For thousands of Dutch e-commerce entrepreneurs, the combination of Shopify and Moneybird forms the backbone of their online business. Shopify handles the storefront, Moneybird handles the books. It is a powerful pairing — until you realize that the bridge between the two is you, manually creating invoices for every single order. If your store processes more than a handful of orders per day, this manual bridge quickly becomes the most frustrating part of running your business.
Why Dutch merchants choose Moneybird
Moneybird has earned its place as one of the most popular accounting platforms in the Netherlands for good reason. It is designed specifically for the Dutch market, with native support for BTW (Dutch VAT) rates, seamless integration with the Belastingdienst for tax filings, and an interface that speaks the language of Dutch accounting practices. For sole proprietors, small businesses, and growing e-commerce operations alike, Moneybird provides exactly the right level of accounting functionality without the complexity of enterprise-grade software.
The platform handles contact management, invoice creation, expense tracking, and financial reporting in a way that aligns with Dutch fiscal requirements out of the box. Your accountant likely already knows Moneybird and appreciates receiving clean, well-organized books at the end of each quarter. This is precisely why so many Dutch Shopify merchants use it — and precisely why the lack of native integration between the two platforms is so painful.
The manual invoice creation problem
Without automation, every Shopify order requires a separate manual process in Moneybird. You open the order in Shopify, note the customer details, switch to Moneybird, search for the contact or create a new one, enter the line items with correct descriptions and amounts, verify the VAT rate applies correctly, and save the invoice. For a single order, this takes three to five minutes. Multiply that across your daily order volume and the scope of the problem becomes clear.
Contact management becomes a nightmare
One of the most time-consuming aspects of manual invoice creation is managing contacts. When a new customer places an order on Shopify, you need to create that contact in Moneybird with the correct name, email, address, and — for B2B customers — their KVK and BTW numbers. When a returning customer places another order, you need to find their existing contact in Moneybird rather than creating a duplicate. Over time, manual contact management leads to a Moneybird contact list filled with duplicates, misspellings, and inconsistencies that make your bookkeeping unreliable and your accountant unhappy.
VAT handling requires constant attention
Dutch VAT rules are not simple, especially for e-commerce businesses that sell across EU borders. You may need to apply the standard 21 percent BTW rate for domestic sales, the reduced 9 percent rate for certain product categories, reverse-charge VAT for qualifying B2B transactions within the EU, or zero-rate VAT for exports outside the EU. Getting this right on every invoice, manually, while also processing orders quickly enough to maintain fast shipping times, is a recipe for errors that can cause problems during your BTW aangifte.
Returns and credit invoices add complexity
Every return or partial refund in Shopify should generate a corresponding credit invoice in Moneybird to keep your books accurate. Manually tracking which orders have been returned, creating the credit invoice with the correct reference to the original, and ensuring the amounts match perfectly is tedious work that is easy to postpone and even easier to get wrong. Many merchants admit that their credit invoices lag behind their actual returns by days or even weeks, creating a persistent gap between their Shopify reality and their Moneybird books.
Good bookkeeping should be a byproduct of running your store, not a second job that follows after every order.
What automated Shopify-Moneybird integration looks like
Now imagine a different workflow. A customer places an order on your Shopify store, and within seconds — without any action from you — an invoice appears in Moneybird with the correct contact, accurate line items, proper VAT treatment, and a reference linking it back to the Shopify order. When a return is processed in Shopify, a credit invoice is automatically created in Moneybird. Your books are always current, always accurate, and always reconciled.
Automatic invoice creation
The moment a Shopify order reaches a configurable status — whether that is order creation, payment confirmation, or fulfillment — an invoice is generated in Moneybird automatically. Every line item, discount, shipping charge, and tax amount is transferred accurately. The invoice is numbered according to your Moneybird sequence and linked to the Shopify order for easy cross-referencing.
Smart contact matching
Rather than creating duplicate contacts, an intelligent integration matches incoming Shopify customers against your existing Moneybird contact list using email address, company name, and other identifying details. New customers are created automatically with all relevant details populated. Returning customers are matched to their existing Moneybird contact, keeping your contact database clean and your customer history intact.
Configurable rules for different order types
Not every order should be invoiced the same way. Perhaps wholesale orders tagged with "B2B" in Shopify should use a different revenue ledger account in Moneybird. Perhaps orders containing certain product tags need a specific VAT treatment. A well-designed integration lets you define these rules once and applies them automatically to every matching order, eliminating the need to remember and manually apply different treatments for different order types.
Credit invoices for returns
When a refund is processed in Shopify, the integration automatically creates a credit invoice in Moneybird that references the original invoice. Partial refunds are handled correctly, with only the returned items and amounts reflected. Your Moneybird administration stays perfectly synchronized with your Shopify returns, without any manual intervention.
Sync logs for complete visibility
Every synchronization action is logged with full details — which order triggered which invoice, what contact was matched or created, and whether any issues were encountered. This audit trail gives you and your accountant complete visibility into the automated process and makes it easy to investigate any question about a specific transaction.
Need a custom integration for your Shopify store?
MoneybirdSync: built for this exact problem
We built MoneybirdSync specifically to solve the Shopify-Moneybird integration challenge for Dutch merchants. It is not a generic accounting connector that happens to support Moneybird — it is a purpose-built integration designed around the specific needs and workflows of Dutch e-commerce businesses using these two platforms.
Setting up MoneybirdSync takes minutes, not days. You connect your Shopify store, authorize access to your Moneybird administration, configure your invoice rules and VAT mappings, and the integration begins working immediately. There is no complex mapping exercise, no CSV imports, and no technical knowledge required.
What merchants report after switching
Merchants who switch from manual invoice creation to MoneybirdSync consistently report the same outcomes. The hours they previously spent on bookkeeping administration each week simply disappear from their schedule. Their accountant notices that the books are cleaner and more consistent than they have ever been. The end-of-month and end-of-quarter reconciliation, which used to take a full day or more, becomes a quick verification that takes minutes. And perhaps most importantly, the nagging anxiety that something was missed or entered incorrectly — that persistent background stress that every manually-bookkeeping merchant knows — is replaced by confidence that every order is accounted for accurately and automatically.
The financial impact is straightforward. If you spend even five hours per week on manual Shopify-to-Moneybird data entry, that is over 20 hours per month of work that MoneybirdSync eliminates entirely. Factor in the errors avoided, the accountant hours saved, and the peace of mind gained, and the integration pays for itself many times over from the very first month.
If you are tired of being the manual bridge between Shopify and Moneybird, reach out to us. We will have your automated bookkeeping up and running faster than you would spend on this week's invoices.
