WooCommerce make it simple to adjust the settings we require. These are the settings we use for NSW Australia based businesses.
General Business Region Settings
Settings are as follows:
1. Base Location: Australia – New South Wales
2. Currency: Australian Dollars ($)
3. Allowed Countries: Specific Countries
4. Specific Countries: Australia
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and press Save Changes
Sometimes a store will want to export from Australia but with the shipping costs being fairly high usually and the competition from other suppliers closer to the buyer that makes it unlikely. Plus fraud from overseas purchases is much harder to recover than in Australia for the seller.
Inventory
If you can order new stock from suppliers as needed and don’t need to wait more than 48hrs to receive it then turning off the inventory option is generally the easiest approach and requires less time to manage the store.
If you do need inventory management enter the email address you want to have the notifications to go to and select the options that suits you for the inventory warning levels etc.
Taxation Settings
1. Enable Taxes: Tick Enable taxes and tax calculations
2. Prices Entered With Tax: Select Yes, I will enter prices inclusive of tax
3. Display prices during cart/checkout: Select Including tax
4. Press Save Changes
The other settings on the page are usually fine as defaults. If the person entering the products is going to be entering ex-gst prices then select the alternative option in point 2 but most people seem to think of their products and have prices listed as including gst.
Tax Rate
At the top of the tax settings page is a link for the standard tax rate.
1. Click on Tax Rates: standard
2. The tax rate table should be empty to start with as below
3. Click the button for Insert Row
4. Enter the Country Code as AU
5. Enter the Tax Rate as 10
6. Press Save Changes
Shipping
Shipping is an important but more complicated aspect of shopping cart configuration.
- General shipping information, regions, costs and plugins
- Calculating shipping by regions of postcodes
Disable Free Shipping
The default settings on the shipping tab in woocommerce settings are usually fine but Free Shipping will be enabled by default, if you don’t plan on offering free shipping then:
1. Click on the link for free shipping at the top of the shipping tab
2. Untick the box for enable free shipping
3. Save Changes
Payment Gateways
For a detailed look at payment gateways for Australian ecommerce stores check this article.
Usually PayPal will be the option that a startup online store will pick. It’s very simple to setup, there are no monthly fees and the transaction fees are $0.30 + 2.4% on transactions which whilst not brilliant is probably only about 0.5% to 1% higher than the deal a new business will get from a bank. eWay is the other main option we suggest which costs about $1 per day and $0.30 + 2.2% on the transactions.
Bank Transfer
Click the link for Bacs (its for bank transfer) at the top of the page
To turn off bank transfer
1. Untick the box for Enable bank transfer
2. Save Changes
or configure bank transfer for use
If you plan on using bank transfer:
1. Account Name with the name on your account, usually business name
2. Account Number as your account number provided by the bank
3. BSB into the Sort Code field.
4. You can put the name of the bank into the Bank Name field too but it’s not required
5. Click Save Changes
6. And of course you would need to leave the box to enable bank transfer ticked so that it is active.
Cheque
Click on the link for Cheque at the top of the page
To turn off cheque payment
1. Remove the tick from enable cheque payment
2. Click Save Changes
or to use cheque payments
1. Leave the enable cheque ticked
2. Put your postal address details into the large text box
3. Click Save Changes
Cash on Delivery
COD is disabled by default, if you want to use it click on it’s link and tick the box to enable and then save.
PayPal
If you don’t plan on using PayPal then untick the box on it’s page and save the changes.
If you are going to be using Paypal though:
1. Enter your paypal account email address
2. Remove the tick from the Enable sandbox modei
3. Save Changes
Emails
There are lots of options for customising the standard emails that are sent to customers. As a minium on the emails tab you will want to set:
1. From Name as your business name
2. From Email Address as your business email address
3. Email footer text to something like ‘Thank you for shopping with us, if you have any questions please call…’
4. Save Changes
