Summary

Review of common end of financial year's hows-to and processes within the Unleashed - Xero integration

1. Stock value Variance

2. Reconciliation

3. Account Types - Chart of Accounts

4. Journals and Accounts

5. Journal Dates

6. Useful Reports

7. Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Please note there may be certain information about Xero Integration that may not be covered here but can be found on the Xero integration support pages on our Support Portal here.

1. Stock  Variance

Some of the common reasons why you may experience stock value discrepancy between Unleashed and Xero are: 

• The systems did not match at the initial setup (variance from the beginning of the integration set up) - Check the opening balances in Xero and in Unleashed. More about what you need to know before integrating Xero with Unleashed please click here.

• Transactions were manually deleted in Xero - Check the 'export data' tab for a full total variance. 

• Journals toggles switched OFF under the Xero Configuration settings - if you have disabled specific journals to be exported to Xero then this could have contributed to the discrepancy.

• Manual journal entries added to Xero - Check for manual journals not coming from Unleashed. 

• Journals that have not been approved in Xero - Check 'drafts' in Xero and approve.

• Journals have not been sent across to Xero - Check the 'Export data' tab, run a reconciliation to find missing transactions* (to find more about the Reconciliation process please scroll down*)

• Dates have been changed on the 'Dispatched date' (Shipments) and/or the 'Supplier invoice date' (Purchase order). - Check journal dates and compare to Unleashed and find last time the Stock on hand matched. 

If you have checked and tried all the above and the stock value is still showing significant discrepancies for a long period of time, our recommendation is to ‘draw a line’ and create a stock count in Unleashed and a manual journal entry in Xero to match the Stock on Hand value between systems; you can then start fresh again from that point in time and any newly completed transactions in Unleashed will then be sent to Xero.

2. Reconciliation 

For any variances and stock value discrepancy, we would recommend you make sure when the Stock value in Xero and Unleashed matched last and work forward reconciling both systems.

The Reconciliation between the two systems is the most important tool to:

• See if all your transactions have been exported to Xero.
• To pick up any variances between the two systems. If a variance is then picked up, you can look at the Transaction in Unleashed and in Xero to see where the change happened and address it right then, so that the variances don't keep building up. Our recommendation to find these variances would be to reconcile each Month starting as far back as you need, this will help drill down by transaction the variances that you are seeing:

1. Navigate to Integration > Integration Store > Click on the Xero tile

2. Select the 'Export Xero Data' tab

3. Adjust the Date Range (please note you can only do 1 month at a time)

4. Click 'Reconcile Transactions'

5. Start with all the 'Sales Invoices' then move on through the other tabs, including the journals

6. Click on the Taskbar (3 bars at the top of your screen) to see when the Reconciliation has completed. Once you see a green tick, you can refresh your page. Then go back to the Export Data tab and re-enter the dates you are reconciling. 

7. Once the Reconciliation is complete, you will be given a comparison between Unleashed and Xero and you can review the 'Variance' column. This will allow you to check these transactions and see if they have been manually adjusted or investigate why they do not match.

8. If a transaction for a specific period has failed, there will be a Total Variance and variance count. If you see this you can then identify which transactions haven't exported by looking at the Xero total column, this will be 0, and the Variance column which will be the transaction amount and the Export status column will be blank. You can then manually export the transaction by clicking the blue export button.

9. If all the transactions have exported but you still have a Total variance and Variance count, it may be that the transaction was amended in Xero after it was exported; you will be able to identify these transactions as the Xero total column will not match the Total column and the variance column will total the difference between the two. You can directly navigate to the transaction in Xero by clicking the blue Xero link.

3. Account types – Chart of Accounts

As part of the initial integration set-up, you are required to select the default accounts for the Chart of Accounts in the Configuration Settings of your Xero integration store.

The Chart Of Accounts must be set up within your Xero as the following account type in order to work with Unleashed:

• Cost Of Goods Sold = Direct cost
• Sales = Revenue
• Stock On Hand = Current Asset

Sales Account: The Sales Account selection should be the primary sales account in your Xero Profit and Loss. All completed sales invoices, shipment journals, and Sales Credits in Unleashed will have the transaction lines coded to the Xero sales account
Cost of Goods Sold Account: The Cost of Goods Sold Account selection should be your cost of goods sold account in your Xero Profit and Loss. All shipment journals sent to Xero will be coded to the Cost of Goods Sold account and the Stock on Hand account.
Stock On Hand Account: The Stock On Hand Account selection should be your stock on hand account in your Xero Balance Sheet. All purchases and journals sent from Unleashed will be coded to this account.

Please note - Unleashed will interact with multiple Sales and Cost of Goods Sold accounts and one Stock on hand account in Xero.

There aren’t any specific Unleashed working practices regarding these, the selection of the accounts will be dictated by your business' own requirements; we would also recommend consulting with your accountant.

After setting the default accounts in the Chart of Accounts, you can choose to override these on the product record and/or customer record level or directly on the transaction itself before completion. We follow an Account hierarchy which follows the below precedence: 

1. Product sales account

2. Customer sales account

3. Default sales account (in Xero’s Configuration settings)

Examples and exceptions:

- Sales order - if you have set up a sales account against your customer and you also have a sales code set up against the products added to that sales order, the sales account setup against the customer will be overridden by the one set up against your products.

- in the scenario where you select the 'Default sales account' against a product record but your customer record has a specific different sales account, the latter will override the default account and display on the journal when the sales order (invoice) has been completed.  

If you have any issues with selecting the wrong account on a completed transaction in Unleashed, you can manually change the account on the journal once this has exported to your Xero; however, it is important to keep the above hierarchy in mind when creating any processes as any changes to the account made in Xero won't retrospectively change what was selected in Unleashed originally. 

4. Journals and accounts 

Please find below a list of which accounts are affected in Xero depending on the transaction type in Unleashed.

Purchases - a purchase journal is sent over when a Purchase Order is receipted. If you add any extra costs to the receipted order before completing it, a re-cost journal is also sent over to Xero. No journals are sent across when you complete the Purchase order.

• Stock movement journals --> Stock on hand account

• Purchase costs --> Stock on hand account

• Purchase order re-cost --> Stock on hand account

• Supplier return journals --> Stock on hand account

Sales - of a sales order, we send an invoice journal to Xero when the invoice is completed in Unleashed and a stock movement journal (i.e. shipment journal) when a shipment has been dispatched.

And when completing a credit note, Unleashed will send a credit note journal for the value and a credit journal to account for the stock and value change over to Xero.

• Stock movement journals --> Cost of goods sold account (increases) and Stock on hand account (decreases)

• Sales "invoices" --> Sales account

• Credit note --> Sales account

• Credit journals --> Cost of goods sold account (decreases) and Stock on hand account (increases)

Assemblies/ Stock adjustments/Stock counts/Stock Revaluation - journals are sent over to Xero respectively when completing an assembly, stock count, stock adjustment or stock revaluation when costs have been adjusted.

For instance, Unleashed doesn’t send a journal for the total assembly costs to Xero when an assembly has been completed. The final cost of an assembly is computed from the average landed cost of the component products, cost of any never diminishing item and any supplier costs added to the assembly. 
So, If the completed assembly only has stocked component products, no journal is sent across to Xero; this is because there will be no overall change in the stock on hand value in your system. A journal will only be created if there are any extra costs associated to the assembly such as supplier costs or costs added as never diminishing products (e.g. labour, shipping fees, etc.).

• Assembly costs (for supplier costs) --> Stock on hand account

• Assembly journal (stock journal for never diminishing product e.g. labour) -->Expense account & Stock on Hand account increase.
  
  

• Stock adjustment journals --> Stock on hand account and Cost of goods sold account OR sales account (depending on what account has been selected on the stock adjustment transaction level)

• Stock count journals -->

  -SOH value increases (positive variance): SOH increases and COGS decreases 

  -SOH value decreases (negative variance): SOH decreases and COGS increases 

• Stock Revaluation -->

  -SOH value increases: SOH increases and COGS decreases 

  -SOH value decreases: SOH decreases and COGS increases 

5. Journals Dates

We would recommend you watch this video to have an overview of the dates displayed on the journals exported to Xero.

Please note

- There has been a recent update on the PO costs dates journals behaviour and how journals are created and pushed to Xero depending on which date has been selected. You can find more information about it here.

- The assembly’s supplier costs journals which are sent across to Xero will be taking into consideration the cost date set on the Supplier costs tab. If you have any cost added to the assembly as a never diminishing product, the date showing on the journal for such costs will be in line with the Assembly date.

6. Useful Reports

If you wish to know the current value of your stock in Unleashed, you can use the Stock on Hand Enquiry Report (Reports> Inventory) to compare the final stock value in your Xero account. The value in your Stock on Hand Enquiry should ideally match the value in your Current Asset account.

If you are looking for a COGS report, Unleashed doesn’t have a specific report however you can obtain the same information by using the Transaction Enquiry Report (Reports> Inventory). You can export this and then ‘multi-filter’ it to include the transaction types that affect the Cost of Sales account in Xero. The main transactions that affect these accounts are Sales Shipment, Credits, Stock Adjustments, Stock Take Adjustments, Assembly In/Out, and Disassembly In/Out

7. Common Errors & Troubleshooting

1. Archived Contacts 

‘The contact with the specified contact details has been archived. The contact must be un-archived before creating new invoices or credit notes.'

The error means the contact has been archived in Xero (not Unleashed). To restore a contact you've archived or merged in Xero:

1. Navigate to the Contacts menu, and select All Contacts.

2. Select Archived.

3. Select the contact to open their details, then click Restore.

4. Click Restore to confirm.

Once you have done this go back into Unleashed and try to export the transaction again. 

2. Contact Duplicates

‘The contact name ABCD is already assigned to another contact. The contact name must be unique across all active contacts’

This error message means that there is already another record using the same customer name and/or code in Xero, all customer records need to be unique. Therefore, you will need to make sure that there is only one customer record associated per one customer record in both systems. 
 
Also, if you had a Supplier record in Xero with the same name/code as your customer, then the system will get confused and unable to distinguish the records.  If you had a Supplier with the same name as a Customer and need to keep this in Xero, you may want to add a symbol like a ' . ', a number, or a Mr/Mrs in front of the existing contact.

3. Account Number / Account Name

‘The Account Number already exists. Please enter a different Account Number.’

This error generally relates to the account number itself and not the customer record. We will look for the customer code in Unleashed to see if the is an account number in Xero for the same name. Because an account already exists using that code in Xero the system cannot export the customer record. Although an account in Xero exists in this name there isn't a Customer Record that is also using the same code, it might be under a different customer name.

 Therefore, you will need to check if a Customer Record has already been set up in Xero using a different customer name, but attached to this account code in Xero. If it has, you can change the customer code in Unleashed by navigating to Customers>Change Codes.

If there is no associated Customer record for this Account in Xero, you would disable the 'Send customer code to Xero account number’ via Integration>integration store> Xero> Configuration tab >‘What exports to Xero?" and make sure that the option is unticked. Remember to click on Save configuration. Once disabled, you can then export the Customer record from the failed exports queue (and after that, you can enable this option if you need to). Once the customer record has been exported to Xero you can then link it to the account in Xero.

4. Customers' Contact email addresses

‘The contact name is already assigned to another contact. The contact name must be unique across all active contacts.’

This error means that you may have a duplicate contact email address against a customer record that's already been used in a different customer account in Xero, so the integration's not able to successfully sync the exporting customers with this duplicate email address. You'll need to provide a unique email address per customer record in Unleashed and then this will allow you to export to Xero successfully.

5. Lock dates 

‘The document date cannot be before the end of year lock date, currently set at DD-MM-YYYY’

The lock date is something set within Xero, you would have to ask your accountant if you're able to unlock the date. More information can be found on the Xero Community page here.

However, Xero lock dates only prevent Paid or Awaiting Approval Status bills to be sent from Unleashed to Xero, while draft bills should still be able to be exported. For this reason, you can change the export status of your journals to draft in the Xero Integration’s Configuration Settings > What exports to Xero?> click on ‘Configure> select Draft and click on Save configuration

If you can’t change the journals to draft for business reasons, unfortunately, we won't be able to do anything on our site (such as changing the date of the transaction), this needs to be done inside your accounting system. Alternatively, if you do not wish to export these transactions due to their dates you can click on the 'Delete' links within the failed export queue.

5. Tax type not matching account type 

"The TaxType code 'TAXNAME' cannot be used with account code 'ACCOUNTNUMBER'. * The TaxType code 'TAXNAME' cannot be used with account code 'ACCOUNTNUMBER'."

This error suggests the tax code is not matching with the correct account. We would recommend you manually re-sync your Xero taxes to match Unleashed's taxes via the Xero Integration store > Configuration settings> Setup your Xero taxes.

6. Validation errors/ Xero API errors

'Validation Error ‘Export of Supplier/Customer to Xero Contacts API failed - Details: A problem occurred when trying to send data to Xero. Value cannot be null. Parameter name: TransactionId’

This specific error message may appear if the Xero integration is trying to send over a supplier or customer record deleted within Unleashed, hence the null value.

This is a validation error that can simply be ignored/deleted so you can click on delete from the 'Manage your Queue 'screen. Normally this wouldn't happen, however, it can show as an error if you're having multiple browser tabs open at the same time, in particular the Xero integration page within Unleashed.

7. Duplicate Purchase journals in Xero

When you receipt a PO in Unleashed, a draft journal is sent over to Xero showing the PO number as well as the Supplier Reference on the same Reference tab as in this example.
If the Supplier reference is changed or updated in Xero when the purchase order is still in a receipting status in Unleashed, the whole content of the Reference tab will change - which means, Unleashed will not be able to recognize the same original transaction as the journal reference has since changed and it will export again.

To avoid this you will need to leave the original supplier reference as is and not update it in Xero OR update the supplier reference in Xero only after completing the Purchase Order in Unleashed.