Faire + Shopify Integration: How Fees and Commissions Impact Your Accounting | Build with Bookkeep

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Faire offers an integration with Shopify that allows brands to sync Faire marketplace orders directly into Shopify. This makes it easier to manage inventory, orders, and fulfillment from a single platform.

How Faire Orders Sync into Shopify

When the Faire integration is enabled:

• Faire orders are created as Shopify orders.

• Faire commission and payment processing fees can be synced into Shopify as line items on the order, depending on your integration preferences.

• These settings can be configured in Shopify under the Faire preferences.

(See Shopify’s documentation here: Shopify Preferences)

Why This Creates Accounting Challenges

While syncing fees and commissions as line items provides visibility, it also introduces several accounting issues:

1. Fees are not products
   The commission and processing fee line items created by Faire are not actual products. This makes them difficult to track, categorize, and map cleanly in accounting systems that expect products or standardized fee structures.

2. Gross sales are understated in Shopify
   Because these fee and commission line items directly reduce the order subtotal, Shopify reports netted-down gross sales rather than true gross revenue. This can:

   • Understate top-line revenue
   • Make revenue trends harder to analyze
   • Obscure the true cost of selling on Faire

3. Limited expense visibility
   With fees embedded directly into the order subtotal, it becomes difficult to clearly understand:

   • How much you are paying in Faire commissions
   • How much you are paying in payment processing fees
   • How those expenses change over time

Example
Shopify’s Finance Summary shows $4,365.73 in gross sales.

In Bookkeep, you’ll see the same total, confirming the data matches Shopify. When you drill into the subcategories, Bookkeep clearly separates Faire commission fees ($120.80) and payment processing fees ($20.23), which reduce the actual gross sales of $4,506.76 down to the $4,365.73 reported.

How Bookkeep Solves This

Bookkeep is built to handle marketplace and payment-provider complexity like this.

When syncing Shopify data into your accounting system, Bookkeep:

• Identifies Faire commission and processing fee line items
• Separates these amounts under gross sales
• Allows you to map commissions and fees directly to the correct expense accounts
• Preserves true gross sales, giving you a more accurate top-line revenue figure
• Provides clear visibility into the total cost of selling on Faire

This results in:

• Cleaner journal entries
• Accurate gross vs. net reporting
• Better insight into marketplace profitability

Summary

While the Faire–Shopify integration makes operational syncing easy, the way fees and commissions are represented can distort financial reporting. Bookkeep bridges that gap by allowing you to correctly classify Faire fees as expenses—so you can trust your gross sales and clearly understand your marketplace costs.