Connecting Shopify to BMD: Automated Bookkeeping

The end of the month, the same routine again: export orders from Shopify, clean up the file in Excel, match payouts from Shopify Payments and PayPal, collect invoices as PDFs and send everything to your tax adviser. There, it gets entered into BMD by hand once more. With every additional order this becomes more tedious and more error-prone.

This article explains why Shopify and BMD do not connect on their own, what your tax adviser actually needs and which three ways exist to automate the process.

Why Shopify and BMD do not connect on their own

Shopify is an international shop system, BMD is accounting and tax software that is widely used in Austria. During our research in October 2026 we found no official, direct connection between the two. Most accounting apps in the Shopify App Store focus on DATEV, the system used by many German tax advisers. A few apps list BMD among their supported formats. Check how far that support goes together with your tax adviser before you buy.

There is also a fundamental difference: Shopify thinks in orders, accounting thinks in journal entries. An order with two items at different VAT rates, shipping costs, a discount code and payment via Shopify Payments becomes several journal lines on different accounts. Someone has to do exactly this translation, either a person at the end of the month or an interface.

What your tax adviser actually needs

Before thinking about technology, clarify with your tax adviser in which form they want to receive the data. BMD offers import functions through which bookings from other systems can be read in, for example as a structured CSV file. Which format, which fields and which account mapping your firm uses is up to them. They typically need:

• Revenue split by VAT rate and country, such as domestic, other EU countries with and without a VAT ID, and non-EU countries
• Shipping costs, discounts and vouchers as separate items
• Payments by payment provider, so bank receipts can be matched
• Fees from Shopify Payments, PayPal or Klarna, which are often already deducted from payouts
• Invoices and credit notes as receipts, ideally clearly linked to the booking

Ask specifically for a sample file or a format description. With this template, each of the following three solutions can be implemented cleanly.

Three ways: intermediate tool, export file, custom interface

1. Intermediate tool (an app from the Shopify App Store or an accounting service) A ready-made app collects orders and payouts and turns them into booking data. Advantage: quick to set up, low entry costs. Disadvantage: you are tied to its feature set, and Austrian specifics are not always fully covered. Suits smaller shops with simple cases, if your tax adviser accepts the output format.

2. Regular export in the right format A small program fetches the data through the official Shopify interface, converts it into the format your firm can import and stores the file with its receipts monthly or weekly. Advantage: tailored exactly to your account mapping, manageable effort. Disadvantage: a person still starts the import in BMD. Suits most growing shops.

3. Custom interface with reconciliation Orders, credit notes and payouts are processed continuously, and discrepancies are detected and reported, for example when a payout does not match the sum of the orders. Advantage: a largely automatic process with errors visible early. Disadvantage: more effort to set up. Suits shops with many orders, several countries or several sales channels.

If you already use an ERP such as weclapp, it can act as the bridge: weclapp offers an export for BMD, and shop orders flow into the ERP first. Find out more on our page about weclapp integration.

Austrian specifics: VAT rates, OSS, credit notes

This is where standard solutions make most of their mistakes. The key points:

• Several VAT rates: besides the standard rate of 20 percent, Austria has reduced rates of 10 and 13 percent. Since 1 July 2026, according to the Austrian business service portal (USP), there is also a rate of 4.9 percent for selected basic foods. If you sell food, books or plants, for example, you often have several rates in one order, and new rates must also be added to the interface.
• One-Stop Shop (OSS): if you sell to consumers in other EU countries and exceed €10,000 per year EU-wide, the VAT of the destination country generally applies. It is reported collectively via the OSS. Revenue therefore has to be available split by country.
• Business customers in the EU: for deliveries to companies with a valid VAT ID, the tax liability can shift to the recipient (reverse charge). The VAT ID must be recorded and verified for this.
• Returns and credit notes: a refund in Shopify has to appear in accounting as a credit note for the original invoice, with the correct VAT rate and in the correct period.
• Net payouts: payment providers often transfer in batches and minus their fees. For clean bookings, revenue and fees must be visible separately.

Always clarify the tax treatment of your cases with your tax adviser. An interface implements their requirements, it does not replace tax advice.

How to recognise a good connection

Whichever of the three options you choose, a solution you can rely on follows a few basic rules.

• Traceability: for every booking you can find the matching order in Shopify and vice versa, for example via the order or invoice number.
• Nothing twice, nothing forgotten: running an export twice does not create duplicate bookings. A missing order gets noticed.
• Receipts stay available: in Austria, books and receipts generally have to be kept for seven years (§ 132 BAO, the Austrian Federal Fiscal Code). Invoices and credit notes should therefore be stored permanently, not only in an app you might cancel one day.
• Clear error messages: if an order cannot be matched, for example because of an unknown VAT rate, it is reported instead of being silently skipped.
• Adaptable without a rebuild: if accounts, VAT rates or payment providers change, the mapping can be adjusted without rebuilding the solution.

These points are also a good checklist when you test a ready-made app.

When a custom connection pays off

A simple rule of thumb: count how many hours per month you and your tax adviser spend on exports, rework and follow-up questions, and what a wrong booking could cost. A custom connection usually pays off when

• you regularly have many orders and the monthly reconciliation takes hours,
• you sell to several countries or use several VAT rates,
• other channels such as marketplaces or a physical shop are added alongside Shopify,
• errors have so far only come to light with the VAT return.

At EA Digital Solutions, system integration starts from €4,500 (as of October 2026). For extensions directly in the shop, such as custom apps or special workflows, see Shopify API and custom apps. General considerations on standard versus custom solutions can be found in the article ERP integration: when a custom connection pays off.

How an integration project works

1. Map the current process: together we look at how orders get from Shopify to bookings today and where time is lost.
2. Agree the format with your tax adviser: chart of accounts, tax codes, receipt numbers and import format are written down.
3. Implementation and test run: the connection processes a closed month in parallel with the existing process. Your tax adviser compares the results.
4. Switch-over and handover: only once the figures match do we switch over. You receive short documentation of what is transferred when.

Your next step

In a free initial analysis we look at your process from order to booking and tell you which of the three options is enough for your shop. Feel free to bring a sample file from your tax adviser. An export of a closed month from Shopify and a list of the payment providers you use are also helpful. With these we can quickly see where most of the manual work happens today. Our office is in Graz, and remote collaboration works just as well.