Reconcile via the API
Be able to reconcile bank statement lines via the API.
Hi everyone,
Firstly, apologies – it’s obvious from the continuing comments that we declined this request too hastily and without the explanation it deserved.
We know that reconciling would be a valuable API feature, but reconciling requires fine grained access to bank statement data and unfortunately we’re not able to share that data via the API for commercial reasons.
At Xero we’re passionate about having an open API and providing small businesses with open access to their data. Unfortunately, many of the partners we rely on for statement data don’t share the same ideals.
Hopefully change is coming in the form of open banking. However, it will be a long time before we can openly share statement data via the API and provide a decent reconciliation experience to third-party apps. For that reason we will unfortunately leave this request as ‘declined’.
For the immediate future, we’re busy doing some really cool stuff to improve the in-product experience and automating bank rec as much as we can. We already have bank rules, auto-match, suggestions and cash coding but there’s lots more coming this year.
Again, we apologies for our lack of transparency on this thread. We do value the feedback on UserVoice and have shipped features with over 3000 votes in the last 12 months. We definitely dropped the ball on this one though.
Cheers,
Adam
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Andy Slack commented
I would like to +1 this feature.
I am trying to automate my book keeping as much as possible. My use-case is chasing stakeholders for invoices which we have payments for but no linked Invoice.
I would like to send them a Slack message with the invoice request, the user would then add the invoice via Slack and it would add it to xero and link it to this payment.
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James Masters commented
Xero is excellent in almost all ways but this is a potential showstopper and we are trying to find a replacement that autoreconciles straightforward transactions. Our bookkeepers currently get paid for hours of time every month just sitting in front of a screen pressing the OK button like idiots. Completely unacceptable in today's world. If you are not permitted to do auto-reconciliation via the API, then just implement it yourselves within the app. An easy project that could be done within a few weeks. No risk if you optionally only allow exact matches on reference or put in other such limitations. If you don't do it, your competitors will and Xero will be no more.
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Jeremy Burgess commented
+1 our use case is very simple. Approx 400 transactions per day are paid into bank via Worldpay or PayPal. These transactions have a reference number that matches the invoice in Xero.
In the reconciling view most go green anyway because of a value match (values vary a lot but there can be incorrect matches).
We simply need to query unreconciled transactions and match each against the correct invoice. The days all exists in Xero at this point. Even connecting to open banking won't help is there is no API function to finish the job.
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Fil Mackay commented
Not so much "open banking" when you are prevented from accessing your own transaction data because of intermediation. Xero needs to renegotiate these restrictions with Basiq, or start bypassing and going direct on behalf of your customers.
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Mark Owen commented
+1 following (can't vote as suggested here: https://developer.xero.com/documentation/api/accounting/bankstatements due to "Idea has been closed"
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Ziegfried Kritzinger commented
1000+ We have verbatim the same requirement as mentioned by James Sefton.
"We would like to be able to simply query if there are unreconciled transactions pending or not. Part of our integration issues late payment charges to clients and letters regarding late payments. We would very much like to do an API call to check that all transactions are reconciled before this automated action takes place. In our case, you do not need to divulge any information at all. A simple true or false for if reconciliation is up to date would be perfect for our use case." -
Katryn Napao commented
When are we opening this card please? It's vital in this time and age that we automate tasks like this.
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Paul Parsons commented
I don't understand why it would affect your partners. All the bank statements in Xero more or less follow the same format whether it's HSBC, PayPal, Revolut etc.
I woud like the ability to automatically reconcile the ones I know that can be. eg. a description containing PayPal should go to my PayPal GBP account. If there's an inter currency exchange between accounts, transfer those automatically. If I had an API for statements I could do this -
Fil Mackay commented
+1000
I want to be able to perform more automated reconciliations, and leave transactions to the Xero UI for human handling. This is a real blocker and the biggest limitation in Xero IMO.
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Katryn Napao commented
+1000
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James Sefton commented
+1. We would like to be able to simply query if there are unreconciled transactions pending or not. Part of our integration issues late payment charges to clients and letters regarding late payments. We would very much like to do an API call to check that all transactions are reconciled before this automated action takes place. In our case, you do not need to divulge any information at all. A simple true or false for if reconciliation is up to date would be perfect for our use case.
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jan stehlik commented
+1 this is absolutely essential for any sort of bank reconciliation automation, major blocker for us
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Michael Tierney commented
+1 a lot of reconciliation is no brainer type stuff having a human manually click it really unnecessary and besides the humans get it wrong sometimes anyways - a lot of reconciliation could be easily automated with just a few edge cases remaining which jeeds a human intervention - across all the organisations you have literally lifetimes of people clicking mouse buttons endlessly
I understand about the limitations of the api etc
but seems like there must be an answer to this - the data we newd is already within the platform and you have permission for that we really just need to be able to create rules and execute them automatically
what about a kind of private api that could only operate within the platform and could not send or receive any other data?
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Nathan A commented
+1
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Hugh Mc Manus commented
+1 For this also. What a shame this is not available.
Not sure how open banking would help with this since I would then have to register as a data recipient just to get access to my own transactions in my own bank account. As mentioned by Charlie even the limited data would help.
My use case is to find the un-reconciled transactions so that I can search in my communication system for the invoice sent to me to make sure I have a record of it stored.
Oh well I will have to stick with the automation tools provide until this is available.
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Charlie commented
+1 for this, it seems unfathomable that we are unable to access unreconciled bank lines; even limited data such as the reference, date, amount and ID (xero) would suffice. This would at least allow us to advise accountants/verify. Ideally, we should be able to then allocate via the api.
The current use case this is prohibiting is reconciling a third-party payment provider. We already upload/create the invoices in Xero and are aware of the exact amounts, bank reference and date of the transaction but are unable to reconcile these. It's imperative due to volume and accuracy to be able to reconcile these automatically as credits are deducted from payments received, thus information isn't directly available in Xero making reconciliation difficult.
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Nancy commented
We need to be able to build a reconciliation feature to enable an important use-case for our customers. Please enable this.
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Dominic Dicoco commented
This is really needed. It would only be of benefit to Xero to allow developers access to your platform.
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Marvin Osswald commented
i've got about 50000 transactions from online e-commerce i have to reconcile at the moment. Fair, it's historic data but i expect about 50 new ones a day. This would be the easiest to automate from my platform as my e-commerce system knows exactly what tracking category to attach. Manually i'm not even sure if its viable.
I'd love to vote on it but can't, you guys have a great api and a very good product please don't have it ruined by politics...
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Russell Williams commented
Come month end, we have over 170 Xero Subscriptions that need to be reviewed and activity statement summaries created. Without an ability to confirm that the Xero Subscription has been reconciled for the month against all their bank feed this is impossible. So even if the full feed can't be sent through, can some information that will enable read only analytics access determine if all bank feed transactions have been actioned and reconciled for month end processing?