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Xero

Overview

Xero provides accounting and payroll software for small business, so you can see your cash flow in real time with online accounting, invoicing, billing, and banking services. Combining Grow’s ability to update data as it changes and Xero’s flexibility with viewing up-to-date information enables you to make powerful and effective financial decisions at a moment’s notice.

Contents in This Article

Features

Acquisition Method

State
  Data Warehouse

  Alpha

  Direct Query

   Supported

How to Connect

  1. Click on the Data tab at the top left of the global navigation. You will be brought to your Data Connections.
  2. Click on the blue "Connect" button and search for Xero.
  3. Click on the Xero logo.
  4. The Manage Connections page will open, revealing a "Connect to Xero" button. A window will pop up to log in with your Xero credentials. After entering your credentials you will see a green confirmation message that the connection has been made. To warehouse your data right away, keep the Manage Connections page open and skip down to the Connection Workflow section to follow those instructions.

Data Warehouse

Xero is on the Grow Data Warehouse, which we highly recommend you use. For more information about warehousing your data, visit the Data Warehouse Help Article.

Suggested Tables

The following suggested tables are available in Grow. These are toggled on by default when you sync your data for the first time.

  • Balance Sheet
    • Balance Sheet (Formatted)
  • Bank Summary
  • Executive Summary
    • Executive Summary (Formatted)
  • Invoices
    • Invoices (Formatted)
    • Invoice Credit Notes
    • Invoice Line Items
    • Invoice Payments
  • Profit And Loss
    • Profit And Loss (Formatted)
  • Purchase Orders

Other Tables

These additional tables are available in Grow.

  • Accounts
  • Aged Payables By Contact
  • Aged Receivables By Contact
  • Budget Summary
    • Budget Summary (Formatted)
  • Contacts
    • Contacts (Formatted)
    • Contact Addresses
    • Contact Phones
  • Items
    • Items (Formatted)
  • Journals
    • Journals (Formatted)
    • Journal Lines
  • Linked Transactions
  • Repeating Invoices
    • Repeating Invoices (Formatted)
    • Repeating Invoice Line Items
  • Tracking Categories
  • Trial Balance

Xero_Tables.png

How to Warehouse your Data

  1. Starting with the Connections Overview Page, navigate to your Xero connection and click on it to open the Connection Details page.
  2. Select the “Manage Connection” button inside the Connection Details section to open the warehouse table selection flow.
  3. If your data source isn't already connected, refer to the How to Connect section of this article for more details. If your data source is already connected, you can immediately select which tables of data you want to warehouse.
  4. Once you have finished selecting the data that you want stored in Grow’s Data Warehouse, click the “Sync & Store” button at the bottom of the Manage Connection page. This will begin the initial population of your warehouse with the tables you defined. Populating your data warehouse for the first time may take a while, even up to several hours.
  5. While your data is "In Queue" or "Processing", you may continue working within the app.

Sync Interval

Full Sync

The default sync interval is 12 hours per table for the following source and associated derived tables:

  • Accounts
  • Aged Payables
  • Aged Receivables
  • Balance Sheet
  • Bank Summary
  • Budget Summary
  • Executive Summary
  • Items
  • Linked Transactions
  • Profit And Loss
  • Repeating Invoices
  • Tracking Categories
  • Trial Balance

Incremental Sync

When incremental sync is available, the default incremental sync interval is 1 hour, while the default full sync interval is 1 week.

Incremental sync is enabled for the following tables:

  • Contacts
  • Invoices
  • Journals
  • Purchase Orders

To learn more about sync intervals and how to adjust the default settings, please visit this section of the Data Warehouse help article.

Direct Query

A direct query connection can be used to pull data into Grow. With abnormal usage, Direct Query can run into API limitations depending on the data source. For this reason, we recommend that you use Grow's Data Warehouse for a more performant, reliable experience.

Support Status

Direct Query Currently supported with no projection to stop maintaining

 

Endpoints

Below is a list of the reports that the Xero integration offers, along with a description of each report.

  • Accounts: List of all the bank accounts connected to my Xero account
  • Aged Payable by Contact: List of historical transactions paid to provider or supplier with associated details.
  • Aged Receivables by Contact: List of historical transactions received by customer with associated details.
  • Balance Sheet: Details of Balance Sheet entries for last two years, including the value of assets, liabilities and other categories listed on your account.
  • Bank Statement: Charges and deposits for specified bank account.
    • NOTE: Bank Statement is no longer supported by Xero and users may experience issues accessing this endpoint. However, it is still working in some instances so we've kept the endpoint available to Grow users. Please review Xero's API documentation for more details.
  • Bank Statement (multiple accounts): Opening and closing balance for selected time period and specific transactions for multiple bank accounts allowing for aggregated totals.
    • NOTE: Bank Statement (multiple accounts) is no longer supported by Xero and users may experience issues accessing this endpoint. However, it is still working in some instances so we've kept the endpoint available to Grow users. Please review Xero's API documentation for more details.
  • Bank Summary: Opening and closing balance, cash received and spent for specified time period.
  • Budget Summary: Monthly budget projections specified in your account.
  • Contacts: List of all contacts, activity status and associated ID.
  • Executive Summary: List of key values for the last year including profitability, balance sheet, asset positions, cash flow, average debtor days etc.
  • Invoices: List of all invoice totals, amount due, paid, and categories.
  • Invoice Line Items: List of all invoice line items, amount due, and categories.
  • Items: Retrieve inventory information like description, quantity, and price.
  • Linked Transactions: List of any transactions linked from a purchase transactions and a customer or sales transaction.
  • Profit and Loss: Last 12 months of data including monthly revenue, operating expenses, cost of sales, etc.
  • Repeating Invoices: List of any invoices set up to repeat and associated details.
  • Tracking Categories: List of all tracking categories and associated details.
  • Trial balance: Statement of all debits and credits for account.

API Documentation

https://developer.xero.com/documentation/

This is for reference only; you should not need to consult these to use the connection in Grow.

 

FAQs + Tips and Tricks

Time Zone

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) — All date and timestamps are stored in UTC. If account timezone settings are set in Grow, these times will adjust accordingly. For more information, visit this Help Center article.

If you have a lot of data or many datasets from Xero, you may run into API limits.

Xero has a daily call cap and per minute cap. If you anticipate hitting the per minute cap of 60 calls in 60 seconds, just wait a minute and try again.

Using the Tracking CategoryIDs and OptionIDs with the Profit and Loss report

If you want to limit the information for a profit and loss report using a custom tracking ID that you've created in Xero, you can find the CategoryID and OptionID in the "TrackingCategories" report. Then simply cut and paste those values into the fields in the "Profit and Loss" report.

xero-tracking-ids.gif

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