Xero

The Xero integration lets your consultants create invoices for placements directly in Spott and send them to Xero as drafts. Your finance team then approves, sends and records payment in Xero as usual, and Spott tracks each invoice’s status on the placement. With the integration you can:

• Sync your Xero items into Spott as pay codes, so line items use the same codes, prices and descriptions as in Xero.
• Link a Spott company to its Xero contact once, so every future invoice goes to the right billing entity.
• Create draft invoices from contingent, contract and retained placements, including invoices built from approved timesheets.
• See at a glance which placements are invoiced, which invoices are still drafts, and which are paid.

This page covers setting up the integration. Creating invoices, and following their status once they are in Xero, is on Invoicing with Xero. Approving, sending and reconciling invoices happens in Xero, not in Spott.

Before you start

Check that three things are in place before your team creates its first invoice:

• A Spott admin has connected Xero. It is connected once for the whole workspace, with one Xero organization or several.
• Your Xero items are set up. Spott imports them as pay codes, with their codes, descriptions and default prices.
• Your billing contacts exist in Xero. Each Spott company is linked to an existing Xero contact. You cannot create Xero contacts from Spott yet, so add any missing ones in Xero first.

Connect your Xero organizations

1. Go to Settings → Integrations and select Xero.
2. Connect your Xero account and choose the Xero organization to link. It appears as your Primary organisation.
3. To link another organization, for example a second legal entity, click Connect another organisation and choose it in Xero. It appears as a Connected organisation.

Each organization has its own row, showing its name and Connected. A workspace can connect up to 10 organizations. Organizations are not tied to a brand, entity or office in Spott. Each invoice goes to the organization you choose when you create it, as described in Invoicing with Xero.

Disconnect an organization

1. On the Xero integration page, open the dropdown next to Connected on the organization’s row.
2. Click Disconnect Xero.
3. Hold the red Hold to Disconnect button to confirm.

Only that organization is disconnected; any others stay connected. Its invoices, contact links and pay codes are kept, but cannot be used until you connect it again. The primary organization is always the one connected first, and you cannot make another one primary. If you disconnect it, the oldest remaining organization becomes primary. If the connection is ended from Xero’s side, the row still reads Connected but shows an orange note: “Disconnected from Xero. Reconnect to resume invoicing.” Click Reconnect next to it.

Sync pay codes from Xero

Pay codes are the items you bill for, such as a permanent placement fee or an hourly development rate. They come from your Xero items.

1. On the Xero integration page, open Manage pay codes. You can also go to Settings → Templates → Rate Card Templates → Pay Codes.
2. Click Sync pay codes to import the latest item codes from Xero. With several organizations connected, this imports from all of them at once, and the list is grouped by organization.
3. Imported codes appear in the list with a Xero label, alongside their description.

Sync again whenever your finance team adds or changes items in Xero. Syncing is one-way: changes in Xero come into Spott, but pay codes you create in Spott are not sent to Xero. A code exists only once in your workspace. If two organizations both have an item with the same code, Spott keeps one shared pay code, with one description, linked to both. On an invoice you only see the pay codes of the invoice’s organization.

Move a Spott pay code to Xero

If you created a pay code in Spott and now want to invoice it through Xero:

1. In Xero, create an item whose code matches the Spott pay code exactly, including capitals and spaces. OT and ot are treated as different codes.
2. Back in Spott, click Sync pay codes again.

Spott links the two, and the pay code gets the Xero label. Any rate cards and timesheets already using it keep working.

Description templates

A pay code’s description becomes the line description on the invoice. Instead of fixed text, you can write it as a template that fills in details from the placement. This works for every pay code, including ones synced from Xero: open a Xero pay code in Spott and add variables to its description.

1. Open a pay code and click in the Description field.
2. Type { and pick a placement variable, such as first name, last name, company or start date.

For example, Placement of { First name } { Last name } at { Company }, starting { Start date } becomes Placement of John Doe at Acme, starting 2024-02-01 on the invoice.

• Only placement variables can be used.
• A description without variables is used as written.
• If one invoice covers several placements, the variables cannot be filled in and the line reads N/A. Edit that line by hand before sending.

Link companies to Xero contacts

Each Spott company is billed through a Xero contact. You can link it ahead of time from the company record, or the first time you invoice that company. With several organizations connected, a company can have one Xero contact in each.

1. Open the company in Spott and click External Links.
2. Click the + next to Xero.
3. With several organizations connected, choose the Xero organisation. The primary one is preselected.
4. Pick the Xero contact from the dropdown.

Once linked, every invoice to that company in that organization goes to the same Xero contact, and you are not asked again. Double-check the contact before you confirm, because the link cannot be undone from Spott.