How payment fees affect WooCommerce profit

WooCommerce Analytics doesn't record payment processing fees. To see what fees cost you, export a month of transactions or a payout report from your payment processor, total the fees, and divide by total sales from Analytics › Revenue for the same dates. That's your effective fee rate, which you subtract when working out profit.

Most store owners know their headline rate. Fewer know their effective rate, which is usually higher. This guide shows how to find it, why small orders and refunds push it up, and where it fits in a profit calculation.

How payment fees are usually charged

Card and wallet processors typically charge a percentage of the amount plus a fixed fee per transaction. Many add extra for international cards, currency conversion, certain card types, disputes and chargebacks. Exact rates depend on the processor, your country, your plan and sometimes your volume, so this guide doesn't quote any.

To find your rates:

• Your processor's pricing page for your country, plus any custom rate you agreed.
• Your processor's dashboard, where each transaction lists its fee.
• WooPayments users: WooCommerce's WooPayments fees documentation explains its fees, and the fees for an order appear in that order's fee breakdown. It also offers fee and balance reports for a chosen period.

Your statement beats any published rate, because it includes every surcharge you actually paid.

The free way: work out your effective fee rate

1. Total last month's fees. In your processor's dashboard, export transactions or a payout report for the month and sum the fee column. If you use more than one processor (cards plus PayPal, say), do each one.
2. Get total sales from WooCommerce. Go to Analytics › Revenue, set the same dates, and note Total sales (net sales plus taxes plus shipping). Use total sales because fees are charged on everything the customer pays.
3. Divide. Fees ÷ total sales = effective fee rate.

Say your October fees were $610 and total sales were $23,190. Your effective fee rate is 2.6%. As a share of net sales ($18,400), the same fees are 3.3%, which is the number to use when you're comparing fees against your product margin.

Two cautions:

• Payment methods that aren't processed online (bank transfer, cash on delivery) have no processor fee but still show in total sales. If they're a big share, divide fees by card and wallet sales only.
• Dates won't line up exactly. Processors date fees by transaction or payout, and Analytics dates orders by its date type setting (Analytics › Settings). Over a month the gap is small.

Why small orders pay more

The fixed part of the fee is the same on a $10 order and a $200 order, so it's a much bigger share of the small one. Say your processor charged 3% plus $0.25 per transaction (round numbers for the example, not any processor's actual rate):

If your average order value is low, fees eat a larger share of margin. Raising it, with bundles or a free shipping threshold, also lowers your effective fee rate. See how to raise average order value.

Refunds, disputes and chargebacks

These are where fees surprise people:

• Refunds. Many processors keep the original transaction fee when you refund, so a refunded order costs you a fee with no sale left to pay for it. Check what your processor does by opening a refunded transaction in its dashboard.
• Disputes and chargebacks. Most processors charge a separate dispute fee, often whether or not you win. These are easy to miss because they're billed apart from the sale.
• Currency conversion. Selling in several currencies or paying out in a different currency can add a conversion fee on top.

Keep these in the fee total for the month. The guide on profit after refunds and discounts covers what refunds cost beyond fees.

Where fees fit in your profit

Fees are a variable cost: they rise with every order. They come out after gross profit, alongside shipping you paid, to give contribution margin:

Fees are often smaller than the shipping gap, but they're on every order, refunds included. The guide on comparing shipping costs and charges covers the other line.

Can WooCommerce show sales by payment method?

Not in Analytics up to WooCommerce 11.2. The order list shows each order's payment method, and an order export can include it. WooCommerce's developers have announced that WooCommerce 11.3, due in November 2026, adds the payment method to the Analytics › Orders report as a column, a CSV export column and a filter. Once you're on 11.3, you can split order totals by payment method there and apply each processor's fee rate separately.

What Askshelf can and can't tell you

Askshelf still doesn't know your payment fees. It has no access to your processor's statements, so it can't give you a fee total, an effective rate or a profit figure after fees. Its gross profit leaves fees out.

What it can do is split your sales by payment method, which gives you the amounts to apply each processor's rate to. It returns orders and net sales for each method, for any date range, and can compare with an earlier period. Payment method counts orders before refunds, so the totals won't match Analytics › Revenue exactly.

Apply each processor's fee rate to its share, add the fixed per-transaction fee times the order count, and you have a fee estimate per method to check against your statements. The sales summary gives the total sales figure (net sales plus taxes and shipping) if you want the denominator for an overall rate. Askshelf is free for 10 questions a month; see the profit reporting use case for the monthly routine.

To put fees together with costs, shipping and discounts, read the WooCommerce profit reporting guide.