Xero API
Welcome to our official feedback forum for the Xero Developer API.
The Xero Community site is the best place to submit feedback for improving Xero Business
-
291 votes
We have just released the ability to mark an invoice as sent through the API (http://blog.xero.com/2012/10/developer-update-mark-as-sent-through-api/). We hope that this, in addition to the ability to retrieve a PDF copy of an invoice will allow most developers to do the email part themselves.
Work is underway within Xero to provide more flexibility around the emailing of invoices, templates and being able to set a sender address other than the current user. Until this has been done and we can then expose it via the API, we will not be providing the ability to email invoices from Xero via the API.
-
Apply discounts to line items
The main Xero application now allows the application of a discount on a line item. While discounts on line items can be retrieved via the API (GET) it is not possible to create a discount via the API (PUT/POST). Add your votes here if this is something you would like to see.
211 votesNo ETA yet, but please note you can still apply a discount to an invoice via the API by adding an additional line to the invoice with a negative amount.
-
Notify URL When Stuff Changes in Xero - Webhooks
I'm requesting "web hooks" for the Xero API.
Here's how they work: Customer provides a URL (http://myserver.com/xero/changed) to Xero, and when something is changed, Xero notifies that URL, perhaps indicating which records have changed.
The Xero API provides methods that you can query and compare with previous results to see what has changed. However, this is not performant for large data sets, and detecting changes involves a lot of code.
The competition has it - web hooks are supported by QuickBooks. Let's get them in Xero - it's a superior product in every other way.
174 votesI have merged the “callback URL on Invoices” idea with this webhooks idea as we are leaning more towards web hooks, but still very much open to ideas.
We agree it would make working with the API much more efficient.
Please keep sharing your use cases and ideas if you haven’t already: they are a real help.
-
be able to get customer balances via the API
for the purpose of knowing if a customer have overdue balances - so would need to return current balance and overdue amount.
158 votesI’ve reopened this issue just to be clear we haven’t forgotten about this and know this is a big issue for some developers. We’re looking to get overdue and outstanding amounts displayed separately in a future release.
We have exposed a number of reports via the Xero API recently. The AgedReceivablesByContact and AgedPayabledByContact reports will download a summary of all outstanding invoices for a specified contact. This report also provided the total amount outstanding.
See http://blog.xero.com/developer/api/Reports/#AgedPayablesByContact for more information.
If you have any questions, have a look at our new developer answers site: http://answers.xero.com/developer/
Dan..
-
Payroll API
Now that Australian Xero organisations have a full payroll application within Xero, it would be great to expose functionality such as timesheets, payrun details etc via the API. Some work will need to be done to connect this to the Xero API and we need to implement special permissions to only allow access for specific users and applications.
Vote and subscribe to updates to be kept up to date with developments.
148 votesGreat to see votes and use cases so far. We have done some initial scoping with the payroll development team and will look to deliver this functionality in 2013
-
API Overpayments & Prepayments
We have recently released overpayment and prepayment functionality within the main Xero application: http://blog.xero.com/2011/11/overpayments-and-prepayments/
While this is straightforward within Xero thanks to some nice UI designs, we want to better understand how users of the API might like to use this feature before we consider implementing it. Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.
134 votes -
Import bank statement lines via the API
Be able to import bank statement lines into a bank account in Xero. This would be useful for custom bank accounts or banks that do not have a direct feed into Xero
126 votes -
Repeating invoices via the API
Be able to create and manage repeating invoices (http://help.xero.com/#Accounts_RepeatingInvoice) via the API.
103 votesWe have no current plans to provide this functionality via the API as we have more sought after features to deliver and external systems using the API can easily create invoices on demand. Xero is not suitable as a billing engine, which is what the net effect of exposing repeating invoices via the API would be.
We appreciate there is demand for this feature so we will keep this request open, but it is unlikely to make it onto the development schedule for the next year.
Our initial priority would be to allow developers to retrieve a list of repeating invoices already created
-
Credit Notes: apply as invoice payment & refund
At the moment, you can create a credit note via the API but you cannot:
- Apply the credit note as a payment to an invoice
- Apply a payment to the credit note (thus refunding the customer)93 votesWork is now underway to expose the ability to apply a credit note as a payment on an invoice and
also to apply a payment to a credit note (refund).
Note that these are separate streams of work but we will leave them as a combined request for now.Make sure you subscribe to the developer mailing list to stay up to date with API releases: http://developer.xero.com/subscribe-to-the-xero-api-developer-mailing-list/
-
Add read-only access to accounting numbers for use in other systems
I have an internal system that handles all the other metrics for our business, but the financial data is missing.
We could either hand-enter the necessary data or build some sort of import functionality, but it would be best to query Xero directly so I can use that data in my internal system.
Thanks for listening!
87 votes
Adminxero
(Admin, Xero)
responded
We introduced Reporting API’s earlier this year – see http://developer.xero.com/api/reports/ and the ability to get all journals for an organisation – http://developer.xero.com/api/journals/
You currently need to be a standard user in Xero to grant rights to a 3rd party application. Adding permission options for apps is on our radar
-
History & Notes
Expose invoice History & Notes through the API
72 votes -
Reconcile via the API
Be able to reconcile bank statement lines via the API.
70 votesAdminxero
(Admin, Xero)
responded
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
For some of your scenarios consider using the approach described in our guide for handling payment processor receipts in Xero could be a whole lot more efficient. http://blog.xero.com/developer/handling-payment-processor-receipts-in-xero/
Even if you have a statement line for every invoice payment (rather than a statement line equalling many payments) you could utilise a clearing account to pay off invoices and then use Xero cash/fast coding to code all the bank statement lines of a similar pattern to the clearing account.
Unfortunately I can’t commit to progressing this request further at the moment. We’ll keep listening to your feedback and can add more examples in the guide above if you think that would be helpful.
-
PUT/POST tracking categories and options
Be able to create tracking options via the API. Also when creating invoices via the API allow the creation of tracking options within Xero's existing tracking groups if they don't exist.
53 votesNo ETA on when we might be able to do this yet, but definitely something we want to get to – keep voting and let us know of specific use cases you might have – they are always useful when we look at scoping development.
-
Be able to retrieve & e-mail statements to receivable accounts via the API
E-mailing updates to receivable accounts about their payments via the API would be very useful. Via the web interface, this is possible by sending a statement. API request is to be able to retrieve a statement report and email it via the API
51 votes -
General Journal Improvements
1) include transaction source and id to be able to link back to the source document of the journal eg AP/AR invoice etc 2) allow endpoint to be filtered by accounting date to be able to get just a certain period.
50 votes -
46 votes
-
Allow third party apps to plug into the Xero interface
If the Xero interface could be configured to display data from and interact with the apps third party developers are creating similar to the way Facebook applications work inside their platform
45 votesIt is certainly a nice idea in a lot of ways, and Jesse’s use case example is good one.
On the other side, allowing 3rd party applications plug into the core Xero application present some quite major security implications. The data we hold on behalf of our customers is considered highly sensitive by us and we ensure we have bank level security across all aspects of our application.
Second to that, we are a design lead and focused company – we want our software to be really easy to use and remain simple and intuitive, so allowing 3rd parties to introduce interface elements into Xero would be something we would need to carefully plan for.
With this in mind, it would be quite an onerous task for us to implement a secure framework that would allow 3rd party applications to interface within Xero, in a sensible way that does not…
-
Update payments to allow Get and Post via the API
Have the ability get get payments via the PaymentID and also create payments via POST
44 votesWe’re currently working on the Payments endpoint, adding GET method and adding more fields when creating the payments (e.g. currency rate).
We will consider adding a POST method, but this wouldn’t add the ability to update a payment – this is a limitation of the core accounting engine.
-
allow notes in invoice output
there are some situations where it's useful to add a note to an invoice that's include in the invoice PDF. e.g a message about the reverse charge VAT treatment for EC customers. I would guess there's more exceptions like this where a note would be useful.
44 votesYou might consider adding a comment-only line item to the invoice. This would get printed on the PDF of the invoice.
If the message is to be added to lots of invoices, you could even consider defining a price list item with a description only. This would save re-typing the comment for each invoice.
A third option is adding a comment onto a docx branding theme template. If all EC customers could be assigned the same branding theme, the comment could be hard-coded onto the docx template.
We’ll certainly consider other options to make life easier for our customers.
-
Expose the Online invoicing URL via the Xero API
Xero has recently released online invoicing functionality within the main application (http://help.xero.com/#OnlineInvoices).
Be able to retrieve the online invoicing URL via the Xero API.
Note that this URL is only generated when the invoice is emailed within the Xero application. Exposing this field will be of limited value until further work is done to be able to email an invoice from Xero via the API (but that is a separate issue).
43 votes
- Don't see your idea?
