In MyCashflow, archiving orders locks their content for reporting purposes. The accounting report based on archived orders provides a comprehensive breakdown of sales for accounting and tax purposes.

The point of archiving is to make sure that the online store's reports also remain reliable in the long run. No changes can be made to the contents, amounts or payment transactions of archived orders, which means that archived orders always appear in reports for the same time period.

The following changes that would have impact on bookkeeping cannot be made after an order has been archived:

  • Adding new products
  • Deleting products
  • Editing quantities
  • Editing product unit prices
  • Editing tax rates
  • Editing shipping and payment costs as well as discounts
  • Refunds or other changes to payment transactions

Often, editing customer information may impact an order's VAT rate (depending upon the order's delivery destination, and on tax-free EU community sales). However, changes made to customer information don't impact tax rates and totals in archived orders.

Canceled orders cannot be archived, and archived orders cannot be canceled.

Enabling order archiving

You can enable manual archiving of orders in order settings. If you want to use automatic archiving, contact the MyCashflow customer service.

To enable manual archiving, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Order settings.
  2. Click Activate in Archive settings.

Now you have enabled manual archiving of orders in your online store. Orders can now be archived by all users who have access to the Orders page.

Next, grant bookkeeping permissions to all necessary users of the admin panel. With bookkeeping permissions users can undo archiving or set the date of archiving (by default this is the day when the order has been archived).

You can manage user permissions in the settings of each user account on the Account > Users page.

Archiving orders manually

You can learn here how to archive orders manually.

At the end of every month, you may want to go through orders that haven't been archived yet and archive them before sending the bookkeeping report to your bookkeeper.

  1. Find the order and open its details from the list on the admin panel page Orders.
  2. In the upper right corner of the order page, click Archive order.

    If your user account has bookkeeping permissions, you can also specify the date for which the order should be archived.

The order has been archived. Its product content and totals can no longer be edited. To view the order later on, use the Archive status menu in the search tool on the Orders page.

The order will become visible in the bookkeeping report immediately after archiving.

Archiving orders automatically

Orders are archived automatically either when they are received or when their products are marked as shipped. Alternatively, you can manually archive orders.

When enabling archiving, notify the MyCashflow customer service of your preferred method for archiving orders.

Archiving orders in bulk

MyCashflow includes a tool that allows you to bulk archive old orders from a time period of your choice. For example, when you enable archiving, it can be used to conveniently archive all orders for the current accounting period.

Before using bulk archiving, make sure that all the orders received within the time frame are ready for archiving. Bulk archiving cannot be undone.

If necessary, see what archiving does to orders.

Here's how to bulk archive orders:

  1. In the admin panel of your online store, go to Settings > Order settings.
  2. In Archive settings, select the time period for which you want to archive orders.

    Bulk archiving goes through all orders created in the online store during the selected time period.

  3. Choose an archiving method from the Archive orders menu:
    • By the date the order was placed: The order will appear in the accounting report according to the original order date.
    • By the date of the last order delivery: The order will appear in the accounting report according to the date when its last shipment was dispatched.

    It is a good idea to always use the same archiving method so that the accounting of the online store remains consistent.

  4. Finally, click Archive.

    The tool archives all orders that can be archived for the time period.

Reports

Your online store's archived orders are accounted for in bookkeeping reports, with a comprehensive breakdown of sales with regards to taxation and bookkeeping. You can learn more here about the report's different sections.

To access the report, in the admin panel go to Reports > Bookkeeping report.

The report can be generated for the time period of your choice. In the report, you can see the turnover excluding VAT, tax amounts, and sales including taxes.

Order values accounted for in the report are those values which are set at the moment at which archiving is carried out. Changes made before an order was archived aren't accounted for in the report. To generate a report without order breakdown, select the option Show only summary.

Sales details

The breakdown contains the online store's product sales without tax, discounts, or turnover distribution by VAT.

Net sales (by tax rates and processing) – Sales discounts (by tax rates) = Net sales in total

Sales of goods outside the Community

This will show you sales including and excluding taxes for a selected time period according to tax rates, as well as tax amounts for every tax rate.

If your online store only has domestic sales, your bookkeeper can use this table to report the turnover by tax rates.

The breakdown by country illustrates country-specific sales according to different tax rates and the amount of taxes.

VAT details

This breakdown contains information on intra-community orders according to VAT numbers that were archived during the defined time period. The VAT calculations are mostly based on the country of delivery as well as the VAT liability of the customer's EU area.

If the customer is a business that is subjected to value added tax, sales must be processed as EU sales, exclusive of VAT. EU sales which are exclusive of VAT must be reported to tax authorities in monthly tax declarations (including country, VAT number, and sales which are exclusive of tax).

Learn more about EU sales.

Payment details

Payment details contain a summary of order payment methods and payment statuses (paid and open). The value of payment transactions corresponds to sales including taxes when the order payment transactions are combined with the correct orders.

The totals associated with different payment methods are reported in bookkeeping in separate accounts as receivables, from where they are credited once the money has been received (e.g. a settlement has been made by the payment service).

Orders with under- or overcharge

At times, your online store may have orders whose open or completed payments don't match the order total. This may happen if returns or exchanges haven't been duly processed.

So in this section you can see orders for which customers have been overcharged or for which they paid too little. Such payments must be corrected by creating positive or negative payment transactions for the order.

See the instructions on how to create payment transactions.

Open orders

The breakdown of open orders contains a list of orders that haven't been paid for, as well as details such as order status, totals, and the amount to be paid.

The order numbers on the aforementioned lists are links. Click them to easily access orders that require correction.

Processing returns and exchanges for archived orders

You can process returns and exchanges even for orders that have already been archived. In such a case, the archived order will remain untouched and a new return order will be created in your online store to account for the changes.

  1. Find the order and open its details from the list on the admin panel page Orders.

    To search for archived orders use the search tool in the right-hand pane on the Orders page.

  2. In the shipment table, mark all products that need to be returned or exchanged.
  3. In the heading row of the shipment table, click Process return.

    The return form opens.

  4. In the return form, define the return settings.

    See also the description of return settings.

  5. In the return form, click Process return.

    A new return order is created in the online store to which you will be redirected.

    In the case of exchanges, products that should be exchanged will be displayed as a separate shipment.

  6. In the return order's shipment table, click Save the return.

    The return order is marked as having been delivered.

  7. If you need to make a refund to the customer due to a return, in the return order's Payment transactions menu, click Create new.

    Make sure that your online store has a payment method that can be used for making refunds (e.g. MyCashflow Refund).

    See also the instructions on how to create payment transactions and how to make a refund.

  8. Finish processing the refund.
  9. Exchanges: Mark the potential products to be shipped as delivered once the customer has made the relevant payments.

    Learn more about marking shipments as delivered.

  10. If order archiving is enabled in your online store, archive the order to bookkeeping once you're sure that you will no longer have to edit it.

Undoing archiving

If necessary, you can undo archiving for an order, which will allow you to edit the order's sums and products and will remove the order from bookkeeping reports.

Make sure to notify your bookkeeper if you undo archiving

If you undo archiving for an order, the order won't be included in bookkeeping reports anymore. Make sure to provide your bookkeeper with an updated report for the month during which the order was originally archived.

If you re-archive the order later on, the order will be displayed in bookkeeping reports with the date of the most recent archiving.

You may want to undo archiving before you settle VAT.

Archiving can be undone only by users who have the Bookkeeping permission. The account owner of the online store can grant bookkeeping permissions to users on the admin panel’s Account > Users page.

To undo archiving for an order:

  1. Open the archived order on the admin panel's Orders page.

    You can easily find archived orders by using the Archive status filter in the right-hand pane.

  2. At the top of the order page, click Undo archiving.

After undoing archiving you'll be able to edit the order's products and sums.

If necessary, once you're done editing, re-archive the order and provide your bookkeeper with an updated bookkeeping report.