Xero integration

Connecting Xero keeps your clients, invoices and payments in step across both systems, so the same customer is not typed into two places and reconciled by hand afterwards.

It is the same job as the QuickBooks integration, for the other accounting package. The one real difference is that Xero also wants an account mapping, not just a tax one.

Where to find it

Settings → Integrations holds every connection EyeOnTask makes to an outside system.

Settings → Integrations

Xero Online Integration is the second card.

Connecting

Settings → Integrations → Xero Online Integration

Connect to Xero hands you to Xero to sign in. You are signing in to Xero itself here, not to EyeOnTask.

Xero sign-in

Xero then asks which organisation to connect — its word for a set of books.

Xero → select organisation

Pick the organisation whose books this EyeOnTask account bills for, and allow access.

Xero → allow access

Caution

One EyeOnTask account connects to one Xero organisation at a time. If you keep several, finish syncing one and disconnect before you connect the next.

Mapping

Allowing access brings you back to EyeOnTask, on the mapping screen. This is where you tell the two systems that your tax is their tax — without it, a synced invoice arrives in Xero with nothing in the tax field.

Xero Online Integration → mapping

Tax Mapping pairs each tax you charge in EyeOnTask with a Xero tax rate. Work down the list and match them off.

Account Mapping is the part QuickBooks does not ask for. Income account decides which Xero account synced invoices are posted to — usually Sales. Get this wrong and the invoices still arrive, but they land in the wrong place in your chart of accounts, which your accountant will find before you do.

Update saves the mapping. Skip moves on without it, which is useful the first time you connect and want to see the sync tabs first. Go to mapping brings you back to this screen at any point.

The four sync tabs

Past the mapping screen sit four tabs — Client, Invoice, Payment and Inventory. Each lists what is available to sync, with tickboxes to choose rows and a button to send them.

Which way each one travels is the thing to learn, because they are not all the same:

Tab	Direction
Client	Both ways — EyeOnTask → Xero, and Xero → EyeOnTask
Invoice	One way — EyeOnTask → Xero only
Payment	Both ways

A fourth Inventory tab sits alongside them for the products and services side of the connection.

Clients

Xero Online Integration → Client

Tick the clients you want and press Sync Clients to Xero.

Xero Online Integration → Client, the other direction

Sync Client From Xero brings them the other way, which is how you start when your customer list already lives in Xero — you import it rather than retyping it.

The clients you sent across turn up in Xero under Contacts.

Xero → Contacts

Note

Clients go first. Until a client exists on both sides, their invoices and payments will not appear in the Invoice and Payment tabs at all. An empty Invoice tab almost always means the client behind those invoices has not been synced yet.

Invoices

Xero Online Integration → Invoice

Invoices travel one way only, out of EyeOnTask. That is deliberate: EyeOnTask is where the work is priced, so it is where the invoice is raised, and Xero receives it.

What you send appears in Xero under Business → Invoices.

Xero → Business → Invoices

Payments

Xero Online Integration → Payment

Xero Online Integration → Payment, the other direction

Payments go both ways, because money genuinely arrives on both sides — a card payment taken through EyeOnTask, a bank transfer reconciled in Xero. Syncing both directions is what stops a client looking unpaid in one system and settled in the other.

A payment sent to Xero shows against its invoice there, which flips the invoice to Paid.

Xero → Business → Invoices, after syncing payments

Payments coming the other way land on the client’s payment ledger in EyeOnTask, marked with where they came from.

Disconnecting

Xero Online Integration → mapping, with Disconnect highlighted

The back arrow — or Go to mapping — returns you to the mapping screen, and Disconnect ends the connection. Do that when you are finished with one organisation and want to connect another.

When something will not sync

A row that refuses to go across is usually Xero rejecting it, not EyeOnTask failing to send it, and the message comes back from Xero itself. See QuickBooks and Xero sync errors.

Where to go next

• QuickBooks integration — the same job, the other accounting package
• QuickBooks and Xero sync errors — what the refusals mean and how to clear them
• A client’s payments — where synced payments land on the client record
• Invoice and accounts settings — numbering, tax and the rest of the invoicing setup