can accept up to 255 characters, which can include alphanumeric values and some special characters. The input is checked using the WordPress function santize_text_field, which means HTML, invalid UTF characters, and octets will be removed when saved (an octet is defined by % followed by 2 characters with a value in the range of a-f or 0-9).

Adding a simple product

Adding a Simple product is similar to writing a post in WordPress.

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Products > Add Product. You then have a familiar interface and should immediately feel at home.
  2. Enter a product Title and Description.
  3. Go to the Product Data panel, and select downloadable (digital) or virtual (service) if applicable.

Note: Virtual products don’t require shipping — an order with virtual products won’t calculate shipping costs.

Product data

The Product Data meta box is where the majority of important data is added for your products.

General section

  • Price
    • Regular Price – Item’s normal/regular price
    • Sale Price – Item’s discounted price that can then be scheduled for certain date ranges. The sale expires at 11:59pm of the specified end date
  • Tax
    • Tax status – Taxable / Shipping only / None
    • Tax class – Choose which tax class should be applied

Inventory section / Stock Management

The inventory section allows you to manage stock for the product individually and define whether to allow back orders and more. It enables you to sell products and allow customers to add them to the cart to buy.

Enable Stock Management must be selected in Products Inventory Settings; otherwise, only the ‘Stock status’ option is visible in the Product Data Inventory box.

Options when stock management at product level is disabled. You are responsible for updating the Stock Status.

Options when stock management at product level is enabled.

  • Enter the Stock Quantity, and WooCommerce auto-manages inventory and auto-updates Stock Status as Stock, Out of Stock or On Backorder.
  • Select whether to Allow Backorders.
  • Low stock threshold – Enter a number upon which you are notified.
  • Tick the Sold Individually box to limit the product to one per order.
When an order is placed in WooCommerce it gets the status Pending payment. At this point you don’t see any inventory change in the order notes. Which is how WooCommerce handles the order statuses.
Stock quantity changes are added to the order notes once the order is considered paid. Read more about WooCommerce order statuses here.

Even though the stock quantity is not yet reduced, the way WooCommerce operates is that it actually reserves/holds the products in an order when the order is placed. This is so that a product can’t be sold out while a customer’s payment is being processed. You can control this with the help of the WooCommerce Hold stock setting. If you for instance enter 5 minutes in the Hold stock (minutes) field, that is how long the product is held while awaiting order payment.

If no payment is received within these 5 minutes the order will be cancelled and the product will be available for purchase again. Please note that this only applies to orders with the Pending payment status, not On hold. When setting the amount of minutes stock will be held you need to consider setting enough time to actually allow a customer the time to finish their order. You also need to consider not setting it too long, so that it remains unavailable for others if the customer decides to not complete the order.

Hold stock (minutes)

Shipping section

  • Weight – Weight of the item.
  • Dimensions – Length, width and height for the item.
  • Shipping Class – Shipping classes are used by certain shipping methods to group similar products.

Linked Products section

Using up-sells and cross-sells, you can cross promote your products. They can be added by searching for a particular product and selecting the product from the dropdown list:

Up-sells are displayed on the product details page. These are products that you may wish to encourage users to upgrade, based on the product they are currently viewing. For example, if the user is viewing the coffee product listing page, you may want to display tea kettles on that same page as an up-sell.
WooCommerce Product Up-Sells

Cross-sells are products that are displayed with the cart and related to the user’s cart contents. As an example, if the user adds a Nintendo DS to their cart, you may want to suggest they purchase a spare stylus when they arrive at the cart page.

Grouping – Used to make a product part of a grouped product.

Attributes section

On the Attributes tab, you can assign details to a product. You will see a select box containing global attribute sets you created (e.g., platform). 

Once you have chosen an attribute from the select box, click add and apply the terms attached to that attribute (e.g., Nintendo DS) to the product. You can hide the attribute on the frontend by leaving the Visible checkbox unticked.

Custom attributes can also be applied by choosing Custom product attribute from the select box. These are added at the product level and won’t be available in layered navigation or other products.

Advanced section

  • Purchase note – enter an optional note to send the customer after they purchase the product.
  • Menu order – custom ordering position for this item.
  • Enable Reviews – enable/disable customer reviews for this item.

Product short description

Add an excerpt. This typically appears next to product imagery on the listing page, and the long description appears in the Product Description tab.

Video embeds (oembed) may be used, as of version 3.1x.

Taxonomies

On the right-hand side of the Add New Product panel, there are product categories in which you can place your product, similar to a standard WordPress post. You can also assign product tags in the same way.
WooCommerce Product Categories and Tags

Product images

Add a main product image and a gallery of images.

Setting catalog visibility options and feature status

In the Publish panel, you can set Catalog Visibility for your product.

  • Shop and search – Visible everywhere, shop pages, category pages and search results.
  • Shop only – Visible in shop pages and category pages, but not search results.
  • Search only – Visible in search results, but not in the shop page or category pages.
  • Hidden – Only visible on the single product page – not on any other pages.

You can also set whether the product is promoted in product categories, up-sells, related products as a Featured Product. For example, you could tick the Featured box on all bundles you sell.

Other ways to set as Featured are described in the below section: Mark a product as Featured.

Hiding WooCommerce Products – Your Options

On each WooCommerce Product Page editor you’ll see under the “Publish” panel 2 types of Product Page Visibility Options.

  • WordPress “Visibility” Option
  • WooCommerce “Catalog Visibility” Option

Product Visibility WooCommerce

Adding a grouped product

A grouped product is created in much the same way as a Simple product. Grouped products are like lists of other products in your shop, and as a result do not have prices or stock numbers of their own. To create one, select Grouped Product from the Product Type dropdown.

Create the Grouped product

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products > Add New.
  2. Enter a Title for the Grouped product, e.g., Back to School set
  3. Scroll down to Product Data and select Grouped from the dropdown. The price and several other fields disappear. This is normal because a Grouped Product is a collection of ‘child products’, which is where you add this information.
  4. Publish.

The Grouped product is still an empty group. To this Grouped product, you need to:

  • Create products and add them
  • Add existing child products

Having the choice to first create Simple products and add them to a Grouped product later; or first create a Grouped product and add Simple products later gives you flexibility to add Simple products to more than one Grouped product.

Add products to the Group

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products > Add New.
  2. Select the Grouped product you wish to add products to.
  3. Scroll down to Product Data and go to Linked Products.
  4. Select Grouped Products, and search for the product by typing
  5. Click the products you wish to add.
  6. Update
  7. You can drag and drop to reorder the Grouped Products. Once you press Update, the new order will be shown on the product page.

Adding a virtual product

When adding a Simple product, you can tick the Virtual checkbox box in the product type panel.

With Variable products this checkbox is moved to each variation.

Enabling this, disables all shipping related fields such as shipping dimensions. A virtual product will also not trigger the shipping calculator in cart and checkout.

Adding a downloadable product

When adding a simple product, you can select the Downloadable checkbox box in the product type panel. This adds two new fields:

  • File path — Path or url to your downloadable file.
  • Download limit – Limit on number of times the customer can download file. Left blank for unlimited downloads.

For maximum flexibility, downloadable products also incur a shipping cost (if, for example, you were offering both a packaged and a downloadable version of a product, this would be ideal). You can also check the Virtual box if the downloadable product is not shippable.

Adding an external/affiliate product

Select ‘External/Affiliate’ from the product type dropdown. This will change the Product data metabox a bit. It first removes the shipping section from the left side. It then adds two new fields in the General section, the Product URL and Button text fields. The Product URL field is the destination where users can purchase this product. Then the Button text lets you change the normal Add to cart button text to your preferred text.

Adding a variable product

Variable products are one of the more complex of product types. They let you define variations of a single product where each variation may have a different SKU, price or stock level.

Duplicating a product
duplicate

To save time, it’s possible to use a product and duplicate it to create similar products with variations and other qualities.

Go to WooCommerce > Products and look through the list for a product you wish to replicate, then click Duplicate.

Deleting a product
delete-product-woocommerce

To delete a product:

  1. Go to: WooCommerce > Products.
  2. Find the product you wish to delete.
  3. Hover in the area under the Product name and click Trash.

To mark a product as featured, go to Products > All Products and select the Star in the featured column. Alternatively, select Quick Edit and then the Featured option.



How WooCommerce order numbers are generated

You may have often wondered why, sometimes, WooCommerce order numbers don’t appear to be sequential. Order numbers being in order is something most site owners would expect to see, and for those seeing this for the first time, these out-of-sequence order numbers can be slightly misleading, causing one to think that some orders are missing or haven’t been updated in the list. 
how WooCommerce order numbers are generated - Default WooCommerce Order Numbers Screenshot

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, and WordPress stores everything as a record in the wp_posts table in the database – whether it is a blog post, a page, a product, an image or an order. The default post types as well as custom post types are all stored in this wp_posts table. Thus, each time an order is created, a new record for it gets added in wp_posts table. All records in this table have a unique ID, and the order number is the same as this unique ID.

how WooCommerce order numbers are generated - The wp_posts table

Why do sometimes order numbers appear to be in sequence?

If, in between orders, there have been no new product additions, image/attachment uploads or no new page additions, then the order numbers may appear in sequence, as illustrated in the screenshot where order numbers 112, 113 and 114 are in sequence:

how WooCommerce order numbers are generated - Orders in Sequence

But, if a product is added to your store in between orders, this will also be considered as a post and a record for it will be created and assigned the next unique ID in sequence. If the product has an image (which it will, in most cases), then this image will also have its own record and ID. The same applies to new pages. This can cause the order numbers to be non-sequential.

shop_order Post Type

The post_type column in the wp_posts table denotes the type of post the record refers to. As you can see in the following screenshot, this takes different values such as shop_order, page, product, post, attachment and so on, depending on whether it’s an order, a page, a product, a post, an attachment (image) etc. Of these, ‘page’, ‘post’ and ‘attachment’ are default post types, while ‘shop_order’ and ‘product’ are custom post types.

how WooCommerce order numbers are generated - The post_type column in the wp_posts table

The process of adding new features thus becomes simple through the use of custom post types.

Subscription Status Guide

This guide details each status, explains when it is applied and what it represents.

Pending Subscription Status

When a subscription is first created, either by a customer purchasing a subscription product via checkout or a store owner manually adding a subscription, it will have the Pending status.

This status indicates that the subscription has been created, but no payments have been processed on the subscription.

Active Subscription Status

After the initial payment for a subscription has been processed (if any payment is required), it will be transitioned to the Active status.

This status indicates the subscription will renew or expire at a given time in the future. When a subscription is Active, the user associated with the subscription will be assigned the default subscriber role, and may be given special access by other extensions, like WooCommerce Memberships. Whenever a subscription is activated, Subscriptions will also calculate the next payment date for the subscription if it’s not already set.

On-Hold Subscription Status

A subscription is placed On-Hold when an associated order is awaiting payment, or it has been manually suspended by the store owner or customer.

A subscription can remain On-Hold indefinitely. If it was manually suspended, it will need to be manually reactivated. If it was suspended awaiting payment, it will be reactivated once that payment is processed.

When a subscription is On-Hold, the user associated with the subscription will be assigned the default inactive role, and may no longer be granted special access by other extensions, like WooCommerce Memberships.

Pending-Cancellation Subscription Status

When a subscription is manually cancelled by the customer, its status is not usually transitioned to Cancelled immediately. If the subscription has a pre-paid term that has not been provided yet, the subscription will be assigned the Pending Cancellation status.

During this time, the user associated with the subscription will continue to have the subscriber role, and may be given special access by other extensions, like WooCommerce Memberships.

When the pre-paid term ends, the subscription’s status will be transitioned to Cancelled.

Cancelled Subscription Status

The Cancelled status is assigned to subscriptions with the Pending Cancellation status when they reach the end of their pre-paid term.

When a subscription is Cancelled, the user associated with the subscription will be assigned the default inactive role, and may no longer be granted special access by other extensions, like WooCommerce Memberships.

WooCommerce Analytics

WooCommerce Analytics only works with WordPress 5.3+.

WooCommerce Analytics is a new reporting and data analysis tool to help you manage your store. The suite introduces nine new reports along with advanced filtering and segmenting tools, the ability to download all data to CSV, and a customizable dashboard to monitor all the important key metrics of your site.

Since there is a great deal of functionality in Analytics, the sections in the Table of Contents in the right sidebar will be discussed.

Analytics Basics

Most of the new reports in the WooCommerce Analytics section have a set of common tools. This document will introduce you to those features, and how they can be utilized to customize and dive deeper into the various new analytics reports.

Navigate to Analytics > Revenue to get started.

Definition of Terms

The table below describes how different metrics within WooCommerce Analytics are calculated.
TERMDESCRIPTION
Gross SalesSale price of product(s) multiplied by quantity ordered. Does not include refunds, coupons, taxes, or shipping
Total SalesGross Sales – Returns – Coupons + Taxes + Shipping
Net SalesGross Sales – Returns – Coupons
(referred to as “Sales” in the legacy WooCommerce Reports)
OrdersThe number of new orders placed for a selected date range
Average Order ValueNet Sales / Orders
Items SoldThe discrete number of items sold.
RefundsMoney returned to the customer via a refund
Discounted OrdersThe count of orders with a coupon applied.
Net Discount AmountTotal sum of discounts from coupons.
Total TaxOrder Tax + Shipping Tax
Order TaxThe total tax applied to items in an order
Shipping TaxThe total tax applied to shipping in an order
ShippingThe shipping charges associated with an order or refund.
DownloadsTotal number of downloaded files

Refunds

Refunds in WooCommerce Analytics are reported differently than in the legacy WooCommerce Reports.

In WooCommerce Analytics:

  • Refunds appear as a negative number on the date that the return occurred (not the date the order was placed).
  • Refunds include discounts from coupons.
  • Refunded shipping charges and refunded taxes are not included in the Refunds summary number or columns. They appear as negative values in the shipping and taxes summary numbers and columns respectively.
Note: What is the difference between a refund and a return?

A refund encompasses the total amount that’s refunded to the customer which includes the value of goods or services purchased, shipping, and tax.

However, “Returns” only account for the value of goods or services in a refund, shipping and tax are tracked separately.

Date Range Picker


The Date Range picker allows you to specify which dates to include in the report being viewed. When you first open the Date Range Picker, a variety of popular presets allow you to quickly choose some common date ranges:

  • Today
  • Yesterday
  • Week to Date
  • Last Week
  • Month to Date
  • Last Month
  • Quarter to Date
  • Last Year

You can also select which date range to compare against, either the same range from the “Prior Year” or the “Prior Period.”

If the presets don’t match your desired date range, click the “Custom” tab at the top of the picker for more granular control over the date range:

In the custom picker, you can either manually enter the start and end date using the provided input fields, or use the calendar to make your selection.

After either choosing a preset, or a custom date range, click the Update button to modify the data in the report. By doing this, the date range selected is added to the address of the report URL, allowing you to bookmark or share a report URL with a specific date range with other Store admins. This date selection persists on the report view until you navigate away from the report.

Advanced Filters

Depending on the report you are viewing, there might also be other Quick Filters and/or Advanced Filters that allow you to further customize the data set being viewed.

If filter options are available, they will be shown next to the Date Range picker, or below it on narrow/mobile viewports. Much like the date range selection, filters are also persisted to the URL which allows you to save a quick link to a specific filtered version of a report. Available filters for each report are covered more in-depth in each report’s documentation.

Summary Numbers / Chart


At the top of the reports, the Chart and Summary numbers offer quick access to key data, trends of that data, and visualizations for changes over time in the period selected, and the period being compared against.

Summary Numbers

The “Summary Number” tab gives you a quick view of the total figure for that metric over the period selected, the total number for the period being compared, and the percentage trend between those two figures. By clicking on a Summary Number, that particular metric is then displayed in the chart.

For example, this is what the “Orders Summary Number” looks like:

Chart

The charts on report pages offer quite a few options to customize the visualization of data. The “Data Legend” (labeled “a” in the above screenshot) allows you to toggle the visibility of the different data set periods. The “Interval Selector” (labeled “b”) allows you to adjust the interval displayed in the chart. The options available here are dependent upon the length of the date range selected:

LENGTH OF DATE RANGEINTERVAL OPTIONS
One year or more‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, ‘quarter’, ‘year’
90 days to 1 year‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, ‘quarter’
1 month – 89 days‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’
1 week – 28 days‘day’, ‘week’
1 day – 1 week‘day’
1 day‘day’, ‘hour’

And lastly, you can adjust the “Type of Chart” being displayed (labeled “c”) between a bar or line chart.

Table

The table which displays the detailed data on Analytics reports also has a number of features that allow you to customize how the data is displayed, and even an option to download a CSV copy of the data used in the report for further analysis.

Table Column Sorting

Many columns in reports will allow you to click on the column header to sort the tabular data by that value and to either sort by that value in ascending or descending order. Simply click the column header to sort by that value, and click it again to change between ascending and descending sort.

Toggle Column Visibility

If a report contains a data column that you don’t need to be displayed, you can adjust the visibility of it by using the visibility menu on the right side of the table header. Click the column name in the menu to change the visibility of the column. Your visibility selections are persisted to your user preferences for each report, so on subsequent visits to that report, the columns you have previously toggled off will not be displayed.

Download (to CSV)

If you would like to download a copy of the data contained in the report table, you can do so by clicking the Download button in the table header. If the amount of data shown in the report is limited to one page ( e.g. there are no pagination options shown in the table footer ), the CSV file will download immediately.

If your selected date range results in a data set that spans more than one page in the table, your CSV download will be processed as a background job by WooCommerce. Once the data is ready to be downloaded, an email will be sent to the address that is attached to your WordPress account with a link to download the file. Here is how that email looks like:


Receiver is using the email address attached to your WordPress account.
Click on Download your Orders Report to download the file.
Note: If you have more than one Admin on your site, the currently logged-in Admin who initiates the download will receive the report.
Table Pagination

When the data displayed in the table is larger than the default single page size of 25, some pagination options will appear in the table footer area. Directional buttons–labeled < and >–enable you to move backward and forward between pages, and a text field will allow you to jump to a specific page number. Furthermore, you can change the number of rows to display per page.

Table Search Box

On some reports, a search box is displayed in the table header area as well. For details on what the search box does on a given report, please refer to the associated documentation for that report.

Analytics Dashboard

The new dashboard in WooCommerce has been designed to allow you to keep track of the statistics and data that matter most to your site. Each section of the dashboard can be fully customized to meet the needs of your store, and also act as launching points to dive deeper into other Analytics Reports.

The dashboard is comprised of three sections:

  • Performance Indicators,
  • Charts, and
  • Leaderboards.

The data presented in these sections are controlled by the Date Picker which appears at the top of the page. This lets you quickly look at data for a number of preset date-ranges like week, month, quarter, and year to date, or to select a specific date range to view.

Navigate to WooCommerce > Dashboard to get started.

Customize Dashboard Sections

These sections can be re-ordered, re-named, or even toggled off if you don’t want to view a particular section(s).

Toggle Stats

To customize dashboard sections, click the kebab menu in the top right corner of the section. The first item that appears in this menu is the ability to toggle the display of the various stats that are shown in the section.

Rename, Move or Remove a Dashboard Section

Below that you will find options for renaming the section, moving it up or down, or removing it entirely from the dashboard.

Add a Dashboard Section

If you removed a dashboard section, or you have an extension installed that adds in an option for a new section, a plus icon will appear at the bottom of your dashboard. Clicking that plus will allow you to insert previously removed sections, or add in new ones.

Performance Section

By default, the Performance Indicators section is what appears at the top of your dashboard below the Date Picker. Each performance indicator will display a label informing you of the statistic that is being presented, the value of that statistic for the date range selected, a percentage change over the prior period along with a trend arrow of up/down/same, and the value for the previous period that is being compared.

Beyond giving you a quick glimpse into the statistic, Performance Indicators also act as a quick shortcut to dive deeper into the data behind the stat. For example, clicking on the Total Sales indicator will open up the Revenue Report for the date range that has been selected on the Dashboard. From there you can view associated charts and tabular data for deeper analysis.

Using the customization menu in the top right corner of the section, you can toggle the display of the following default performance indicators:

INDICATOR NAMEDESCRIPTIONLINKS TO (REPORT NAME > CHART NAME)
Total SalesGross Sales – Returns – Coupons + Taxes + ShippingRevenue Report > Total Sales
Net SalesGross Sales – Returns – CouponsRevenue Report > Net Sales
OrdersThe number of new orders placed for a selected date rangeOrders Report > Orders
Average Order ValueNet Sales / OrdersOrders Report > Average Order Value
Items SoldThe discrete number of items sold.Products Report > Items Sold
RefundsMoney returned to the customer via a refundRevenue Report > Refunds
Discounted OrdersThe count of orders with a coupon applied.Coupons Report > Orders Count
Net Discount AmountTotal sum of discounts from coupons.Coupons Report > Amount
Total TaxOrder Tax + Shipping TaxTaxes Report > Total Tax
Order TaxThe total of tax applied to items in an orderTaxes Report > Order Tax
Shipping TaxThe total of tax applied to shipping in an orderTaxes Report > Shipping Tax
ShippingThe shipping charges associated with an order or refund.Revenue Report > Shipping
DownloadsTotal count of downloaded filesDownloads Report > Download Count
Gross SalesSale price of product(s) x quantity ordered. Does not include refunds, coupons, taxes or shippingRevenue Report > Gross Sales

Charts Section

The next section displayed by default is Charts. The customization menu again allows you to toggle the display of charts that are most useful for your Store. The following charts are available to display in this section:
CHART NAMEDESCRIPTIONLINKS TO (REPORT NAME > CHART NAME)
Total SalesGross Sales – Returns – Coupons + Taxes + ShippingRevenue Report > Total Sales
Net SalesGross Sales – Returns – CouponsRevenue Report > Net Sales
OrdersThe number of new orders placed for a selected date rangeOrders Report > Orders
Average Order ValueNet Sales / OrdersOrders Report > Average Order Value
Items SoldThe discrete number of items sold.Products Report > Items Sold
RefundsMoney returned to the customer via a refundRevenue Report > Refunds
Discounted OrdersThe count of orders with a coupon applied.Coupons Report > Orders Count
Gross Discount AmountTotal sum of discounts from coupons.Coupons Report > Amount
Total TaxOrder Tax + Shipping TaxTaxes Report > Total Tax
Order TaxThe total of tax applied to items in an orderTaxes Report > Order Tax
Shipping TaxThe total of tax applied to shipping in an orderTaxes Report > Shipping Tax
ShippingThe shipping charges associated with an order or refund.Revenue Report > Shipping
DownloadsTotal count of downloaded filesDownloads Report > Download Count

Chart Interval Options

The charts section has a setting that allows you to set the time interval to display in the charts. The options displayed in the interval drop down are determined by how long of a date range you currently have selected in the Date Picker.

LENGTH OF DATE RANGEINTERVAL OPTIONS
One year or more‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, ‘quarter’, ‘year’
90 days to 1 year‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’, ‘quarter’
1 month – 89 days‘day’, ‘week’, ‘month’
1 week – 28 days‘day’, ‘week’
1 day – 1 week‘day’
1 day‘day’, ‘hour’

Chart Type Option

The last way you can customize the appearance of the charts is the ability to toggle between Line and Bar charts. Your selection chosen here will be saved to your user options and used on subsequent visits to the WooCommerce Dashboard.

Leaderboards Section

The final section on the Dashboard allows you to view four different “Leaderboards” for your store’s statistics. Like the other two sections, you can also toggle the visibility of the leaderboards via the customization menu. By default you have the following four Leaderboards to choose from:
  • Top Customers, Total Spend
  • Top Coupons, Number of Orders
  • Top Categories, Items Sold
  • Top Products, Items Sold

Analytics Settings

WooCommerce Admin is pre-configured with default settings for WooCommerce Analytics.

Navigate to Analytics > Settings to change these default settings.

These settings are broken down into sections:

  • Excluded Statuses
  • Actionable Statuses – See Activity Panels for details
  • Default Date Range
  • Import Historical Data
  • Reset Defaults

Excluded Statuses

In this section, statuses that are unchecked are included in analytics reports. Checked statuses are excluded. If your store uses custom order statuses, those statuses are included in the reports by default. They will be listed in this section under Custom Statuses and can be excluded via the status checkbox.

Default Date Range


WooCommerce Admin is pre-configured with a default date range of Month to Date. This is the date range that will be used when loading the WooCommerce Dashboard or Analytics page from any non-WooCommerce Admin page. Any reports that support a date range will have a Date Range Picker to allow changing the date range for the report.

Date Type

Select the date field that should be considered for Revenue and Order Reports. The default date type is set to “Date Paid”. This setting gives you the flexibility to select the date to be used in the reports – Order created, Order processed, or Order Completed.

Importing Historical Data

When you install WooCommerce 4.0 (or the WooCommerce Admin plugin) the new Analytics functionality needs to process the historical data in order to populate new Report pages. This is not done automatically – extremely large or high volume stores might want to schedule a maintenance window in which to import their historical data.

Stores with existing Orders will be prompted to import their data:

Prompt to import historical data
Starting the Import

To start a historical data import, use the prompt above or go to Analytics > Settings, and scroll down to Import Historical Data.

Stores that only want to see report data from a certain date onward can choose a date period, otherwise “all” data will be imported.

Extremely large or high volume stores might choose to import data in smaller increments – perhaps each year or quarter separately. The “skip previously imported customers and orders” control allows for overlapping date ranges to be imported without unnecessary data processing.

The Customer and Order counts will be updated in real-time to reflect changes made to the import settings. Press “start” when you’re ready for the import to begin.

Monitoring Progress

Once you’ve started an import, progress will be periodically updated on the Analytics > Settings screen.

Historical data import in progress

Navigating away from this page will not affect the import, and you can return to it at any time to monitor progress.

Once the import is complete, the status will reflect it:

Historical data complete

You’ll be given the option to run another import or to delete previously imported data. Please note that deletion is for analytics data only. This doesn’t delete your products, orders, customers, etc…

Resetting Analytics

Speaking of deleting any already imported historical data. If you do need to reset the Analytics reports you can do so from this settings screen by selecting Delete Previously Imported Data. Once that data is deleted your reports won’t show any information and you’d want to select new historical data to import, say a new time frame, or wait on new orders and customers to come in.

How the Import Works
Initial Data Import

The historical data import uses Action Scheduler to queue jobs that process the existing data on your store, building tables of aggregate data to be used in Reports.

Before version 3.0.0, Action Scheduler used custom post types to manage queue data. To avoid problems queuing large numbers of items, the import jobs are queued and processed in batches to reduce the likelihood of execution time limits on servers/hosts with limited resources.

Subsequent Data Updates

All Customers and Orders that get created after WooCommerce 4.0 (or the WooCommerce Admin plugin) is installed are automatically queued for processing. Only historical data requires manual intervention to process.

Action Scheduler at Scale

For extremely large or high volume stores, we recommend following the Action Scheduler documentation for Background Processing at Scale.

If you’re using WooCommerce 3.9 or earlier, the bundled version of Action Scheduler uses a custom post type to manage queues. This can cause performance issues for high volume stores. We recommend installing the Action Scheduler plugin at version 3.0.0 or later. Action Scheduler 3.0.0+ uses custom database tables for queue handling and is significantly faster than previous versions.

Reset Defaults

The “Reset Defaults” button resets the settings to default values for all of the settings above the button. It has no effect on the data imported via Import Historical Data.

Reports

WooCommerce Analytics lets you access individual reports (listed below) directly from your site’s dashboard. Below you will find detailed instructions on how to access and use them:

Analytics Cache

WooCommerce has to process a large amount of data to generate the reports detailed in this section. To avoid potential performance issues the data is cached in a usable format and regularly updated.

If you notice that the figures displayed in the reports differ from the actual figures on your website then you can clear the cache by going to WooCommerce > Status > Tools and running the Clear Analytics Cache tool. If after clearing the cache the figures still look off, try reimporting historical data.


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