Xeroom WooCommerce to Xero Integration

Easy, Accurate & Reliable

 

Xeroom WooCommerce – Xero Accounts Integration

What it does – Xeroom is a WordPress plug that integrates the WooCommerce WordPress plugin with the Xero online accounts application to create a seamless e-commerce system. Xeroom will automatically post the orders along with all the relevant customer data and metadata generated in WooCommerce into Xero and create new invoices and payments with the correct accounting, inventory, customer, tax and product entries.

Built on knowledge & experience – We have applied our accounting and ecommerce knowledge and added it to with the experience and feedback plus suggestions of dozens of our customers to create a truly unique and powerful product.  We have invested hundreds of hours of time from our developers and accountants to make it really excellent.  You are taping into this vast knowledge pool when you deploy Xeroom.

What data does it send? -Xeroom will create new invoices either as draft, approved (to enable further editing or review) or paid.  It will post the line items and information to the correct sales, COGS, tax and inventory accounts.  The prices, sales taxes, discounts, coupons, product code, description, inventory, reference, customer details and payment information are transferred and taken care of by Xeroom giving far more functionality than currently exists on other similar plugins. It can also update the inventory, product price and description in WooCommerce from Xero or the other way around.

Management and control of the process – Full management of the synch process and parameters is provided to save you time and make it really useful.  Synch can take place on checkout or manually with multiple orders being processed in one go.  Sales of different products and different geographies can be posted to different Xero accounts to provide useful analysis. Different payment methods can be posted to different bank or creditor clearing accounts for easy bookkeeping reconciliations, as can shipping revenues and COGS. Full control of how and what is automated with management of the posting process and visual order post status for both order and payment sending is provided.

Xeroom Features & Benefits 

The full detailed list of Xeroom feature is extensive and has been developed over almost 10 years of experience in integrating WooCommerce with Xero.  You won’t need all of these to start with but you are future-proofing and de-risking your investment by deploying a seasoned, stable, extensible plugin application that is packed with time-saving features to give you ease-of-use flexibility, control and error-free reliability.  Compare this list with the competition most of which have a fraction of these.  Many players come and go within a few years as they realise this is not an application for the faint-hearted.  As you can see what was added in 2022 we continue to add substantial improvements to make Xeroom keep well ahead of the pack with its World-leading position.

Click to open as pdf Xeroom full feature list – Jan 23

 

 

Competitor Comparison – (Based on Dec 2021 Version)

Note: This list is as of Dec 2021, we are updating it to reflect all the enhancements added in 2022. OneSaas and Automate.io have now dropped their Xero integrations Open Xeroom feature comparison as PDF.

Xeroom links the two most popular systems for e-commerce and accounting – WooCommerce and Xero – enabling them to be seamlessly integrated.  This delivers incredible power to your IT systems as never before as it brings you the missing piece to give you the best of both Worlds.  As the market leaders in e-commerce and online accounting both these brands will only get stronger and increase market share over time.  This means that they will continue to enhance their offerings consolidating their market positions even more.

Compare the rich functionality of our plugin with other competitive offerings and see what great value we are.  We understand that small businesses run on tight margins, don’t have big departments available and have very little time available so need quick tried and tested “off-the-shelf” solutions.  We have therefore designed our offerings to give great value and save time and money both now, in setting up things properly to run smoothly and efficiently but also in the future.  That’s why we don’t charge expensive high monthly fees like some of our competitors do of $250/month.

Consider the many benefits that Xeroom offers you compared to the competition:

Accounting Integration – Summary Features and Benefits for Quick Read

  1. A dedicated WooCommerce to Xero two-way integration link for synchronising data.
  2. Synchronise order invoices, payments, inventory, customer details (names and addresses), new products, new descriptions, sale items, coupons, discounts, references, VAT/sales taxes from Woocommerce to Xero.
  3. Instant or Batched – Data can be synchronised immediately or deferred and processed in batches.
  4. True seamless integration of WooCommerce with Xero not just a flat memo cut-and-paste.  All data from WooCommerce is posted into the correct accounts in Xero and so is available for further use and audit.
  5. Two-way inventory check for a product when ordered.
  6. Full product inventory synchronizations from Woo-Xero or Xero-Woo on an immediate or timed schedule.
  7. Invoices can be created in Xero as Draft or Approved status.  They can also be created as Paid invoices once the payment has been made.
  8. Auto or manual completion option to automatically post payments to create a Paid invoice or conversely to prevent such an action.
  9. Cancelled orders in Woocommerce can automatically generate credit notes in Xero.
  10. Revenues can be automatically posted to separate breakout accounts by geography or product category enabling great sales analysis in Xero.
  11. Comprehensive GST/VAT mapping features giving full flexibility about treatment by geography, product type and tax class.
  12. Product prices can be posted as sales tax inclusive or exclusive from WooCommerce.
  13. If a product code doesn’t exist in Xero it will create one using the SKU or if no SKU exists then with the product ID.
  14. Posting of payments by different gateways to separate Xero bank accounts.
  15. Manually select orders from the Woocommerce order screen for batch posting to Xero.
  16. Visual management of the Xero invoice status from the Woocommerce order screen.
  17. Secure encrypted communications using dedicated Xero API keys – with traffic light connection status.
  18. Bulk data loader for historic invoices – perfect if you want to bring your past orders and data into Xero.
  19. EC VAT reporting for digital goods – country labels can be invoked and invoices posted using them.
  20. Choice of Woocommerce or Xero to be master for product prices and info.

 

Non-accounting – Features and Benefits:

  1. Save hours of time re-entering data from Woocommerce into Xero.
  2. A tried-and-tested accounting solution developed for small businesses by experienced accountants.
  3. Is a WordPress plugin that is easy to install, configure, use and understand not some 3rd party platform and complicated software that has ongoing maintenance overhead.
  4. Coded by one of the World’s top WordPress plugin development teams to the latest security and other standards.
  5. Eight years of development of useful powerful features as driven by our customers’ practical needs and feedback.
  6. Keep “one version of the truth” and no conflicting accounting information.
  7. Avoid errors in transcribing data.
  8. No expensive monthly subscriptions, just one simple low annual fee.
  9. Unlimited transactions – With no annoying limits.
  10. Free trial available for 7 days – Simply signup and cancel for any reason within 7 days.
  11. Multiple WordPress websites can flow to one Xero instance/subscription with one Xeroom licence with sales broken out by different account codes.
  12. Installation and other Xero services available to provide a complete and quick solution to all your Xero accounting needs.

Xeroom offers a great value, proven intelligent integration that will pay for itself within weeks.

 

 

Xeroom Progress & Future Developments 

In 2021 and 2022 we have added a huge amount of functionality to Xeroom and it has now matured into the application we envisioned many years ago.  Our vision now for Xeroom is to continue to develop it and make it richer in features and scope, depth of integration, ease-of-use and stability.  We have a wish list of new features based on feedback from our customers and aim to do four major releases per year, each of which represents a substantial investment of time and money.  The development history and features over the last 4 years can be viewed on our updates page support and updates page.

How to Install the Xeroom Integration

For full installation instructions please navigate to the menu item above.  The process can appear a little convoluted to a newcomer due to the way Xero works in setting up security credentials but if you follow the step-by-step guide it is not difficult.   We have made it as simple as possible.  For experienced IT people it follows the standard OAuth2a protocol for apps. If you are not familiar, patient or confident with the installation, setup, configuration and testing process then please purchase this service from us.

How to Get Started

Want to road test Xeroom?  Please go to our Getting Started page where everything you need to do it yourself or use our installation service to jump start your integration.

Comparison With Other Xero Synch Integrations

We believe that we offer overall better value for money in terms of cost and rich functionality.  Our many customers agree with us!

Xeroom Invoice Functionality is Richer

Xeroom functionality – This far exceeds that of similar plugins some of whom have tried to copy what we have done.  See the extensive list above.  We were the first to offer this application in 2014 and others have since come along to copy.  Over the last 9 years we have spent a huge amount of effort and money developing features that our customers told us were important firstly from an accounting point of view and then from an IT one. Just take a look at our long list of features and compare those to what our competitors offer.  If you want a simple approach to start with then many of these can be set at defaults but with Xeroom you future-proof your investment as it provides the ability to expand in the long-term as you learn to get the most from Xero.

Xeroom is a WooCommerce plugin not a separate SAAS platform – These SAAS platforms are often not much more than a generic ETL tool for importing, mapping and exporting data.  They are not dedicated to WooCommerce like Xeroom is. They are complex and operate outside of WooCommerce meaning yet another platform/app to learn and maintain. They offer little management of the invoice creation process in Xero or management of the process in WooCommerce, no useful settings or respect for the accounting process and requirements needed to get the most out of Xero.

We Invest Heavily to Make Xeroom the Best Integration Available

Xeroom is our only product so we have a strong interest in making it a success.  We don’t work on any other accounting packages or ecommerce platforms.  This means that we are focused on investing all our effort and money into enhancing it, fixing bugs that arise and making it the best Woo-Xero integration plugin on the market always based on feedback from our many customers – Nobody else has done that!    We aim to provide 4-6 releases a year with bug fixes and new enhancements.  This means you stay up-to-date and make the most from Xero as we release powerful new features, always leading from an accounting perspective.  We also aim to make Xeroom compatible with the main WooCommerce plugins that are used to provide core functionality to an ecommerce business.  This empowers your system and reduces the integration risks.

Xeroom was Developed by Accountants for Accountants

Xeroom functionality was developed over 10 years by accountants for accountants, unlike the many “half-baked” competing apps that have little accounting thought put into them.  We are not just blindly dumping a flat invoice across into Xero.  What Xeroom does is to properly integrate the two systems so that Xero will process and post the data correctly and usefully from an accounting and reporting point of view.  eg the sales and shipping revenues are posted by product or geography to the correct sales accounts, payments to the correct bank accounts and sales taxes to the correct tax accounts for each product whether standard, reduced or zero rate ensuring that the bookkeeping entries are not only correct but save time for reconciliations.

We consider real life accounting processes such as handling payment-on-account customers.   Xeroom will generate new inventory line items in Xero if they don’t exist from the data in WooCommerce and provide two-way synchronisation of tracked inventory amounts allowing feeds from other sources such as phone orders, eBay and Amazon.  It will also synchronise inventory for all products and SKUs between the two systems on an hourly basis.

Xeroom Reduces Risk with Top Quality Code & Extensive Testing

Bringing together three rapidly changing complex applications (WordPress, WooCommerce and Xero) is no small feat and full of risk due to the rapidly changing nature of not only the core apps and platforms but also the many plugins being used.  To achieve this Xeroom is coded by WP Riders, one of the World’s top specialist WooCommerce plugin development teams.  They have have developed some very popular plugins used by millions and have extensive experience in developing accounting applications.  They are ranked and respected by peers as one of the top professionals in this area.   The code is written to the latest development and security standards by a principal developer and reviewed by the Head of Development using the latest QC methodologies. We then independently test it to ensure compliance with the functional requirements and reliable operation under different cases.  Any new release enhancements are also tested on a number of live beta-sites before being released so that we can flush out as many bugs as possible to give a stable and reliable app.

Xeroom Offers the Best Value for Money

We are cheaper than most of our competitors and an annual licence is less than the cost of an hour of a typical accountant’s time.  You can find cheaper plugins with far less functionality and unstable code. There are also more generic ETL SAAS connectors but these are a false economy and will cost you a lot more in time in the long-run due to their complexity, reliability and risk.  If you value your time and work out the Total Cost of Ownership for things that are missing or not working or errors popping up during operation due to new releases of WooCommerce, WordPress and other plugins, we are easily the best value on the market.   We also have no transaction quotas plus we also provide installation and other useful Xero related services.  Our knowledgeable staff can get you up and running into fully productive state saving you money much faster.

But I Don’t Need All The Features of Xeroom

Although Xeroom has a lot of well-thought out and designed features that you think you might not need we have not priced Xeroom assuming that you use all of these.  Rather we have set the price assuming that each user will make use of the essential features and a handful of others which will be different for different users.  The price is set to enable us to continue to provide excellent backup, support and service along with regular updates, bug fixes and useful enhancements.

We were the First Xero Integration for WooCommerce

Xeroom was launched 9 years ago in 2014.  However, 2022 saw our largest ever financial investment in enhancing its features and making it easier to use.  Unlike other large company competitors who come, make a good effort and big splash with large marketing budgets but eventually give up and go (like OneSAAS and Automate.io) we are in this for the long-haul.  We believe that we have the best WooCommerce – Xero integration available and it only continues to get better.

What does Xeroom Not Do?

Replication – Our aim is to provide a rich link between WooCommerce and Xero.  We are not seeking to recreate any of the WooCommerce functionality in Xero or vice versa.  The “one version of the truth” should be in Xero as that is a serious accounting system with full audit trails which WooCommerce is not.  We don’t believe that to for example try and copy, back flush and reconcile things like customer payments from Xero back to WooCommerce makes any sense.  That would be to have “two versions of the truth” and would take up a lot of resources to manage and maintain for very limited benefit and a risky result.  We see WooCommerce as one source of orders/data that flow into the Xero accounting system but which also receives orders from other sources such as telephone orders or retail physical stores.

Multi-site Version of WordPress – Xeroom doesn’t work for this.  You can however connect multiple separate WordPress sites to one instance of Xero by using the same credentials so again Xero can act as your receptacle for orders from multiple sources.  You can also map the sales from each site to a different account in Xero so that you get sales reporting broken out by business.

Multi-currency –  Xeroom will only work with this version of Xero if the base currencies of WooCommerce and Xero are the same.

Other Pre-Sales Questions

1. Why is your listing on WordPress.org repository showing as “suspended”? – When we originally listed on their repository in 2016 we offered a free encoded version and like many other plugins we were not aware that they didn’t permit commercial plugins nor encoded ones.  We therefore had to suspend our listing but left it in place due to the positive reviews and useful support info that had built up over time.  At that time we launched and developed this website.  We stopped encoding Xeroom in 2020 as it was making life difficult for our customers and we also stopped the free version.  Instead we offer a 7-day money-back purchase to facilitate a no-risk trial.

2. Why does your support bulletin board have no recent activity? – Early in 2021 we started a new help desk system and in late 2022 we launched a new Knowledge Base help system which we are now migrating all the past data into.  Support requests are now all ticketed to avoid delays and being missed which is what happens with emails and bulletin boards.  

3. Why is your licence price higher than WooCommerce’s Xero plugin? – Their plugin is not actually written by WooCommerce but by a third party.  We believe that we offer a lot more proven functionality, stability and features as a result of being in the market longer, investing a lot more time and money into the product responding to our customer’s requests.  You get what you pay for and a lot of our business comes from people who have bought a “cheaper” plugin only to find it doesn’t do what they want in a reliable way.  If your time is valuable then don’t waste it!  Buy cheap and you buy twice is very true here.  We believe that our price – which is less than an hour of an accountant’s time – offers excellent value which will more than pay for itself many times over.  It gives us sufficient to provide the investment needed to take the product forward and provide the level of support we think our customers need.

4. What things makes Xeroom better than WooCommerce’s Xero Plugin? – This is not developed by WooCommerce but by a third party company.  Any support has to be funnelled through WooCommerce.   Apart from the many useful accounting and inventory features detailed above we also have invested a lot of time in the following:

  • Making it easy to install and use – We provide drop-down preset selection lists for accounts, the order dashboard Xero status for easy management, debug screen etc.
  • Robust and reliable use of the Xero API – We made sure that the link is robust since the Xero API has a lot of limitations that need to be managed to avoid errors or failed order postings eg we have the Xero API call rate throttle, the inventory debug tool.
  • Performance enhancements – We added features to raise the performance such as batch processing send and resend of orders, order posting triggers, decoupling of check-out to order send, integration with other popular WooCommerce plugins.
  • We also offer a range of installation, support, presales and other related useful services that they don’t offer.

5. Who has coded Xeroom? – Xeroom is coded by WP-Riders one of the World’s top Woocommerce plugin developers who have developed dozens of very successful plugins.  WooCommerce’s own plugin is developed by a third party and not by themselves.  We don’t know who but we are open about who our developers our as they have a reputation for delivering top quality reliable code.

6. Why are you not Xero certified? – We have tried to join their partner program but it is really aimed at the big boys who can invest millions in large apps and SAAS platforms.  Unless we rewrite Xeroom to follow their architecture they won’t certify us.  Since we are a small company we don’t have the resources to do that, but this will probably change as they grow and want to expand their partner base.

Further Pre-Sales Help

We aim to provide a comprehensive explanation of what Xeroom does and how it works on our site here.  We are happy to answer a few questions by emailing [email protected].  We don’t provide a telephone sales line as that would bump up our prices.  If you need consulting presales support (by email or telephone) in answering long lists of questions about how Xeroom would work with your setup or business then please purchase an hour of our pre-sales time for $97 from here and email us the questions to [email protected]  and we will be happy to assist.

About Us – History of Xeroom

Xeroom was developed by a small team of well respected WooCommerce plugin developers, accountants and bookkeepers all of whom have been using Xero commercially for many years.  The team has a number of chartered accountants and bookkeepers and over 60 years experience in developing and implementing mainstream accounting applications such as Oracle Enterprise Financial Apps,  Sage (including SageLine 50) and now Xero. We have been using Xero for over 12 years and were one of the first users in the UK .  We have also contributed to some of the core functionality of Xero.  We are looking to add implementation partners such as chartered accountants or WooCommerce IT specialists who know Woocommerce and Xero – please get in touch if you are interested.

Xeroom started life 10 years ago as a link between the CubeCart ecommerce platform and Xero for a number of retail websites. It was rewritten 6 years ago not long after WooCommerce was released since nothing else existed at the time that could do this.  It gradually continued to develop and we started to market it in 2016. WooCommerce has since released its own copycat version as have others but we have stayed firmly ahead of them and will continue to do so due to the expertise required to develop  this type of app.  At the start of 2018 we engaged a World leading team of WooCommerce plugin developers to take over development.  They have handled the large amount of complex new functionality that we added especially the extensive sales tax, order posting management and full inventory synchronisation features.

We are focused on and dedicated to WooCommerce that now has over 40 million commercial sites as well as to Xero, which we see as dominating the online SAAS market and now has 2 million users Worldwide. We don’t touch other accounting apps or ecommerce systems as we believe that this combination is the “best-of-breed” which will dominate the market in the long run due to its popularity.  Our future vision for Xeroom is to work with Xero to extend its functionality into new areas not currently addressed such as business intelligence thus adding even more value for our customers’ benefit.