Xero Practice Manager Integrations: Understanding the Xero Integration

This article is an extract from the book 'Everything you need to know about Xero Practice Manager'
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Xero is the first integration we want to set up in our tech stack. When we have these two apps integrated, there are six areas that sync:

• Clients
• Contacts
• Suppliers
• Invoices
• Payments
• Purchase orders.

Clients and suppliers

If we make an update to a client or supplier address in XPM, it will also update Xero. If you make this update in Xero, it will not flow back to XPM, so you always want to be making your updates in XPM.

Keep in mind here that not every field in Xero and XPM are connected via the API, there are fields in both apps that do not exist in the other. For example, Xero has ‘GST Number’ as a field but this does not exist in XPM, so we can’t expect this to update from one system to the other.

Below are how the fields sync from XPM to the contact information in Xero.

Clients:

• Client > Contact Name
• Phone > Phone
• Physical Address > Street Address
• Postal Address > Postal Address.

Contacts:

• Name > Primary Person (Last Name)
• Position > {no sync}
• Phone Number > {no sync}
• Mobile > {no sync}
• Email Address > Email.

The next thing to consider in your integration between XPM and Xero is invoicing and purchase orders. Let’s first look at purchase orders.

Purchase orders

Purchase orders are not often used by accountants, but it is important to understand that the option is there. We will cover this in more detail in Chapter 9: Outsourcing and Disbursements. When you receipt a purchase order in XPM, it will create an accounts payable invoice against that supplier in Xero. Here are the fields that sync from XPM to Xero when receipting a purchase order:

• Supplier > Contact Name
• Item Description > Description
• Supplier Invoice Number > Invoice Reference.

Invoices

Now let’s look at invoicing. Invoices can flow from XPM to Xero, and from Xero to XPM. We will be covering this in much more detail in Chapter 7: Setting Up Engagements and again in Chapter 10: Invoicing, but here is a brief explanation.

You will be creating your invoices in XPM for your billable and quoted jobs. You click into the job, raise an invoice, then approve this invoice. This will create an accounts receivable invoice against that customer in Xero. Simple.

For fixed-price agreements, we manage our invoicing in Xero. We set up repeating invoices in Xero and these invoices are then sent back to XPM to sit against the relevant job. We do this by capturing the job number, or the client order number, in the invoice reference in Xero, so the invoice knows which job to sit against. The reason we raise our fixed-price agreement invoices in Xero is because it has the ability to set up repeating invoices, whereas XPM does not have this facility. The fields that sync from XPM to Xero depend on which integration settings you set up. To get a deep understanding of this, look at Chapter 10: Invoicing.

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