Xero Integration Guide

Most small businesses struggle with expense tracking, invoicing, managing quotations,  sending purchase orders and there lack a clear picture of their business from a Profit & Loss, balance sheet standpoint.

Bambapos chose to integrate with Xero Accounting Software to offer a complete solution that is simple to use and provides the necessary reports. 

If you are not familiar with Xero, you can proceed to the website to find more.

To begin with, ensure:

1. You have signed up for Xero. signup here
2. You have created a Xero organisation - basically your store account and its location.

You can also access Xero from Bambapos by clicking “Go to Xero”

Assuming you already have a Xero account, you now need to connect Bambapos to your Xero account before you can configure the sync.

Click “Sync With Xero” on the menu as shown above.
You will be redirected to Xero for a moment and asked to allow Bambapos to allow access for 30 minutes.

Click Allow.

Xero will then redirect you back to Bambapos on a page showing Xero Status and Account Mapping.
 

A green popup in the top right corner will be showing you how much time is left and which organisation you are connected to while Bambapos is syncing data to Xero. This is the same process you must take to sync your data with Xero at any given point, until we have an automated sync(coming soon).

The status report will show which record is being synced by constantly updating the numbers i.e new records, updates, errors, etc. If you see errors on syncing a particular record, please click the record to view the details.  

We also have an option to enter the start time and end time in case you need to go back further than our default period of pushing data. For instance if you want to push the data for January 2018 to Xero, you set the "from date" as January and end date as any date in the future and restart the sync.
The branch option - is optional but if set, only sales of a particular outlet will be pushed to the connected Xero organisation.

 Records are pushed to Xero sequentially in the following order:

1. Contacts  - all new suppliers and customers and any updates.
   
2. Items - all new products and any product changes.
   
3. Invoices - all new sales and reversals.
   
4. Payments - all payments to invoices.

Sometimes if your records accumulate over a long period, the Sync may take more 30 minutes. In fact, it will take more than a day if the total no. of records exceed 5,000.
When the 30 minutes expire, you will get this message:

At this stage you may be automatically redirected to Xero to authorize for another 30 minutes or, you can connect to your Xero again manually by clicking "Connect" as show below.

Below is an illustration of how and what data is shared between our POS system and Xero.

NOTE: Bambapos does not pull data from Xero. The integration only creates data in Xero at the moment. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1:

Is inventory tracked in Xero?

Answer: 

No. Inventory tracking should never be done in Xero. Reason being, Xero does not support multi-location inventory. Therefore, you should make your purchase orders in Xero but receive the goods in Bambapos.

Question 2:

How are sales from different Outlets recognised in Xero?

Answer:

 Xero has a feature for categorising sales and its called Tracking Category. The integration can automatically create the tracking category called Outlet and then create your outlets as options in the category. So whenever sales are pushed to Xero, the invoice is tracked using a the name of the outlet. Finally, when you are viewing your reports, Xero provides a filter to View by Outlet.

Question 3:

How do sales done on credit in Bambapos get cleared in Xero?
Answer:

Bambapos only creates an Invoice for the sale in Xero. When you receive payment, add it to the customer account in Bambapos  and in Xero follow this steps:

1. Search the customer name in contacts. 
2. Click to view pending payments.
3. Find the Invoice to pay and add payment.

Sales and Payments Accounts Mapping

Xero provides many chart of accounts that are beneficial in accounting. 

The two types of accounts we pay attention to are: BANK accounts and REVENUE accounts.

By default, Xero provides a sales account with code 200 and code 310 for Cost of Goods Sold account. Bambapos also by default adopts these accounts for mapping sales revenue.

However, if you have multiple revenue centres you need to follow this steps:

1. Create your revenue centres as REVENUE accounts in Xero.
2. Match a revenue centre with a category in Bambapos - by making sure products fall in the correct category in Bambapos.
3. Configure the integration by mapping a Bambapos Category to Revenue Centre in Xero.
4. Save your mapping and when the data is pushed to Xero, you are guaranteed the respective revenue accounts will be hit.
   Also make sure you have one cost of goods account

Xero has no default bank accounts. You must create your bank accounts in Xero first. 

Bambapos by default creates a bank account for each tender type that is available in Bambapos.
However, you can configure Bambapos to use your Bank accounts when Payments are pushed to Xero. You achieve that by selecting where each tender type should be mapped to in image shown above.

Below is illustration of a configuration for an account using the default setup and a customised setup.

Default Setup

Customized Setup.

 
Make sure to save your customized setup if you make any changes. Simply click "Update".

 
We are currently pursuing a permanent certificate for synchronizing automatically, and hope to get it as soon as possible.

For further questions, do not hesitate to ask, our team will be on standby to help you get it working for you.