By the Orderfy team ·
What the operations system does, and what Xero does
Xero is accounting software: the ledger, the bank feeds, GST and the reports your accountant needs. A wholesaler's daily work happens before the accounts: quoting, taking orders, buying stock, receiving it, picking it and delivering it. Software for that work sits beside Xero and passes it the documents that matter to the accounts.
A clear rule helps: the operations system owns the document (who, what, how many, when) and Xero owns the money.
Seven things to check in any Xero connection
- Which documents are sent. Sales invoices only, or supplier bills and credit notes as well?
- Which way each one goes. One-way is easier to trust than two systems that can both edit the same invoice.
- Whether your accounts team approves them. Do documents arrive approved, or waiting for someone to approve them in Xero?
- How payments get back. When a customer pays in Xero, does the order show as paid, and how soon?
- What happens to deposits. A deposit taken before the goods are delivered needs its own invoice.
- Where stock values are kept. Some connections post stock and cost of goods sold to Xero. Others leave that to your accountant.
- What happens when the connection is down. Is the work queued and retried, and can you see what failed and why?
How Orderfy's Xero connection works
Xero is built in on every Orderfy plan. An admin connects it in settings and approves the connection in Xero.
- Sent to Xero: sales invoices, deposit invoices, supplier bills, customer credit notes and supplier credit notes. A supplier bill is raised when stock is receipted, one for each goods receipt.
- Approval: everything Orderfy sends arrives in Xero unapproved, for your accounts team to approve there. Documents can be sent automatically, or held in a queue for someone to send.
- Read back: customer payments, the status of each invoice and whether a supplier bill has been paid. A payment recorded in Xero shows against the order in Orderfy.
- Contacts: a customer or supplier is created in Xero the first time they are billed.
- When Xero is unavailable: Orderfy queues the work and sends it when Xero is back, and a sync log lists everything sent, with any error explained.
More about the Xero integration.
What Orderfy does not send to Xero
Orderfy does not send stock values, cost of goods sold or inventory journals, and products are not created as Xero items. Quotes, sales orders and purchase orders stay in Orderfy: only the invoice, the bill and the credit note go across. Bank feeds, bank reconciliation, supplier payments, journals and payroll stay in Xero.
If your accountant wants stock on the balance sheet, Orderfy's stock reports give the value by warehouse and location for them to record.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Can I see the list of exactly what is sent to Xero and what is read back?
- If an invoice is changed in Xero, what happens in your system?
- If a payment is removed in Xero, does the order stop showing as paid?
- Can I see a log of what was sent, and retry something that failed?
- What will my accountant still have to do by hand?