What each date means
Order created date is when WooCommerce first created the order. A customer may then take time to complete payment, use an offline method or return later.
Paid date is recorded when WooCommerce considers the order paid. For immediate card payments, the two dates are often close. For delayed, retried or manual payments, they may differ.
Why paid date often suits daily retail summaries
A daily retail summary is intended to represent sales and payment activity for a particular day. Grouping by paid date usually aligns more closely with the money captured by gateways and the clearing-account movement that will later be reconciled.
Example: an order is created at 11:58pm on Monday but the card payment succeeds at 12:03am on Tuesday. An order-date summary puts the sale on Monday; a paid-date summary puts it on Tuesday.
When order date can still be appropriate
Some businesses have reporting policies built around the order creation date or use workflows where payment timing is not the determining event. The right choice should be explicit and consistent, not assumed by the connector.
Refund dates are separate events
A refund may occur days or months after the original order. The refund needs its own source date and accounting treatment so it is not silently pushed back into the sale date.
How ClearCommerce handles the choice
The export profile stores the grouping date option: paid date, order created date or completed date. Source order and refund data remain separate from that treatment, and the preview shows the result before export.