Xero is an accounting software specially designed for small to medium organisations. It's cloud-based, and specifically designed to help automate many manual accounting tasks.
With the Xero app for Beacon, you can:
Export payments in Beacon directly to Xero
Invoice people and organisations without leaving Beacon
In this article:
Export payments to Xero
Overview
Beacon lets you export payments in your database to Xero as account transactions in a few clicks.
During export, we'll auto-set Xero accounts based on the income streams set on your payment records (we'd recommend a rules-based smart field for this), making it easy for income in Xero to be categorised in the same way as your Beacon database.
You'll also get full control of:
References set on each transaction
Item descriptions
Tracking categories (optional)
Inventory item codes (optional)
Mapping to Xero accounts
The Xero app lets you choose a drop-down field on your payment record type as your Xero account mapping field:
For each drop-down option, you can choose the Xero account that it should correspond to:
Tip: Whilst you can use any drop-down field as your account mapping field, we recommend using a rules-based smart field to automatically allocate your income streams, so you don't need to set them manually.
Note: Beacon works best with a chart of accounts that reflects the charity SORP major categorisations of income, rather than account codes for each funder/fund/campaign/etc. which are better as tracking categories.
There's some excellent advice, and suggested account categories, in this article from AccountingWEB.
Payouts (or "batches")
Payouts (e.g. from Stripe, JustGiving, cheques) can be tricky to reconcile, as usually they represent multiple payments - but are only one line on the bank statement.
We've thought hard about this 🤔, and Beacon has a payout record type which works with Xero, making this a piece of cake.
When exporting a payment to Xero, if it points at a payout record in Beacon, we'll use some fields from the payout record to set on transactions:
Reference = set from the payout Reference field
Note: While a single payout is only one line on your bank statement, the Xero app will create one transaction per payment in Xero.
During reconciliation, you can search for the payout reference to match up multiple transactions against the single bank line.
Tracking categories
Want to categorise your income in Xero further? You can take advantage of Xero's tracking categories to help with reporting. (Xero lets you have up to two active categories)
Tip: Many organisations set Fund as one of these categories, to represent the restricted fund a transaction is allocated to.
When configuring the Xero app in Beacon, you'll see the available tracking categories, and can choose a field (short text or drop-down list) in Beacon to map to them.
When exporting to Xero, we'll set the tracking categories accordingly:
Warning: Heads up! Beacon does not create tracking category options for you. During export, we'll only set the category value if the field value in Beacon matches one of your allowed options in Xero.
Inventory
Similarly to tracking categories above, you can map a field to the inventory "Item code" field.
Xero contact
Beacon does not create contacts for each supporter in Xero when exporting payments. If you're like many charities, you may have thousands of supporters, and creating contacts for each supporter could get messy, quickly!
To keep your Xero account clean and tidy, Beacon creates a single "Beacon transaction" contact in Xero. All payments exported from Beacon are allocated to this contact.
Invoicing
Invoice any contact
When viewing any individual person or organisation record in Beacon, you can use a Xero card to create a new invoice:
When invoicing someone, you'll be prompted the details of the contact in Xero, along with the amounts you'd like to invoice them for:
When you send the invoice, Beacon will automatically do the following:
Create a contact in Xero if they don't already exist
Create an invoice for the contact
Email the invoice to them (through Xero's emailing system)
When viewing an organisation or a person, Beacon will check (in real-time) your Xero account to see the status the invoices you've sent to them through Beacon:
Install guide
Navigate to the apps directory in your Beacon sidebar, and click Install on the Xero app.
Next, you need to connect your Xero account with Beacon. (You'll be prompted to give Beacon specific access to your Xero account)
After connecting, configure your export mapping settings, and click Save Integration.
(If you'd like to invoice from Beacon) Go to any Person or Organisation record in your database, and open customisation mode. Add a new card, and choose the List of invoices option:
That's it!
Frequently asked questions (exporting)
What happens if I re-export a transaction?
Beacon will update the transaction that was previously exported.
How many payments can I export at one time?
10,000. That's a lot of payments though, so it may take some time to complete!
How does Beacon handle split payments when exporting?
If you have split payments enabled on your account, the Xero integration will create one transaction per group when exporting to Xero.
Each payment within the split group will be a separate line item within a single transaction.
Does Beacon's integration work together with Xero's Stripe bank feed?
No. Beacon's integration is designed to be used instead of Xero's Stripe bank feed integration.
Beacon's integration is designed to make it easy to reconcile many payments in Beacon to a single "batch" payout from Stripe - not individual payments in Beacon to Stripe bank feed lines.
If you're trying to reconcile against the Stripe bank feed integration, you'll notice that payment "fees" cause a problem, because:
Beacon creates these as a separate line item within an exported transaction
Stripe creates fee items as separate bank lines
One transaction in Xero can only link to one bank line - which will prevent you being able to reconcile items (without un-setting the fees in Beacon before export, which we don't recommend).
Frequently asked questions (invoicing)
Does Beacon create contacts in Xero when I invoice someone?
Yes.
If you're invoicing a person, we check to see if they're already in Xero based on their email address. For organisations, this is based on their name.
Additionally, if you've already invoiced someone through Beacon before, we store linked contact in Xero, and will send invoices to them going forwards (even if the name/email has changed).
Is it possible to add multiple line items in invoices sent?
At the moment, it's only possible to send invoices with a single line item. If invoicing with multiple line items is a requirement, please let us know!
Is it possible to see invoices I've sent through Xero on an organisation record in Beacon?
At the moment, the 'List of invoices' card found on organisation records in Beacon will only display invoices that you sent through Beacon. If it would be useful to you if Beacon also displayed invoices sent externally from Beacon, please let us know!
How is the tax rate set?
We'll automatically apply the default rate of tax attached to the "Line item account code" (e.g. 200 - Sales).