Xero v2 Integration - Invoices Export

Overview 

Invoices are exported from Astute using the accounts receivable (AR) integration with payments recorded against the invoice in Xero.

This means that the Astute portal is intended only to generate and send invoices to your clients.

Marking Historical Invoices as Exported

Invoices which were previously exported to another invoicing integration won’t be recognised as exported when the Xero v2 integration is switched on.

To prevent historical data from being exported again, a mock export is performed to mark all data prior to the migration date as exported. Invoice data prior to the date of the mock export will not push through when you run your first export to Xero, unless it has been reset for export.

Please speak to your Implementation Consultant or our Support team for more information on this.

Customers and Contacts

When an invoice is exported from Astute, the customer name will be checked against your list of Contacts in Xero. If the Contact doesn’t already exist, one will be created. The next time you export an invoice for that customer, it will be linked to that Contact in Xero. Only the Name will be included in the export from Astute. If you need additional details stored in Xero you will need to enter these manually against the Xero Contact. 

You can see which Contacts the Astute Customer profile is linked to by going to Users > Customers > select customer > Integration. There’s a section at the bottom called ‘Link to Xero’ where you’ll see the details of which Xero organisation and Contact this customer profile is linked to. 

Remove the Customer/Contact Link

If required, you can remove the link between an Astute Customer and Xero Contact. This may be because you need to merge Contacts in Xero and remove those existing links in Astute so you can start fresh, for example. 

Once the link is removed, the next time you export an invoice for this Astute Customer, a new link will be established in the Xero organisation you export it to and you’ll see the new details in the Customer profile in Astute.

Export Invoices

Invoices will be available for export once they are in a status of Sent.

To export an invoice from Astute:

1. Go to Reports > Integrations > Xero Integration

2. In the Report Settings, set the date filter if required and choose the correct Billing Entity

3. Check for any Validation Errors under the Report Summary screen and fix as required

4. Click Export > Export Invoices.

If invoices have been exported successfully, this will be shown in an on-screen banner.  It will indicate how many invoices have been exported as well, so you may notice that some have exported while others have not. Error messages will display for any invoices that have not been exported successfully. Once the errors are fixed, you can export those invoices.  

When invoice data is exported, the invoices that are generated in Xero will be automatically posted and will appear in Business > Sales Invoices > ‘Awaiting Payment’.

You will not be able to reset successfully exported invoices in Astute.

Large Exports

Xero has some limitations around how long your portals can be connected as well as how much data can be sent in one export. To work around this, we’re going to send data internally in smaller blocks to prevent any timeout errors when large exports are required. 

What this means is that exports will be grouped into chunks of 100 when you’re exporting. So, if you were exporting 350 invoices, this would be broken down into 4 chunks (100/100/100/50). You won’t see this during the export, but you will see in the API Log report that there are 4 logs instead of 1. 

If any items were successfully exported, your export will be marked as ‘Sent’. The next time you generate the Xero Integration report, the ‘Invoices Sent’ ‘Payrun’ and ‘Credit Notes Count’ numbers will only show the remaining number of items to be exported.

Invoice Currency

The currency assigned to an invoice in Astute will be applied to the invoice created in Xero. If a currency isn’t specified on an invoice, the default currency for your entity’s default Regulatory Region will apply.

Customer Details in an Invoice Export

Customer details will be pushed across in an invoice export if the Customer:

• has been previously exported to Xero; or,
• has not been updated in Astute since the last time they were exported to Xero; or,
• is created in Astute before going live with Xero and the customer does not exist in Xero.