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1. Provide Non-Crippled Access to Invoice URL via the API

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   5 comments  ·  Accounting API » Invoices  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
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   Matthew Bloch supported this idea  ·  May 11, 2020

2. Allow add multiple Contacts with same name.

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   not planned  ·  13 comments  ·  Accounting API » Contacts  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
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   Matthew Bloch supported this idea  ·  May 11, 2020

3. Reconcile via the API

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   243 comments  ·  Accounting API » Banking  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
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   declined  ·  AdminKelly (Admin, Xero Developer Centre) responded

   Thank you for the continued feedback and for your patience on this long‑running request. We know that programmatic bank reconciliation and AI‑driven workflows are increasingly important to many of you, and we understand the frustration that this capability is not available via the Xero API.

   
   

   After reviewing this again with our legal, risk and banking teams, we have confirmed that we will not be adding the ability to reconcile bank statement lines via the API or to expose unreconciled bank statement data via the public API.

   
   

   There are a few key reasons for this decision:

   1. Regulatory and contractual obligations on raw bank data. Unreconciled bank statement lines are “raw” banking data – unmodified information that comes directly from banks. In markets such as Australia, this data is treated as banking data under consumer data rights regimes. Sharing it on to third parties (including via an open API) would require us to treat every consuming app as if it were a regulated data recipient, with substantial security, accreditation and liability obligations that sit on Xero as an intermediary as well as on those third parties. We have taken a policy decision not to operate as an intermediary for redistributing raw bank statement data.This ensures that the highest standards of banking security are maintained directly between the customer and their financial institution.
   2. Our data‑sharing boundary: unreconciled vs reconciled data. We draw a clear line between:

   • Unreconciled statement data, which is banking data supplied to us by banks and subject to the obligations above; and
   • Reconciled transaction data, which has been improved within Xero (for example, matched to contacts, invoices or accounts) and for which Xero is the custodian on behalf of the customer.

   1. We can expose certain reconciled/derived data through specific endpoints such as the Finance API’s Bank Statements Plus in limited, finance‑focused scenarios, but those endpoints are not designed or licensed for broad, high‑volume access to raw bank feeds or for third‑party replication of Xero’s bank reconciliation engine.
   2. Why “reconcile via the API” falls on the wrong side of that line. Supporting full reconciliation via the API would, in practice, require programmatic access to unreconciled statement lines and a way to push reconciliation decisions back into Xero. That would effectively recreate bank reconciliation workflows outside Xero while still relying on Xero to redistribute raw bank data, which is exactly the pattern our regulatory, security and contractual constraints are designed to avoid. For these reasons, this is not something we can safely or responsibly offer as an open API capability.

   
   

   We recognise that a small number of existing partner applications continue to receive limited access to certain statement data under legacy, contract-specific arrangements that pre‑date this policy. These specific arrangements are strictly managed under heightened security and compliance terms. To ensure we meet our current regulatory and risk standards, we are not extending these legacy permissions to new partners or applying them to any new use cases.

   
   

   We also hear the concern that “this is customer data and customers should be able to use it where they choose”. We agree that customers should have access to their own banking information, and open banking frameworks are designed to give customers direct access to that data from their bank or banking aggregator, without Xero sitting in the middle as a redistributor. For apps that need raw bank statements to power AI or other automation, the right pattern is to source that data directly from the bank or an accredited open‑banking provider, and then connect into Xero using the data structures we do expose.

   
   

   Our strategy for bank reconciliation is to invest in automation inside Xero, where we can manage risk, performance and user experience end‑to‑end. That includes features such as bank rules, suggested matches, cash coding, and newer improvements like statement-period bank reconciliation, enhanced bank feeds, and our AI-powered automation features, rather than exposing the underlying feeds for external reconciliation logic.

   
   

   We will continue to review our approach as regulation, banking connectivity and customer needs evolve, but we want to be clear and transparent that this specific request will remain declined under our current legal and risk framework. We genuinely appreciate the thought and passion that has gone into this thread, and we’ll keep focusing our efforts on making in‑product reconciliation as efficient and intelligent as we can, within those constraints.

   Thank you for the continued feedback and for your patience on this long‑running request. We know that programmatic bank reconciliation and AI‑driven workflows are increasingly important to many of you, and we understand the frustration that this capability is not available via the Xero API.

   
   

   After reviewing this again with our legal, risk and banking teams, we have confirmed that we will not be adding the ability to reconcile bank statement lines via the API or to expose unreconciled bank statement data via the public API.

   
   

   There are a few key reasons for this decision:

   1. Regulatory and contractual obligations on raw bank data. Unreconciled bank statement lines are “raw” banking data – unmodified information that comes directly from banks. In markets such as Australia, this data is treated as banking data under consumer data rights regimes. Sharing it on to third parties (including via an open API) would require us… more
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   Matthew Bloch commented  ·  Feb 25, 2020  ·  Edit…  ·  Delete…

   To Aaron, if you are only ever reconciling one payment for multiple receivables, you can do this via the API. If you submit a BatchPayment with all your invoices lined up against the payment, the reconciliation screen will show that payment in green and let you match it up with one click.

   (the same applies for payables)

   What doesn't work is where you receive a payment for multiple invoices, minus the amount of a bill. It's annoying because you can mark these off against the payment manually, so Xero clealy understands that it's possible. But you can't yet automate it.

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   Matthew Bloch commented  ·  Jul 8, 2019  ·  Edit…  ·  Delete…

   Hi! I'm also frustrated by the lack of a reconciliation API.

   But when Xero say that "reconciling [via an API] requires fine grained access to bank statement data" - they're wrong!

   Sure you can design the API to expose a BankTransactions endpoint, and you'd hit the contractual objection that has apparently blocked this idea for years. That'd be easy and nice and useful but OK - we can't have that.

   Instead - add a new API end point for a "ReconcilationHint" - this could be an extension to the manual Bank Rules, or something new.

   As developers with access to external data, we know that a particular bank transfer will have come in for a certain amount, within certain dates.

   We could tell Xero via this new API "hey, when you see a transaction for £100.00 within a week of September 1st, go ahead and mark it off against Invoices 1, 2, 8 and 47".

   Xero could say "thanks, I see 1, 2, 8 & 47 add up to £100, I'll bear that in mind!"

   Then when it comes to the manual reconciliation, process Xero can take that as a firm instruction to mark those off automatically (or to auto-select them in the current manual process).

   That would at least fulfil *my* reconcilation wishlist, where I need to mark off invoices and bills against a single bank transfer, which the current front-end makes particularly painful. I don't need access to the bank feeds, and I suspect with some more creative API design, they could pick off other use cases in the same way.

   There would be some more design work to do, and would might need another reconciliation front-end - like what if a hinted reconciliation *hasn't* come in? That's a useful thing to know - but even if you could just query previous hints to see if they've been matched, that'd be everything a developer needs to build fully automated reconciliation.

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