Xero

The Xero integration takes purchase orders and expenses from SmarteBuild into your accounting system, so the same invoice is not typed twice.

Set it up from Integrations in the top bar → Xero Settings.

Connecting

Connect Xero when signed in starts the connection and authorises SmarteBuild against your Xero organisation.

Auto connect tenant when needed reconnects automatically rather than prompting each time, which is worth turning on if you use it daily.

Access is per user — a user needs the Xero integration setting on their account. Grant it to whoever does the books, not to everyone. See Adding users.

The three mappings

This is the part that determines whether the integration is useful. Three things have to be told what corresponds to what.

Mapping	What it connects
Map Suppliers with Xero	Your suppliers ↔ Xero contacts
Map Costings with Xero	Your costings ↔ Xero tracking or jobs
Map WBS with Accounts	Your cost centers ↔ Xero account codes

Suppliers

Match each SmarteBuild supplier to its Xero contact.

The usual obstacle is name mismatches — Barwon Concrete here and Barwon Concrete Pty Ltd there. Tidying your supplier list first makes this far quicker, and merging duplicates before mapping saves doing it twice.

Costings

Maps a costing to Xero’s job or tracking category, so costs land against the right job in your accounts.

This is what lets your accountant produce job-level profitability from Xero rather than from SmarteBuild.

Cost centers to accounts

Maps your cost centers to Xero account codes.

Use the same codes in both systems

If your cost center codes match your Xero chart of accounts, this mapping is nearly mechanical and stays right as both change. If they diverge, it is a mapping to maintain forever. Worth aligning them once, early.

Pushing data across

Once mapped:

• Export order to Xero, on a purchase order
• Export to Xero, on an expense — tick Open in Xero to be taken there afterwards
• Delete Xero connection removes the link on a record

The point is that the reference and the amount agree in both systems because they were entered once. Anything entered twice disagrees eventually.

Sending expenses in a batch

On the expenses list you can tick several expenses and send them together.

You are shown what would happen before anything is sent, with a reason beside anything that cannot go — which is nearly always an unmapped supplier or a cost center with no account code. Fix those, or send the rest and come back.

Bills arrive in Xero as drafts. Nothing is authorised on your behalf.

What goes which way

Orders and expenses go from SmarteBuild to Xero. That is where they are paid.

Bill status comes back: once an expense has been exported, SmarteBuild reads what Xero says about it — authorised, paid, part paid, voided — so you are not checking two screens to find out whether a supplier has been paid.

Direction	What moves
SmarteBuild → Xero	Orders, expenses and credit notes, as drafts
Xero → SmarteBuild	Status, total, amount still owing, paid date

Credit notes go across as credit notes (Xero’s ACCPAYCREDIT), not as bills for a negative amount, and come back with how much of the credit is still unapplied. Applying a credit against a particular bill is still done in Xero.

SmarteBuild remains the record of what a job cost and where the money went by trade; Xero is the record of what the business spent and what has been paid. Payment and reconciliation still happen in Xero.

A voided bill releases the expense

If you void or delete a bill in Xero, SmarteBuild notices and unlinks it, so the expense can be sent again. Otherwise it would sit there looking exported, linking to something that is no longer there.

The mismatch check

Because Xero’s total comes back, it gets compared with the expense — and that one comparison catches three separate problems: a bill missing a line, the same bill entered twice, and a bill edited in Xero after it was sent.

Mismatches are counted at the top of the expenses list and flagged on the row. Where a difference is real and you have decided to leave it, you can accept it so it stops being counted.

This is the check most worth having. It is also the reason to export rather than re-key: the comparison is only possible because both sides came from one entry.

When something will not export

Symptom	Usually
Supplier not found	That supplier is not mapped to a Xero contact
Account error	The cost center is not mapped to an account code
Authorisation error	The connection has expired — reconnect
Nothing happens	The user does not have the Xero integration setting
Status never updates	The expense was never exported, or the connection has expired

Most failures are an unmapped record rather than a broken connection. Check the mappings first.

Worth doing at setup

1. Tidy and de-duplicate your supplier list.
2. Align your cost center codes with your Xero chart of accounts.
3. Connect, then map suppliers, costings and cost centers.
4. Export one order and check it landed correctly in Xero.
5. Then start using it in anger.

Step four is the one people skip, and it is the one that catches a mapping mistake before it is replicated across two hundred records.