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The Xero accounting integration posts the invoices, credit notes, customers and payments Alguna creates into Xero, mapped to your chart of accounts, so the ledger reflects billing without re-keying. Use it when Alguna issues and collects invoices and Xero is the system of record for accounting. If instead you want Xero to send invoices to customers and collect payment, see Xero Invoicing. Everything synced here — whether created in the dashboard or through the API — follows the object model in How Alguna works.

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Connecting Xero

To connect your Xero account to Alguna, follow these steps:
  1. Go to Settings → Connections → Integrations in Alguna.
  2. Click Connect on the tile with Xero.
  3. Choose the Xero organization you wish to connect to Alguna.
    • If you’re testing in the sandbox environment, we recommend connecting to a Xero Demo Company.
      • Tip: The Xero Demo Company automatically disconnects every 30 days.
  4. Authorize the connection between Xero and Alguna.
  5. Set Alguna as your source of truth for customer and invoice creation.
  6. Optionally, import existing customers from Xero into Alguna (this can be done at a later date as well).
  7. Set up your accounting ledger and payment accounts for proper ledger entry mapping.

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Connection Scope

When connected to Xero, Alguna syncs the following fields to ensure accurate accounting:
  • Accounts:
    • Chart of Accounts: Alguna syncs invoices and payments to the appropriate ledger account in Xero, based on your setup.
  • Customers:
    • Customers created in Alguna are synced to Xero, allowing smooth invoicing and payment management.
  • Items:
    • All line items on invoices, including quantities, pricing, tax rates, and amounts, are synced between Alguna and Xero.
  • Invoices:
    • Issued invoices, including details such as due dates, amounts, and tax breakdowns, are sent to Xero.
  • Payments:
    • Payments made through Alguna are synced to Xero for reconciliation.

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Syncing & Linking Accounts

During the onboarding process, Alguna allows you to import existing customers from Xero into Alguna. This simplifies customer management by keeping records up to date. Once synced, we recommend using Alguna as your source of truth for customer creation. Alguna only manages customers (not suppliers) during syncs with Xero, matching Xero’s contacts feature that covers both customers and suppliers.

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Accounting Sync & Payment Reconciliation

During the Xero setup process, you can decide how you would like invoices to sync with Xero. Alguna provides flexibility with three sync options:
  1. Only When Issued:
    • When an invoice is sent to the customer, Alguna automatically syncs it to Xero as an open invoice.
    • Payment reconciliation occurs outside of Xero, directly with your payment providers.
  2. Only When Paid:
    • Invoices are created in Xero only after they are issued and the payment is collected via Alguna.
    • Xero will not be aware of any open invoices until the payment is processed and synced.
  3. When Issued and Paid:
    • The invoice is synced when it’s issued and again when payment is collected via Alguna, ensuring that both stages are reflected in Xero.

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Details Synced

When Alguna syncs invoices and payments to Xero, the following details are transferred:

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Managing Tax

For taxable customers, Alguna can provide specific tax codes when syncing invoices to Xero. Ensure that tax rates in Alguna match those in Xero to prevent discrepancies.

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Automatic Payment Reconciliation

If payments are collected through Alguna, the reconciliation is automatically synced to Xero. This means that the original payment source and the payment record are matched in both systems, keeping your financials accurate.

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Posting invoices to deferred income

By default each invoice line posts to its product’s sales account, so revenue reaches the P&L at invoice time. A legal entity can instead post every invoice and credit note line to its deferred income account, leaving the monthly revenue recognition journal entry as the only thing that moves revenue into the P&L. Credit notes follow the same rule, so a credit reverses out of deferred income rather than out of revenue. Only invoices synced after the switch use the deferred income account; invoices already in Xero are untouched. Note the month you switch in: the first journal entry after the cut-over must not release revenue that was already posted to the P&L by earlier invoices.

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Journal entries

Revenue recognition journal entries are posted to Xero per legal entity, per month, from the Revenue Recognition page in Alguna. Each entry carries a CSV of the legal entity’s revenue schedule for that month as an attachment, so the figures behind the entry travel with it; the attachment is best-effort, and if it cannot be built the entry is still posted without it. An entry is either standard, the month’s primary entry, or adjustment, a correction posted on top of a month that already has one. A legal entity can have one standard entry per month; a second is rejected. To correct a month that has already been posted, post an adjustment entry for the difference rather than re-posting the month. See Revenue recognition.

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Sync failures

When a record cannot be posted — an authentication problem, a rate limit, a validation error on the Xero side — Alguna opens a sync issue on the Sync issues page rather than failing silently, and retries or pauses according to the cause. The page is not in the settings menu. Open it directly: Production or Sandbox. See External sync.

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Using Xero for Customer Invoicing

In addition to syncing with Xero for accounting purposes, you can also choose to use Xero to send invoices directly to customers and to collect payments. For more information, see Xero Invoicing.