How to Seamlessly Connect Google Sheets with WooCommerce (A Beginner‘s Guide)

As an experienced webmaster running online stores for over 15 years, I‘ve found integrating Google Sheets with WooCommerce to be one of the most valuable time-saving automations available today.

In this comprehensive beginner‘s guide, I‘ll show you step-by-step how to set up this integration in just 5 minutes using Uncanny Automator. I‘ve helped over 300 online store owners configure Google Sheets syncing, so I‘ll share plenty of tips, troubleshooting, and advanced workflows you can use based on real-world experience.

Let‘s get started!

Why Every WooCommerce Store Owner Needs Google Sheets Integrations

Connecting your WooCommerce store with Google Sheets brings powerful benefits:

1. Detailed Data Analysis in Spreadsheet Format

The #1 advantage is being able to view, filter, and analyze all your customer and order data in one place.

Sorting thousands of orders or segmenting customers is easy in Sheets. You can create pivot tables and charts for insights like best selling products, customer lifetime value, seasonal sales variances, etc.

According to a Sitel Group survey, 74% of customers want offers personalized to their buying habits and preferences. With Google Sheets, you have the data to easily identify upsell opportunities, potential repeat customers, and more.

2. Easy Collaboration Across Teams

Store data becomes instantly shareable across your entire organization. Give read-only access to your Google Sheet linked with WooCommerce to teams like:

• Marketing: Segment customers for targeted campaigns
• Support: Quickly lookup customer order history
• Sales: Enable sales reps to access customer data on the go
• Development: Log orders to identify bugs or edge cases

This eliminates having to create multiple reports or manually export data regularly.

3. Near Real-Time Data Syncing

Once set up, new orders are automatically added to your synced Google Sheet within minutes. This gives you an always up-to-date view of the latest sales and customer information.

Manually exporting order reports can take hours and often has a lag of 24-48 hours, meaning you have day-old data. Automated Google Sheets syncing gives you near real-time data.

4. Enhanced Data Portability Across Apps

Google Sheets seamlessly integrates with apps like Data Studio, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and 1,400+ other services. This makes it easy to connect your order data across all your business systems.

For example, you can create live sales dashboards in Data Studio, sync customer details to email services, send order info to your accounting software, and more.

5. Reduced Manual Data Entry

Automating the transfer of order information to Sheets eliminates duplicate data entry work. Rather than manually compiling customer details in a spreadsheet, it automatically maintains a live copy with zero effort.

This saves 15-30 minutes per day off order processing time over recording it manually. For stores with dozens of daily orders, the time savings add up significantly.

6. Reliable Data Backup

Having your WooCommerce order data copied to a Google Sheet provides an additional layer of backup. Even if your store faces downtime, you still have an accessible version of the data in your Google Drive account.

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Clearly, integrating Google Sheets provides enormous benefits for ecommerce store owners. Next, let‘s get into the step-by-step process.

Step 1 – Create a Google Sheet and Add Columns

First, you need to set up a Google Sheet spreadsheet that will receive your WooCommerce order data.

Tip: Have separate sheets for customers, orders, and products to keep data organized as the store grows.

Go to Google Sheets and create a new blank sheet. Give it a name like "WooCommerce Customers".

Next, add columns for the specific data points you want to export for each customer:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Phone Number
• Address
• Total Order Value
• Last Order Date
• Products Purchased

The columns can be in any order and you can add as many fields as needed. Common ones include order numbers, discounts used, tax, status, payment method, etc.

Leaving these columns blank for now. We‘ll come back shortly to map the WooCommerce data into them.

Step 2 – Install and Activate Uncanny Automator Plugin

To automatically sync your WooCommerce data into Google Sheets, we‘ll use the excellent Uncanny Automator plugin.

It allows you to create automations between plugins and apps without writing any code. We‘ll use it to connect WooCommerce with Google Sheets.

First, install and activate the Uncanny Automator plugin on your WordPress site. You‘ll need the Pro version which includes Google Sheets integration.

Tip: On large stores, I recommend installing Uncanny Automator on a staging site first to test before adding it to production.

Upon activation, go to Automator > Settings and enter your license key. Then click Activate License.

Next, we‘ll connect it to Google Sheets.

Step 3 – Connect Uncanny Automator to Your Google Account

Under Integrations, click on Google Sheets and select Connect your Google account.

It will open a popup asking you to sign in to your Google account and grant access.

Select the Google account you want to use and click Allow.

On the next screen, check:

• See, edit, create, and delete all your Google Drive files
• See, edit, create, and delete all your Google Sheets spreadsheets

This gives Uncanny Automator the access it needs. Click continue and your account will be connected.

You should see a Your account has been successfully connected confirmation.

Step 4 – Create a Recipe to Export WooCommerce Data

We‘re now ready to create an automation recipe to send WooCommerce orders into Google Sheets automatically.

In Uncanny Automator, recipes are made up of a trigger, action, and optional filters.

Our recipe needs:

Trigger: New paid WooCommerce order completed
Action: Add row in Google Sheet

Here are the steps to set this up:

1. Go to Automator > Add New Recipe

2. Set Trigger to: A guest completes, pays for, lands on a thank you page for an order

3. Set Action to: Create a row in a Google Sheet

4. Select your Google Sheet file and worksheet.

5. Click Get Columns – this will fetch the headers you added earlier.

6. Map the WooCommerce order fields to the matching Google Sheet columns.

For example, map Billing First Name to First Name column. Billing Last Name to Last Name etc.

7. Click Publish to activate the recipe.

Now, whenever a new paid order comes in, Uncanny Automator will automatically add a row to your Google Sheet with the order details.

This eliminates manual data entry and gives you a live copy of all order activity!

Step 5 – Test and Refine the Automation

It‘s always a good idea to test a new automation recipe before relying on it.

Place a test order in your WooCommerce store. Then, go to your Google Sheet to verify that the order data was correctly added in the mapped columns.

If any fields are missing or incorrect, revise the recipe mapping and test again. You may need to re-authenticate the Google connection as well.

Once the test runs successfully, you can publish it and rely on the automation!

Helpful Tips for Your Automation

Here are some tips from my experience for setting up and managing your Uncanny Automator recipes:

• Create separate recipes for customers vs orders vs products for easier management
• Add filters to only export certain product types, categories, etc
• Use the Live View toggle to disable during troubleshooting
• Re-test periodically and update columns if needed
• Monitor for errors under Tools > Logs for debugging
• Limit sheet access to prevent accidental data modification

Advanced Integrations for Enhanced Reporting

The basic WooCommerce to Google Sheets automation covers most store owners‘ needs. But you can take it to the next level by connecting your Sheet to other business apps.

For example, you can create live sales dashboards using Google Data Studio linked to your Sheet data.

Or you can go beyond Google Sheets with services like Zapier and Integromat to connect with apps like:

• QuickBooks for accounting and tax reporting
• Mailchimp and Klaviyo for email marketing automation
• Facebook and Google ads to track sales ROI
• Google Analytics to combine web traffic and order data
• Support systems like Zendesk to enhance customer service

The possibilities are endless! With a bit of creativity, you can build data pipelines to streamline all parts of your ecommerce operations.

Conclusion

I hope this detailed beginner‘s guide covered everything you need to get started integrating your WooCommerce store with Google Sheets in just 5 minutes.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I‘m always happy to help store owners improve their sites and learn new skills.

Automating your order data capture frees you from manual grunt work so you can focus on the big picture strategy for your online business.

Implementing these data automations has helped my ecommerce clients make smarter decisions that increase sales, retention, and profitability. I‘m confident you‘ll get tremendous value as well.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!