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Calxa and Xero

Best practices and things to note for a smooth integration with Xero.

Mick Devine avatar
Written by Mick Devine
Updated over 7 months ago

Calxa can be used with a number of different accounting packages and integrates with these packages in different ways. Aside from your initial company setup and subsequent updates, Calxa behaves in much the same way regardless of the chosen accounting package. There are, however, some important differences that need to be noted.

This help note will outline the things you should know about using Calxa with Xero and discuss best practices for a smooth integration.


Xero User Permissions Required

The user that connects the Xero company to Calxa will need to be setup as a Business and Accounting user with one of the following roles.

  • Standard

  • Adviser

Subscription

If you have subscribed to Calxa through Xero you will be directed to Xero > Subscriptions to make any updates that may be required from time to time, these will need to be completed by the Xero Subscriber for your account.

Chart of Accounts

Reports made available to the Xero API reference accounts on a key rather than the account number or name. This means you can safely renumber or rename accounts in Xero and Calxa will apply the new number and or name after the next sync.

Deleting an account in Xero will also delete it in Calxa on the next sync. All budgets and settings associated with the account will also be deleted.

If you archive accounts in Xero then Calxa will mark these accounts as inactive. Inactive accounts are filterable from many views in Calxa.

⚠️ Duplicate accounts are not supported in Calxa (accounts with the same name and number), which can occur in Xero if you archive an account and then add one with the same details again. In this case the Sync with Xero will fail.

Transactions Detail

When first adding a Xero organisation we start by importing summary monthly account movements for this year and last year. Once this initial import is complete you can start working immediately. A background job then builds the transaction detail with full historical amounts.

Note: 💬 depending on the transaction volume the detail and historical amounts can take some time to become available. In some rare cases when the transaction volume is very large, we may hit a daily request limit with Xero. In this case the background process is paused and will restart the following day.

Once the historical transaction detail is complete, the daily syncing processing simply requests transactions that have been modified since the previous sync.

Unrealised Gains/Losses & Bank Revaluation

Calxa builds data from the transactions recorded in Xero. Since Xero do not record a transaction for currency revaluation, we need to perform supplementary syncing steps to reconcile key accounts related to currency revaluations. To optimise the required sync time, Calxa allocates all currency revaluations to the Unassigned Tracking Category option.

What this means for your reports:

  • An Organisation Trial Balance will reconcile to Xero.

  • Consolidating all Tracking Categories will reconcile to Xero.

  • Individual Tracking Category options will not have Unrealised Gains/Losses & Bank revaluations recorded in Calxa reports.

Note: 💬 if you require currency revaluations to be reported at the tracking category level, please let us know via the chat in the bottom right of this page.

Business Units

Business units in Calxa represent your Xero Tracking Categories. Business unit names are configurable via the Business Unit Configuration menu.

Calxa references each Xero Tracking Category on a key rather than the name. This means you can safely rename Tracking Categories and Calxa will apply the new name after the next sync.

Deleting a Tracking Category in Xero will also delete it in Calxa on the next sync. All budgets and settings associated with the Tracking Category will also be deleted.

A Tracking Category can't be deleted in Xero if there are transactions associated with it. In this case Xero will suggest marking it as Archived. Calxa will mark Archived Business Units as Inactive after the next sync.

⚠️ Duplicate Business Units are not supported in Calxa which can occur in Xero if you archive a category option and the add a new one with the same details again. In this case the Sync with Xero will fail.

Business Unit Combinations (Intersections)

If you have setup two Tracking Categories in Xero and wish to budget and report on the intersection of these two categories in Calxa, then you will need to configure Business Unit Combinations. Combinations are not synced by default and must first be defined in the Business Unit Configuration menu. After defining the valid combinations Calxa will then sync these specific intersections.

⚠️Combinations with "Unassigned" categories are not supported in Calxa. The Xero API does not support filtering by Unassigned and therefore Calxa is unable to sync combinations with an Unassigned Tracking Category option.

Budgets

When you initially add a Xero organisation, Calxa will give you the option to import the Xero Overall budget (Organisation level).

If you didn't import your budgets to Calxa when you added your organisation, you can still choose to do this anytime you sync your organisation by adjusting your sync settings on the General Settings screen. This is also where you can turn the budget sync off to manage your budget in Calxa going forward.

Note: 💬 Budgets cannot be updated from Calxa back to Xero.

Tracking Category Budgets

On the General Settings screen select which Xero tracking budgets (one for each tracking option) to import into Calxa and update from Xero each time you Sync. The Xero budget in Calxa will contain all the selected tracking budgets.

You cannot edit the Xero budget in Calxa, however you can make an editable copy or use it as the source data in other calculations.

If you wish to import further budget versions into Calxa, this can be done by using the following process:

  1. Export them from Xero using the CSV option instead of Excel, you will need to export each Tracking Category individually.

  2. Open the file and insert an additional column to your spreadsheet titled Business Unit Name.

  3. Edit each line in the Business Unit Name column to include the Tracking Category option name.

  4. Then import the budgets to Calxa from the spreadsheet.


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