A tour of your WooCommerce dashboard
A guided walkthrough of the WooCommerce admin area — where to find your orders, products, customers, reports, and settings.
- Time
- 5 minutes
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- You’ll need
- Shop Manager or Administrator access
When you log in to WordPress, WooCommerce adds four sections to the left-hand menu: WooCommerce, Products, Analytics and Marketing. This guide walks through each part of that area so nothing feels unfamiliar.
Quick summary
The WooCommerce menu gives you quick access to your orders, customers, reports, settings and extensions. Products, Analytics and Marketing (where coupons live) sit alongside it as their own menus. The WooCommerce home screen shows a snapshot of your store's performance.
What you'll need
You need a WordPress login with at least Shop Manager or Administrator access. If you cannot see the WooCommerce menu, ask your project lead to check your user role.
The WooCommerce home screen
When you click WooCommerce in the left menu, the first screen you land on is the WooCommerce home page. Think of it as a daily briefing for your store.
If your store is new, a store setup checklist sits at the top with the setup tasks still to do. Once that checklist is completed or hidden, the home screen turns to day-to-day management and can show:
- Things to do next — the tasks WooCommerce suggests you tackle.
- Inbox — store notices, extension activity and suggestions. Dismiss a message when you no longer need it.
- Stats overview — Total sales, Net sales, Orders and Products sold, for today, the week to date or the month to date. View detailed stats opens the Analytics Overview.
- Store management — shortcuts to marketing, adding products, and your payment, tax and shipping settings.
To choose which stats appear in the Stats overview, open the ellipsis menu (three dots) in that section. Use Display options in the top right to switch between a single-column and two-column layout.
The main menu items explained
Orders
This is where every purchase lands. You will see a list of all orders, color-coded by status. Click any order to see its full details — what was bought, who bought it, the shipping address, and payment information. You can also add an order by hand from here.
See Understanding orders for a full walkthrough.
Products
Products is its own top-level menu, not a WooCommerce submenu. This is where you build and manage your catalog. You can:
- View all your products in a list
- Add new products
- Edit existing products
- Manage product categories, tags and brands
- View and manage product attributes (like size or color)
- Moderate product reviews
Customers
The Customers screen, under the WooCommerce menu, lists your registered customers and your guest buyers. You can search, filter and sort the list, and see each customer's order count, total spend and average order value. To see the orders themselves, use WooCommerce → Orders.
Coupons
Coupons live under Marketing → Coupons. Create and manage discount codes there. You can set a fixed amount off, a percentage off, or free shipping — and add rules like minimum order value or expiry dates.
See Coupons & discounts for step-by-step instructions.
Reports
WooCommerce → Reports is a legacy tool. WooCommerce deprecated it when version 4.0 shipped in March 2020, and it no longer receives updates. It still shows legacy Orders, Customers, Stock and Taxes tabs, but use the Analytics menu for anything you rely on.
See Reading your store reports to learn what each report means.
Settings
Everything about how your store behaves lives here. The settings are organized into tabs — the main ones are:
| Tab | What it controls |
|---|---|
| General | Country, currency, store address, where you sell and ship |
| Products | Measurements, reviews, inventory behavior, downloadable products |
| Tax | Tax rates and calculation (appears once taxes are enabled in General) |
| Shipping | Shipping zones, shipping settings, and classes |
| Payments | Which payment methods are active |
| Accounts & Privacy | Customer account creation, data retention |
| Emails | Automated email content and appearance |
| Advanced | Page setup, REST API, webhooks, and the Features screen |
There are a few more tabs, such as Integration, Site visibility and Point of Sale, and extensions can add their own.
Extensions
This area lists WooCommerce extensions (add-ons) available from the official marketplace. Use the Discover, Browse and Themes tabs to find them, and the My Subscriptions tab to manage what you already own.
Status
The WooCommerce → Status screen is mainly for developers and support. Use Get system report to produce a snapshot of your server environment, active plugins and potential conflicts, then Copy for support or Download for support. The Logs and Tools tabs live here too. If you are troubleshooting, sharing this report with your Chykalophia contact is very helpful.
The Products menu in detail
The Products menu item expands to show:
- All Products — your full product list with quick-edit options
- Add New — start creating a new product
- Brands — group products by brand
- Categories — manage how your products are grouped
- Tags — manage product tags
- Attributes — define options like "Size" or "Color" that variable products use
- Reviews — approve, reply to and moderate product reviews
The Analytics menu
Analytics is a top-level menu of its own, separate from the legacy Reports screen. It offers:
- Overview — a summary dashboard
- Revenue, Orders, Products, Variations — detailed breakdowns
- Stock, Taxes, Downloads, Categories, Coupons — specific report types
- Settings — excluded order statuses, default date range and date type
You can filter all analytics by date range and export a report table as a CSV file. The customer report is the exception: it sits at WooCommerce → Customers.
Common questions
I can see the WordPress menu but not WooCommerce — why?
You either do not have WooCommerce installed, or your user account does not have the right role. An Administrator or Shop Manager role is needed to see the WooCommerce menu. Ask your developer or project lead.
Can I give my staff access to orders without giving them full admin access?
Yes. The Shop Manager role gives access to WooCommerce orders (including refunds), products, coupons, customers and settings without full WordPress admin access. See WordPress user roles explained for details.
Where do I find my store's sales data?
Go to Analytics → Overview for the current dashboard. The older, deprecated reports are at WooCommerce → Reports.
What is the difference between the WooCommerce home page and the Analytics overview?
The home page is a quick daily snapshot — great for a morning check-in. The Analytics section offers deeper filtering, date comparisons, and export options for more detailed analysis.
Related guides
- What is WooCommerce?
- Products in WooCommerce explained
- Understanding orders
- Reading your store reports
- General store settings
- WordPress user roles explained
- A tour of the WordPress dashboard
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