Create a transition plan for Reports via the API
Xero will be retiring the old reports on July 31. By retiring the old reports, you also retire the only place where subscribers can affect the layout of the Profit and Loss report retrieved via the API. However, to date, you offer no replacement and no transition plan to your subscribers or developers.
We use the Reports endpoint to retrieve data needed for our internal reporting. If not for the API, we'd be pulling and formatting seven reports to compile our monthly reporting. Today, if we add a new account or need to change the layout for the P&L retrieved via the API, we can only do so through the UI for the old Profit and Loss report.
We need a real transition plan. The "new reports are better" mantra I keep hearing isn't a plan.
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Rob commented
If the API is not transitioned to the new reports or the old reports via API are not maintained then the reports API not only goes out of date but also starts to contain errors.
An example of this is with the new financial year transition period feature you have. If the user has set a transition period then the Retained Earnings on the Trial Balance report provided by the API is wrong. This needs to be addressed.
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Damien Pantling commented
Hello, not sure if this specific issue has been addressed yet. I'm an accountant in business and we have 21 Xero large limited company accounts (and growing) and a web-like group structure. We integrate with IRIS accounts production for stat accounts, and set a 9 or 14 month accounting period in Iris. When exporting from Xero to IRIS, IRIS sets the API to match Xero's year-end date, but given Xero cannot have accounting periods <12 months, we get 12 months of TB data come through into IRIS. We then have to manually adjust 21 companies for the 3 month double-count and i anticipate this will take me weeks, these are companies with complex balance sheets.
If Xero could allow us to create <12m accounting periods, all problems would be solved and you would save me weeks of work and a lot of agony explain to stat auditors that our ERP can't comply with the companies act 2006!
Similarly, long accounting periods are not properly picked up in the Xero API, it defaults back to 1 year, which causes issues with the retained earnings balances being exported to 3rd parties. I hope this can be addressed -
Lauren Richter commented
We use the API endpoint for our internal reporting and now that we no longer have access to the old reports, we are unable to modify the account layout or add new accounts for the API endpoint which is the data source for our P&L dashboards. We need a way to continue modifying the API report layout.
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Roustam commented
We retrieve reports for over 80 customers, without API we would have to do it manually. With GUI using different report versions from the API it is a real pain. API and GUI should show the same information.
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Clarisa commented
We use the API endpoint to extract information for 200+ of our clients, and by not updating the API whilst retiring the old reports from the front end. How are we going to view or modify old reports?
We need to be advised on a time frame and decision made on the API soon as its affecting what we do as an organisation. -
Henry Leung commented
We are using the P&L report endpoint to extract the information. Due to the limitation of the standard layout, we have to create the custom layout to extract the relevant information. Given the old report will retire by July and there is no transition plan we are struggle with how to extract such information for any new company created. Xero should consider keeping the old reports or at least allow a way to continue to create custom layout for old report post July 2023.
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Richard Lane commented
AS I have been using Xero since its inception and the reports I have provided to our Corp Meetings are now well understood by all participants, it seems pointless just to change the format to suit 'XERO' rather than the end users such as myself.