Set up

Connecting your Xero account to Sequence is simple. Go to the Integrations tab to get started.

By default, Xero only supports one currency. If you bill customers in multiple customers, you may need to upgrade your Xero plan.
  1. Click the button to connect to Xero.
  2. Select the organization to which you want to connect. Make sure that you have the Xero Demo Company set up and selected if you are using the sandbox environment.
  3. Authorize the connection.
Integrate with Xero

Import customers

You can import customers from Xero into Sequence in order to speed up your onboarding. In order for an invoice or credit note to be synced the end-customer must be linked to a customer in Xero.

You can import some or all of your customers directly from Xero using the customer import tool. In order to be valid for invoicing in Sequence every customer needs the following:

  • A primary address
  • A primary email address

The primary address must have the following fields:

  • First line
  • Town/city
  • Postal/zip code
  • A valid country (Sequence uses the alpha-2 country code format)

If a customer is invalid the reason will be provided, allowing you to update the customer in Xero and reload before importing.

Import customers from Xero

If you want to link an existing customer to Xero you can select them in the Sequence customer view and choose to which Xero customer you want to link them.

In Xero, contacts can be customers and/or suppliers. Sequence only imports customer records. For a Xero contact to become a customer, at least one invoice needs to be issued for them.

To add and link a net new customer to Xero and Sequence, create them in Sequence first and then link them to the corresponding contact in Xero. Alternatively, you can create a mock invoice for the contact in Xero to turn them into a customer (at this point, this is the only way to create a new customer in Xero).

Link a customer to Xero

Ledger accounts

Whenever you create an invoice in Xero each line item is linked to a ledger account. This allows you to categorize the items.

Similarly in Sequence you will need to link each line item to a ledger account in Xero. In order to speed this up you can set a default ledger account in your integration settings. This can be overridden for individual line items.

Set your default ledger account

When you create or edit a plan you can set the ledger account for each product you can also set the ledger account (or use the default). This will get carried through to any generated invoices.

Set the ledger account for a product

Set a ledger account for a specific line item:

Set the ledger account for a line item

If you have existing plans, billing schedules, invoices and/or credit notes in Sequence at the time when you connect your Xero account then setting a default ledger account will allow the integration to begin working straight away. All existing line items will be linked to the default ledger account. These can then be updated on an individual basis either in a plan, invoice or credit note as shown above.

Generating invoices

Whenever an invoice is finalized in Sequence it will automatically get pushed to Xero. The issue and due dates will be set to a dummy date of 1st January 3000 in Xero until you send the invoice, at which point we will update these. This will be overwritten with the correct dates when the invoice is sent. If you subsequently send the invoice via Sequence it will get marked as sent in Xero. Similarly if the invoice is marked as sent in Xero, then the status will be updated in Sequence.

You can navigate from the invoice in Xero to Sequence and vice versa.

Finalize an invoice

Sending an invoice marks it as sent in Xero:

Send an invoice

Once an invoice has been pushed to Xero you can reconcile it against payments. Updating the payment status in Xero will update the invoice in Sequence so that everything is fully in sync across the two systems.

Reconcile payment for an invoice

Generating credit notes

Whenever a credit note is finalized in Sequence it will automatically get pushed to Xero. The issue and due dates will be set to a dummy date of 1st January 3000 in Xero until you send the credit note, at which point we will update these. This will be overwritten with the correct dates when the credit note is sent. If you subsequently send the credit note via Sequence it will get marked as sent in Xero. Similarly if the credit note is marked as sent in Xero, then the status will be updated in Sequence.

You can navigate from the credit note in Xero to Sequence and vice versa.

Send a credit note

Rounding behaviour in Xero

By default, Xero only supports two decimal points. When an invoice is pushed from Sequence into Xero, line item amounts with more than two decimal points (e.g. £0.0003 per event) are therefore flattened into a line item with a quantity of 1 to avoid discrepancies in the total. For example, an invoice line item with a quantity of 500 and a unit-rate of £0.001 will reflect in Xero as a quantity of 1 with a £0.50 rate.