Black Friday this year falls on November 27. For most Shopify stores, it is the busiest day of the year, sometimes generating 5 to 10 times the normal order volume. Great for revenue, but a serious headache for your bookkeeping if you are not prepared. August is the perfect time to get everything in order.
What goes wrong during peak days?
Shopify store owners who create invoices manually in Moneybird run into the same problems the moment things get busy:
- Invoice backlog: Hundreds of orders in a single day simply cannot be processed manually
- VAT errors: Under time pressure, VAT rates, discounts and shipping costs get processed incorrectly
- Duplicate contacts: The same customer gets created multiple times with minor spelling variations
- Post-Black Friday returns: The returns spike in December compounds the administrative chaos further
The result: a Q4 VAT return that costs hours of work in January, right when you want to focus on the year-end closing.
Automate before it gets busy
The smartest move you can make right now is to automate your Shopify bookkeeping before the peak season starts. With Schakel, every order is processed automatically, whether there are 5 or 500 of them.
As soon as a customer checks out in your Shopify store:
- Schakel registers the order via webhook
- The customer is found or created in Moneybird, without duplicates
- A correct invoice is generated with all order lines, VAT and discounts
- The payment status is updated immediately
- Moneybird sends the invoice to your customer by email (optional)
This happens for every single order, even if you receive 800 on Black Friday while you are busy with customer service and logistics.
VAT during Black Friday: what to watch out for
Black Friday attracts international customers too. If you sell a lot to consumers in other EU countries, your bookkeeping needs to handle a few things correctly:
- OSS threshold: If you sell more than €10,000 per year to EU consumers outside the Netherlands, you need to remit VAT in the customer’s country via the OSS scheme. Schakel automatically applies the correct VAT rate per country.
- Discount codes: Discounts reduce the VAT base. Process discount codes manually and the chance of errors is high. Automated, it is always correct.
- Shipping costs: Make sure shipping costs from Shopify are correctly recorded in your bookkeeping. During peak periods, this is often the first thing that gets skipped.
Processing returns after the holidays
After Black Friday and the holiday season, a returns spike always follows. Every return requires a credit note in Moneybird. Manually, that is a significant extra time investment. Schakel automatically generates credit notes as soon as Shopify registers a refund, including the correct VAT processing.
You can read more about how that works in our article on credit notes and returns in Shopify.
Checklist: preparing for Black Friday
- Connect Shopify to Moneybird via Schakel (do this now, not on November 26)
- Check your invoice template: does it include your Chamber of Commerce number, VAT number and payment terms?
- Set the correct VAT rates per product category
- Test a return and verify that the credit note is created correctly
- Enable OSS settings if you sell to EU consumers outside the Netherlands
- Make sure your bank account is linked in Moneybird for automatic reconciliation
Start in August, benefit in November
Entrepreneurs who automate their bookkeeping in August or September go into Black Friday with confidence. No backlog, no errors, no stress. You can focus entirely on capturing orders and serving customers.
Schakel is set up in a few minutes and works directly with your existing Shopify and Moneybird account. Start your trial and approach Black Friday with a clean slate.
Want this handled automatically? Pick your connector.
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