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DEAR Systems and Xero Integration: Settings and Account Code Mapping

DEAR Systems and Xero Integration: Settings and Account Code Mapping

DEAR Systems and Xero Integration: Settings and Account Code Mapping

One of the benefits of DEAR is how it seamlessly integrates with other platforms that improve efficiency within your business. In today’s blog, we’re going to take a look at the available settings with the DEAR Systems and Xero integration, including the required accounts you’ll need and the different configuration options.

Checking Xero integration settings in DEAR

 Once you have Xero all set-up within your DEAR account, you will see this as an option within your user like our example below:

DEAR Systems Dashboard

Here you’ll be able to see all your Xero information, but before going into the property, it’s important to check that your settings are correctly configured. To do this, select Integration from your left hand side menu. Here, you will see all integrations available within DEAR:

Integrations in DEAR | BlueHub

From your available apps, select Xero. You can also get to this screen by selecting My Integrations at the top, which will show those you already have set up. There’s a lot of different options you have in here of different configurations that are available.

In this blog, we’ll take you through a few of the main ones.

Xero Integrations Settings in DEAR

 

  • Xero Invoice Status: This tells DEAR and Xero how you want your invoices to be sent across, e.g., do you want them sent as drafts in case changes are needed.
  • Xero Payments are: You can choose to have these sync both ways, pulled from Xero or set as only push to Xero. Most customers have this set as both ways, but you may have this on pull from Xero if you want only one process to be followed.
  • Export COGS: This stands for Cost of Goods Sold and we find many users keep this on as it exports your costs of goods sold journals and create these for you.
  • Export Purchase Orders to Xero: If you turn this feature on, DEAR will create and send a purchase order in Xero. If you have this turned off, your purchase order will remain in DEAR, and the DEAR system will just send a bill to Xero.
  • Sync Invoices and Credit Notes For: This allows you to decide if you want to sync your invoices and credit notes for different areas (DEAR API, DEAR, DEAR POS) so, if for example, you didn’t want to sync anything from your Point of Sale, you can untick this and it will only sync invoices from the other areas.
  • Category 1 & 2: This is where you can map your tracking categories. DEAR will pull over two tracking categories from Xero and you will be able to tell what these relate to. For example, you may have a tracking category of region and you might want to map this to a specific field within your DEAR inventory system, such as a specific product attribute.
  • Load Items/Invoices from Xero: This is if you want to pull any products or items that you’ve created in Xero. We recommend turning this off as you will have a lot of service items, overheads, bills, etc in there so it’s best to keep this switched off.
  • Export Attachments to Xero: We recommend turning this on as if you attach any purchase orders or similar documents to orders in DEAR, these will also be sent over and stored in your Xero system as well.
  • Auto-synchronisation: If you turn this feature on, you can instruct DEAR when you want to sync and how often. If you switch this off, you will need to manually sync hourly or daily. If you select the auto option, you can set the date and time for the sync to start and select whether you would like any email or internal alerts to be sent if there are any errors.
  • Consolidation Information: This allows you to consolidate information that goes over to your Xero system, for example consolidated sales invoices and credit notes. This is quite commonly done for the DEAR API; this is where you might consolidate your invoices in DEAR from Shopify, for example. You may have fulfilled all the invoices but when they go to Xero, you want to consolidate them down to one. Once payment is processed from Shopify, it makes your reconciliation process much easier.
Managing your chart of accounts

Once you have confirmed all your settings, the next area you’ll need to check for your Xero integration is your chart of accounts. To get to this area, select Settings from the left-hand side menu and go to Reference Books. Within the new window, under Financial, select Account Mapping. You’ll also want to look at Chart of Accounts.

Account Mapping is where we tell DEAR what accounts we want to map to. The Chart of Accounts is what we create our accounts. If you need to create an account code, we recommend creating this in the Xero system and then coming back to the Chart of Accounts option in DEAR. As the account is already in Xero, you can select the Load from Xero option to pull this into DEAR:

Chart of Accounts in DEAR

Once you’ve uploaded new codes into DEAR from Xero, you can go to the Account Mapping screen and start to map your accounts. It’s important to remember that these are your default account codes for each journal or transaction type. If you use any unique accounts for the product, customer, or sales level, they will override these. If they’re blank, your codes will be used – for example, if your default account code is 200 and a product doesn’t have a special account code (or customer doesn’t have a special account code), then account code 200 will be used as default.

Account Mapping Xero Integration

  • Inventory Control Account: This is the current asset account.
  • Cost of Goods Sold: This is where all your cost of goods sold journals will be posts to and where the costs will be accumulated from. This will need to be a direct cost account.
  • Tax Liability Account: This is where all your tax transactions will be posted to.
  • Customer Credit Account: This should be a current liability account that is used for prepayments on sales quotes, for example deposits.
  • In-Transit Account: This is another current asset account where journals will be created when goods are in transit, mainly from stock transfers. So, if you create a stock transfer, it will be moved from your inventory account to in-transit and when it’s received, it will be moved back to the inventory account selected.
  • Unrealised Currently Gains Account: This is if you have any changes in FX rates.
  • Inventory Discrepancy: To be used for stock takes and stock adjustments – to use this there should be an expense account in the system.
  • Default Revenue Account: A revenue type, so you can select sales in there as an example.
  • Work in Progress: This is where any journals will be sent to when completing manufacturing jobs. For example, they’ll be moved from raw materials to work in progress and, when the task is complete, they’ll be moved from work in progress to finished goods.
  • Supplier Deposits: A similar field to the Customer Credit field on the left, this should be a current asset rather than a liability account.
  • Gift Card Liability: If you’re using any gift cards in DEAR – this should be a liability account.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, it’s important to make your accounts in Xero first and pull these over before you commence with your account mapping. There are two final accounts that you’ll need to consider as part of your integration and account setup.

Go to Settings then General Settings and select Purchase Process Customisation:

General Settings in DEAR

If you have accrued inventory transactions turned on, you will need to create a Goods Received Not Invoiced Account and Goods Invoiced Not Received Account. Goods Invoiced Not Received will be a current asset and Goods Received Not Invoiced is an asset or liability account. If you receive the goods but don’t receive the invoice until the end of the month but you want to put a cost against the items received, this is where you would want to turn this option on and vice versa. If you get invoiced in advance of receiving the goods, then you’ll want to use the accrue transactions process.

For more helpful tips of using your DEAR system and Xero integration, visit our YouTube channel or check out more of our blogs here.