Manual CSV Exports
Every status check meant logging into WooCommerce, filtering by status, exporting, and dropping the file into a shared sheet by hand.
AIEM Order Sync
A scheduled n8n automation that keeps AIEM's WooCommerce course orders mirrored to a live Google Sheet every 30 minutes — pending and completed orders refreshed automatically, no manual exports, no stale data.
The Project
About the Workflow
AIEM — the African Institute of Emergency Medicine — runs a medical training academy that sells courses through a WooCommerce-powered store. The admin team needed live visibility into pending and completed orders without manually exporting CSVs or logging into WordPress. The fix: a scheduled n8n automation that pushes data straight into the Google Sheet they already use every day.
Client
African Institute of Emergency Medicine (AIEM) — medical training academy selling continuing-education courses online to South African healthcare practitioners.
Platform
n8n (self-hosted), WooCommerce REST API, and Google Sheets. Africa/Johannesburg timezone, running on a 30-minute schedule.
Status
Live in production. Created January 2026, last updated April 2026. Continues to refresh order data 48 times a day without manual intervention.
The Problem
Stale Data, Manual Exports
Administrators needed a single live view of course orders, broken out by status — but the existing workflow forced them back into the WordPress dashboard every time they needed an answer.
Data Always Lagging
By the time the spreadsheet was current, the WooCommerce store had moved on — pending orders had been paid, completed orders had been refunded.
WordPress Access for All
To see the same data, every team member needed WooCommerce admin credentials — a permissions surface AIEM didn't want to keep widening.
No Split by Status
The team wanted pending and completed orders in separate tabs — something the WooCommerce export flow didn't produce without extra work.
The Solution
A Scheduled, Self-Refreshing Mirror
A scheduled n8n automation that runs every 30 minutes, clears both sheet tabs, and refreshes them with the latest order data — split cleanly into Pending and Completed, with one row per product per order.
-
01
Clear Pending
Wipes rows 2–500 on the Pending tab so old data can't bleed through into the next sync.
-
02
Clear Completed
Same operation on the Completed tab — both sheets start each run from a clean slate.
-
03
Fetch Orders
Pulls every WooCommerce order placed after 1 February 2026 via the REST API.
-
04
Split by Status
Two filter nodes route orders into two streams — one for
status = pending, one forstatus = completed. -
05
Flatten Line Items
A code node flattens nested order data into clean, spreadsheet-friendly rows — one row per product per order.
-
06
Write & Dedupe
Appends to each tab using append-or-update logic, matching on Order Number so duplicates never appear.
How It Works
Workflow Architecture
A single trigger fans out into two parallel writes — same data shape, different status filter.
Schedule Trigger
Fires every 30 minutes · Africa/Johannesburg
Clear sheet: Pending
Removes rows 2–500 on the Pending tab
Clear sheet: Completed
Removes rows 2–500 on the Completed tab
WooCommerce — Get Orders
All orders after 2026-02-01 · returnAll
Status = Pending
Filter: Pending
Keep orders with status = pending
Format Order Data
Flatten line items into one row per product
Sheets — Pending
Append/Update on Order Number
Status = Completed
Filter: Completed
Keep orders with status = completed
Format Order Data
Flatten line items into one row per product
Sheets — Completed
Append/Update on Order Number
Tech & Nodes
What's Under the Hood
Eight nodes, three services, one schedule. No webhook layer, no external orchestrator — n8n on its own.
| Node | Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
Schedule Trigger |
Trigger | Fires every 30 minutes |
Google Sheets ×2 |
Action | Clears rows 2–500 on both tabs before refresh |
WooCommerce |
Action | Fetches all qualifying orders with date filter |
Filter ×2 |
Logic | Splits orders by status = pending / completed |
Code ×2 |
Transform | Flattens nested order + line_item data into a row per product |
Google Sheets ×2 |
Action | Writes formatted rows, matching on Order Number |
Data Output
What Each Row Looks Like
Every order is exploded into one row per purchased product, with the customer, billing, shipping, and item detail flattened side-by-side.
Order ID
Order Number
Order Status
Order Date
Order Total
Currency
Payment Method
Customer ID
Customer Email
Customer Name
Customer Phone
Billing Address
Billing City
Billing State/Country
Shipping Address
Shipping City/State/Country
Product ID
Product Name
Product SKU
Quantity
Item Price
Item Subtotal
Item Total
Last Updated
Processed By
Technical Notes
Audit Findings & Trade-offs
Honest notes on the workflow as it stands — what's a deliberate trade-off, what's a small efficiency opportunity, and what's worth keeping an eye on as volumes grow.
Hardcoded row ceiling. The clear operation targets rows 2–500, which is a safe ceiling for now. If order volume ever exceeds 500 rows in a single sync, anything beyond row 500 wouldn't be cleared. Worth making rowsToDelete dynamic as the catalogue grows.
Annual date filter. The after: 2026-02-01 WooCommerce filter means only 2026 orders are fetched. This is intentional — but it should be bumped each January, or refactored into a config variable so it isn't a silent stale-data trap.
Duplicate formatter. The two Format Order Data code nodes are identical. They could be consolidated upstream of the filter split — minor efficiency win, not a bug.
No error branch. A failed WooCommerce API call would silently result in two blank sheets on the next run. Adding an error branch with a Slack or email notification would harden it against quiet failures.
returnAll on every run. The entire qualifying order set is fetched on each cycle. Fine for current volumes; at higher scale, pagination or an incremental "modified since" cursor would be the next step.
Timezone set correctly. Workflow runs on Africa/Johannesburg — order dates and sync timestamps line up with the team's working hours.
Got a Manual Process That's Eating Your Day?
If your team is exporting CSVs, copy-pasting between dashboards, or chasing data across three systems — there's almost certainly a small, sturdy automation that can take that off your plate. Let's talk.
Work like this sits under AI & Automation services — n8n workflow design, scheduled syncs, WooCommerce + Google Sheets integration, and structured data pipelines.
Related: see the AIEM Auto-Enrolment workflow running on the same n8n instance — WooCommerce purchases into LearnWorlds course access in under five minutes.