Integrations · Xero
Your accountant will feel Europe before your customers do.
Every market you add brings a currency, a tax treatment, a set of channel fees and a filing calendar, and all of it arrives at month end whether or not anyone planned for it. Expandly posts your sales, returns, purchase orders and marketplace settlements into Xero on the mapping you choose, split by channel, currency and payment method. Your close stays the length it is now while the business behind it gets considerably more complicated.
Where we stand with Xero
Our deepest integration of any kind
Not an export you download and import. Connected by authorisation from your Xero organisation, with per-channel account mapping, invoice status control, currency and payment-method routing, and tracking categories.
Built to be handed to an accountant
The mapping decisions are the ones a bookkeeper would ask about, and they are yours to set. We will do the setup call with your accountant in the room, which is usually the fastest way to get it right.
More than invoices
Sales invoices, credit notes for returns, purchase orders and Amazon settlement data all post across, so the marketplace side of your accounts stops being a monthly reconstruction.
The pressure point
What expansion does to your month end
Selling in one market and one currency keeps bookkeeping tractable. Add the UK, Germany and the Netherlands and the same volume of trade produces several times the accounting work: sales in three currencies, VAT at different rates and under different regimes, marketplace fees deducted before the money reaches you, and settlement reports that bear no resemblance to an invoice.
The part that catches finance teams out is the marketplace deduction. A marketplace pays you net of its fees, so the figure landing in your bank is not the figure your sales ledger expects, and reconciling the difference by hand is a monthly exercise that grows with every channel. Add returns, which have to appear as credit notes rather than negative sales, and the reconstruction starts taking days.
None of that is difficult accounting. It is repetitive accounting, and the way it goes wrong is by quietly consuming the time your finance lead should be spending on margin by market. Which is the number the expansion was for.
The flow
What actually posts to Xero
This is the one integration we run where nothing about stock is involved. Everywhere else in the platform, an order corrects your inventory across channels. Here, order and financial data posts into your accounts. Worth stating plainly, because the two get conflated.
Sales invoices
Per order or grouped, to the sales account you nominate for each channel, marked Draft, Approved or Paid as you choose.
Credit notes
Returns post as credit notes rather than as reversed sales, so your ledger reflects what actually happened.
Purchase orders
Raised in Expandly against a supplier and a stock location, then sent across so buying and selling sit in the same accounts.
Amazon settlements
Settlement reports import automatically and post to their own mapping, which is what turns marketplace payouts into something reconcilable.
Taxes
Mapped per rate so the right tax type lands on the right line, per market and per channel.
Other revenues
Shipping income, gift wrapping and similar charges mapped separately rather than buried in the sale.
Pushed on a schedule you set, daily, weekly or monthly in your own timezone, or manually in bulk when you would rather control the timing. Invoices appear in Xero within about ten to fifteen minutes, and each order carries its status so a failure is visible rather than silent.
Setup
The decisions we make with your accountant
These are the choices that determine whether your accounts are usable or merely populated. None of them are difficult, and all of them are easier to get right at the start than to unpick after six months of posted invoices.
Decision
Options
Why it matters
Sales account
Any account in your chart of accounts, set per sales channel
Channel-level revenue separation without a manual split later. Amazon Germany and your own store can land in different accounts or the same one, and it is a reporting decision rather than a technical one.
Invoice status
DraftApprovedPaid
This one follows from how you reconcile, and it is the decision people get wrong. See the two methods below: matching needs Draft or Approved, control needs Paid.
Bank and control account
A default, plus overrides per payment method and per currency
A PayPal receipt, a card settlement and a euro payout can each route to their own account, which is what makes bank reconciliation a match rather than an investigation.
Batching
IndividualIndividual, no account numberGrouped with productGrouped without product
Individual gives you full detail and a lot of invoices. Grouped consolidates by date, currency, channel and payment method. High-volume sellers usually group, and there is a hard practical reason to: Xero will not carry more than 500 products on one invoice.
Due date
Order date by default, or an offset you set
Matters most for trade and wholesale, where terms differ from consumer sales.
Tracking categories
Mapped to account, payment method, country, origin, destination or channel
This is where market-by-market profitability comes from. Map to country or channel and Xero reports become the answer to “which market is actually making money” rather than a single blended figure.
Tracking categories are the item most worth spending ten minutes on. They cost nothing to set and they are what makes your accounts answer a commercial question rather than a compliance one.
Reconciliation
Matching or control, and why the answer changes the setup
There are two established ways to reconcile ecommerce sales in Xero. They are not better and worse, they suit different volumes and different people, and the choice determines several of the settings above. Worth deciding before the first invoice posts.
Method one
Matching
Each invoice is matched to the payment that settles it. Slower, more precise, and generally preferred by teams doing their own books at moderate volume.
- Invoices post as Draft or Approved, not Paid
- Channel fees are entered as a bill rather than a journal
- Batching works against you here, so individual invoices suit it better
- Gives you a defensible audit trail per order
Method two
Control account
Sales post as paid into a control account, and the payout is reconciled against the control balance. Faster at volume, and the method most accountants reach for.
- Invoices post as Paid
- Needs a control account set up in Xero first
- Batching is an advantage rather than a problem
- Scales without the invoice count becoming unmanageable
Before the first push
Why a Xero push fails, and what we check first
Almost every failed first push traces to one of a handful of causes, and every one of them is a setup detail rather than a fault. We work through these at onboarding so your first send lands rather than queues.
Cause
What it looks like
Handled by
Bank accounts without codes
Xero requires a unique numeric code on every account. It assigns them to sales accounts automatically and not to bank accounts, so mapping fails on accounts that look perfectly set up.
Adding the codes in your chart of accounts before mapping. We check this first because it is the most common one.
Currency not enabled
An order in a currency your Xero organisation is not subscribed to will not post.
Confirming your active currencies against the markets you are entering, and importing them into the mapping.
Tax mapped to the wrong side
A tax rate mapped to VAT on Expenses rather than VAT on Income throws an error that names a tax type rather than the real problem.
Mapping every rate deliberately at setup, per market, rather than accepting a default.
SKU length
Xero limits item codes, so a long SKU that works everywhere else is rejected there.
Checking your SKU set against the limit before enabling SKU posting, and choosing whether to send SKUs at all.
Lock date
An order dated before your Xero lock date cannot post, which usually surfaces when historical orders are pushed.
Reading your lock date from Xero and agreeing how far back to load.
Zero stock in Xero
Where Xero inventory tracking is on and an item shows no stock, the invoice is blocked with a message about items available to sell.
Deciding early whether Xero or Expandly is your inventory record. Both are valid; running both without a decision is what causes this.
One further thing worth knowing rather than discovering: Xero drops third-party connections after a password change or one of its own releases. Reconnecting takes a moment from the configuration page, and orders that queued while the connection was down are pushed once it is live.
What we handle
The accounting side, alongside everything else
The mapping, set up properly
Sales accounts, taxes, other revenues, bank and control accounts, batching and tracking categories, configured with you and your accountant rather than left as defaults. The mapping page will not save until every channel, revenue and tax is mapped, which is a useful discipline.
The tax work behind the numbers
VAT registration and filing in every market you sell or hold stock in, so the figures posting to Xero are the same ones on your returns. Marketplace settlement data feeds the filings directly.
Reporting that answers the commercial question
Orders, inventory and customers reported with cost price included, so you can read contribution by market and by channel. Export on a schedule, or use tracking categories and read it in Xero.
Cost of sales
Two routes, and it is worth choosing deliberately
Getting cost of sales into Xero is a decision rather than a default, and both routes work. The first is to send SKUs on your invoice lines and let Xero’s own inventory tracking produce the cost journals, which needs those SKUs to exist in Xero already. The second is to take quantity and cost price from Expandly’s reporting and post the journal yourself, or have your accountant do it on a schedule.
Which suits you depends on whether Xero or Expandly is your inventory record, how many SKUs you carry and how your accountant prefers to work. We will go through both on the setup call and set up whichever you pick.
Other packages
If your books are not in Xero
Xero is where the integration goes deepest. Other packages are supported by structured file export, set up with our team so the format matches what your system expects.
Order exports can also run on a schedule, hourly through to monthly, to whichever finance system or third party needs them. Tell us what you are on and we will tell you what the flow looks like.
Global Expansion Pathway™
Why this belongs to the Growth stage
Most integrations in this section sit in the Omni-Channel stage. Accounting sits later, in Growth, delivered as the Revenue Growth Engine™, because its job is not to get you trading. Its job is to tell you which market deserves the next tranche of stock and marketing spend, and that answer only exists if revenue, fees, tax and cost of sales are separated by market in the first place. A blended figure cannot be acted on. This is the stage where the expansion starts paying for itself, and clean books are the instrument that shows it.
Questions
What finance teams ask
Can our accountant do the setup rather than us?
Yes, and we would encourage it. The mapping decisions are theirs by nature, and doing the call with them present takes an hour and saves the unpicking that follows a guessed configuration.
What happens to our historical orders?
A schedule applies from the point you switch it on, so anything before that is pushed manually, in bulk, once you have decided how far back to go. Your Xero lock date sets the practical limit and we read it during setup.
How do marketplace fees get accounted for?
That depends on the reconciliation method you choose. On the matching method, channel fees go in as a bill, which keeps the expense visible as an expense. On the control account method, the payout reconciles against the control balance and the fee falls out of the difference. Amazon settlement data posting across is what makes either approach workable rather than manual.
We sell in three currencies. Does that complicate it?
It is the reason to set the mapping up properly rather than a reason to avoid it. Each currency can route to its own bank or control account, and each has to be active in your Xero organisation first. Tracking categories then let you read performance by market without building a separate report.
Can an invoice be moved to a different Xero organisation later?
An invoice that has posted to one organisation belongs to that organisation, so if you are considering restructuring your entities it is worth raising before you start posting rather than after. Tell us what the plan is and we will sequence the setup around it.
Find out what your close looks like with three markets in it
An hour with us and your accountant on the mapping, the reconciliation method and the reporting you want out of the far end. You will leave with a configuration rather than a list of options.
This page is general guidance and not accounting or tax advice, and it is not a substitute for your accountant’s judgement on how your books should be structured. Xero’s own features, limits and interface change, so confirm anything version-specific with Xero or with us. Tax rules differ by market and change, so talk to our compliance team about how they apply to your products and markets before you make a filing or a registration decision.