Xero

Author: Teodor Petrov

Last Updated: August 18, 2023 11:06

Xero is a robust accounting solution with sophisticated accounting features, ample reports and 800+ integrations. Integrate OfficeRnD with it to save time and streamline your billing and accounting.

We recommend using only one system to charge clients - either OfficeRnD or Xero/Quickbooks - to prevent potential double-charging.

Summary

The integration automates the following procedures:

Generate Invoices - on the billing date you set up in OfficeRnD under Settings/Billing/Invoicing, the system will generate all invoices.
Sync - the customers' profiles and the generated invoices are synced with Xero. During the integration setup, you can choose whether to sync invoices automatically or manually.
Export Invoice Document - you can configure OfficeRnD not to generate the invoice documents so that Xero can create them for you.
Send - you can configure OfficeRnD to automatically send the synced invoices to the members.
Pull Charges - you can configure OfficeRnD to automatically pull reconciled payments from Xero every 6 hours and mark the invoices as paid on the OfficeRnD side.

Note: The Pull Charges and Pull Overpayments schedules keep the last Pull date and they will only pull data that has been added or modified after this date from the Xero integration. For example, if you disconnect a company from Xero and then, add an overpayment in the accounting integration, the schedule will not take it because it would not find a connection. Then, if you decide to connect the company to Xero again in a couple of days, the integration will not be able to pull the overpayment because it will only look for charges and overpayments that has been added or modified within the last 6 hours.

Please note that the integration is not designed to work 2-way for the synchronization of data, meaning that the things that we can pull from Xero are:
- payments of reconciled invoices (in order to mark the invoices in OfficeRnD as paid as well)
- overpayments
- invoice number template (if enabled under Settings/Billing/General)
- invoice document (if enabled under Settings/Billing/General)

Integrate OfficeRnD with Xero

To set up you OfficeRnD and Xero integration you first need to have both OfficeRnD and Xero accounts.

IMPORTANT: In order to connect OfficeRnD to a Xero account, the Xero user that connects the integration has to have at least Standard user permissions for the Xero organization. Read more about Xero user permissions.

Next, follow these steps:

Navigate to Settings/Integrations.
Locate the Xero under the Accounting section and click Activate.
Click connect and authorize OfficeRnD to use your Xero account. You can choose to select one common Xero account for all locations or configure different Xero accounts - one for each location you created in OfficeRnD.
Click Add and select the OfficeRnD location that you want to map to the Xero account. You can connect each location created in OfficeRnD to a specific Xero account. This way you can map the same OfficeRnD billing accounts to different Xero revenue accounts purely based on the location of the customers being invoiced. By default, the system will connect the Xero integration with all OfficeRnD locations.
Click Configure to define the mappings between OfficeRnD and Xero.

Tip: When you connect OfficeRnD to a Xero instance that is invoicing other products or services outside of what OfficeRnD invoices, we recommend that you use the Xero numbering to avoid the two systems duplicating invoice numbers. In that case, navigate to Settings/Invoicing and deselect the Generate invoice numbers in OfficeRnD option.

The configuration is like an interpreter between the OfficeRnD language and the Xero language. The "conversation" between the two systems revolves around invoices and is driven entirely by OfficeRnD. Depending on how you set up the integration, OfficeRnD will let Xero know when a new invoice is generated and updated. OfficeRnD can also regularly ask Xero for updated payments on invoices. You control whether these "conversations" are automated or manually triggered. Each "conversation" contains information about the invoices and their line items, which is why you need to configure mappings between the attributes of the invoice line items in OfficeRnD and Xero - tax rates, plans, payment accounts.

Note: Companies with the same emails are going to have their invoices synced under the same account in Xero. Please make sure that each company has a unique email address.

Note: The integration syncs both by email and customer name, with the following priority:
- 1st, it will try to match the email. If there’s a match we’ll sync the invoices under that single account.
- 2nd, if we can’t match by email, we’ll look at matching the name.

General Settings

The general settings of the configuration are available under the General tab.

Default Status - configure the default status of the invoices created by OfficeRnD in Xero. This status is applied when an invoice is first created after a sync operation between OfficeRnD and Xero.
Note: If the invoice is initially synced with draft status to Xero. In this case, to sync added payment from OfficeRnD to Xero you first have to approve the invoice from Xero side and then sync it.
Sync Behavior - configure the sync behavior so that invoices are synced manually or automatically when you create or update them in OfficeRnD.
Pull charges automatically - tell the system if you want it to automatically pull charges from Xero. When that option is enabled, invoices reconciled in Xero will be automatically marked as Paid on the OfficeRnD side.
Reference template - If you will generate the invoice documents in Xero, you can set a template to be used to populate the invoice Reference property in Xero. You can use the following OfficeRnD placeholders in this template: documentNumber, documentReference, customerName, customerEmail.

Revenue Accounts Mapping

The Revenue Accounts tab is the most important tab of the integration. Within it you "translate" the accounts configured in OfficeRnD under Billing/Accounts to accounts you created in Xero. These mappings define how OfficeRnD allocates each invoice line item to an account in Xero.

On the left side of the tab, you find a list of all Accounts configured in OfficeRnD. Each one needs to be mapped to an account in Xero. To change the OfficeRnD accounts, navigate to Billing/Accounts.

Payment Accounts Mapping

Note: If you're going to sync payments from Xero to OfficeRND, each payment account needs to be mapped to a single account in Xero, otherwise when the system is pulling a paymentfrom Xero it won't allocate it to the correct payment method in OfficeRND.

The Payment Accounts tab enables you to map every payment option available in OfficeRnD to a payment account in Xero. On the left-hand side, it lists all payment option is OfficeRnD, starting with the manual payment options and listing any options provided by an integrated payment provider.

Cash - map to a Xero payment account to record cash payments manually entered on invoices in OfficeRnD.
Bank Transfer- map to a Xero payment account to record bank transfer payments manually entered on invoices in OfficeRnD.
POS - map to a Xero payment account to record POS payments manually entered on invoices in OfficeRnD.
Cheque - map to a Xero payment account to record cheque payments manually entered on invoices in OfficeRnD.
[Payment provider] Card - this option is only available if you integrated OfficeRnD with a credit card payment provider. Map to a Xero payment account to record credit card payments charged via OfficeRnD.
[Payment provider] [Payment Method]- this option is only available if you integrated OfficeRnD with a payment provider that officers non-credit card transactions such as ACH. Map to a Xero payment account to record the payments charged via OfficeRnD.

Note: Please make sure to map each Payment Account to the corresponding Xero account to ensure your Overpayment documents will be synced. If you have not mapped Cash, for example, and you have an Overpayment created with Payment Method Cash, it will be ignored by Xero and there will be no sync.

Tax Rates Mapping

The Tax Rates tab enables you to map every tax rate you configured in OfficeRnD under Billing/Tax Rates to a tax rate in Xero. Make sure to map every tax rate, including the 0 tax rate options as otherwise, the integration will yield errors.

Enable Tracking

The Tracking tab allows you to track invoice line items in Xero based on the location of the invoice in Xero.

Note: Within an invoice, you can have line items that have different locations. Each line item is correctly tracked and reported to Xero. If you have identical line items, that come from different locations, they won't be merged together but will show up as separate lines on the invoice.

Track location by - select whether you want to use Classes or Locations in Xero to tag the invoices.
[Location Name] - map every OfficeRnD location to a class or location property in Xero so that OfficeRnD knows how to translate the invoice location to Xero. Based on that setting, you will be able to track the revenue streams per location.

Branding Mapping

This option only becomes available when you have created at least one custom branding theme in Xero. Learn more about custom themes here. The Branding tab enables you to map each of your OfficeRnD locations to a branding theme in Xero.

Inventory Mapping

The Inventory tab enables you to map the OfficeRnD Billing/Plans to inventory items you create in Xero. These mappings need to be configured only if you haven't configured Revenue mapping and your accounting works based on inventory rather than accounts.

Note: If you map an OfficeRnD account to a Xero account in the Revenue Account tab, it will take precedence over the inventory items mappings.

On the left side of the tab, you find a list of all Billing Plans configured in OfficeRnD. Each one can be mapped to an inventory item in Xero.

Connecting Members and Companies to Xero

After you've successfully set up your integration with Xero you'll be able to see an Integrations section in the profile of both individual members and companies.
By default any new member/company is not connected to Xero, however, once an invoice issued to them is synced, they'll be connected.
These changes will be visible in the integrations section with a little status text.

Additionally, there's a link icon, which when clicked will open a new tab that is going to open your Xero account and the profile of the selected member/company.

Depending on whether the company is connected or disconnected you'll be able to respectively manually disconnect or connect a member/company to Xero.

Disconnecting a contact from Xero will break the link between the contact in Xero and the profile in OfficeRND, but the link will be automatically re-established the next time an invoice is synced.
Choosing to Connect a contact from OfficeRND to Xero will allow you to pick from a list of contacts over in Xero to which to link the profile in OfficeRND.

The manual connect is not necessary if you sync an invoice for the company/member. This should only be done for members and companies that don't have an invoice issued to them yet.

Tips & Tricks

Reconcile Bulk Payments Received from a Payment Provider Using a Clearing Account