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Shop Manager for WooCommerce: FAQ

This Shop Manager FAQ answers the questions people ask before and just after installing: what it needs, what is free, what the AI features cost, and how staff access works. Each answer is short and links to the full guide. For something that is broken rather than unclear, go to Troubleshooting instead.

Getting Started

The first part of this Shop Manager FAQ covers what the plugin needs and what installing it changes.

What is Shop Manager for WooCommerce?
A dashboard for running your store, orders, products, customers, staff and reports, outside the WordPress admin. See What Is Shop Manager?

What does it need?
WooCommerce 8.0 or newer, installed and active. It works with WooCommerce only, not other shop plugins.

Will installing it change my store?
Your orders, products and customers are untouched. Activation adds the dashboard at /sm-dashboard/, four employee roles, and Shop Manager’s own settings and log tables, all of which stay out of the way of WooCommerce.

Does it work on a phone or tablet?
Yes, the layout adapts to smaller screens. Day to day work with long order lists is still most comfortable on a desktop.

Does it support High-Performance Order Storage?
Yes. Shop Manager declares compatibility with WooCommerce’s HPOS order tables and works the same whether they are on or off.

Free, Pro and Licences

The most common Shop Manager FAQ of all is what you get without paying.

What is in the free plugin?
The dashboard and its reports, creating and editing orders with advanced filters, printing, shipping and tracking, the full product screens, customers with automatic tags, and employee management with four editable roles and an activity log. See the pricing page for the full list.

What does Pro add?
Custom order statuses, PDF invoices (four designs, one file for a whole batch, attached to order emails), the AI assistant, AI product descriptions, the AI employee performance summary, and custom employee roles.

Does Pro replace the free plugin?
No. Pro is an add-on and needs the free plugin installed and active. See Install & Activate Shop Manager Pro.

What happens if my licence expires?
The Pro features stop. Custom roles show Pro Required and anyone holding one sees an Access Restricted page until you move them to a built-in role. Nothing is deleted, and renewing brings it all back as it was.

Is there a refund policy?
Yes, a 14 day money-back guarantee, no questions asked.

AI Features

Do the AI features cost extra?
They run on your own key from Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, and that provider bills you for usage. Shop Manager adds no markup; for a typical store it comes to a few dollars a month. See Configure AI Settings & API Keys.

How is my API key stored?
Encrypted with AES-256, using a secret derived from your site’s own WordPress keys. The admin page is never sent the key back, only whether one is saved.

Are the customer tags and insight cards AI?
No. Both are rules applied to your order data, they work without any AI key, and they are free. The AI features are the assistant, the product description writer and the employee summary.

Orders and Products

Can I create and edit orders from the dashboard?
Yes, in the free plugin, for anyone whose role allows it. See Create WooCommerce Orders.

Can I add my own order statuses?
With Pro. Changing an order between the standard statuses is free. See Custom Order Status.

Can I import or export products?
Both, as CSV. Bulk Upload on the add product form creates simple products from a CSV file, and the product list exports the current filtered view. See Add a WooCommerce Product.

Staff and Access

Can staff run the store without wp-admin access?
Yes. Give them a Shop Manager role and they work only in the dashboard; wp-admin sends them back to it. See Employee Management.

Can I change what a role is allowed to do?
Yes, free, for the four built-in roles. Building a new role of your own needs Pro. See Role Based Access Control.

If the Shop Manager FAQ did not answer your question, these are the next places to look.

Still Stuck? Contact us for support.
Last Updated: October 2, 2026