Xero integration: invoices, bills and payments

What posts to Xero, and when

Invoices, carrier bills and payments sync to Xero, both ways, so nobody re-types an approved number or reconciles a spreadsheet on Fridays. Xero represents both sides of that paperwork as the same kind of record, an Invoice: a customer invoice is Type ACCREC, and a carrier's bill is Type ACCPAY. Roadmark posts to whichever type the record is.

Here's one invoice, from the example load used across this site. All amounts on this page are in US dollars. Load 48213, Mississauga ON to Joliet IL for Prairie Foods, delivered with the POD signed at 18:00 CT. The Billing agent drafted invoice INV-10442 at 18:15: the $4,215.00 on the rate con ($3,655.00 linehaul plus $560.00 fuel) and $100.00 of detention from the ELD, for $4,315.00. J. Park approved it, and it posted to Xero as an ACCREC invoice at 18:21. When Prairie Foods pays it, that payment syncs back and closes the invoice in Roadmark too.

Carrier bills: matched before they post

A carrier's bill is checked against the rate con it was tendered at and the POD before it's approved. On load 48254, Pinecrest Carriers billed $1,940.00 against a $1,780.00 rate con: two hours of detention where the POD shows one billable hour. Roadmark drafted a payment of $1,860.00 and a dispute of $80.00, with the POD attached, for a person to approve. Once approved, the payment posts to Xero as an ACCPAY invoice, so what Xero shows as owed to Pinecrest matches what was actually approved, not what was billed.

One Xero organisation per company

Xero calls each set of books an organisation, and keeps them separate: connecting Roadmark to one organisation doesn't give it access to another. In a group of several companies, Groups explains that each keeps its own customers, carriers and books, and a load hauled by one company for another posts as an internal invoice, a payable at one company and a receivable at the other, matched automatically. If a company in the group runs its books on Xero, its share of that internal invoice posts as an ACCPAY or ACCREC invoice in that company's own organisation, the same as any other bill or invoice.

Connecting Xero

To connect, a Xero user with the Connected Apps permission authorizes Roadmark using the same OAuth 2.0 flow any Xero app uses: they sign in, pick the organisation, and allow Roadmark access to it, after which Roadmark appears under Connected apps in Xero's settings. A group connects each company's Roadmark books to its own organisation the same way, one connection per company.

Moving billing to Roadmark doesn't mean moving your books. Your books stay in Xero, synced both ways, whether or not you move invoicing and carrier bills to Roadmark. See Billing for invoices on POD, the three-way match on carrier bills, settlement statements and collections, and Carriers for how a bill reaches that match in the first place.

Driver and owner-operator settlements

A load also produces a third line of paperwork: the driver or owner-operator's pay. Roadmark drafts that settlement from the same load as the invoice, with a statement showing every load, its share of revenue, the fuel surcharge, each deduction and the escrow balance, so the driver can check it before a person approves it. That settlement doesn't post to Xero as an invoice or a bill; it's paid the way settlements are today, while the customer invoice and the carrier's bill keep syncing to Xero as described above.

Before you start

Connecting Xero doesn't change how a load is quoted, dispatched or tracked; it only changes where the resulting paperwork lands. Turn on invoices, carrier bills and payments together, or one at a time, and run a real load through it first. Approving one invoice and one carrier bill, then checking both sides in Xero, is a better test than trusting the connection with a week of billing straight away.