Any live integration between a user’s database and the Xero database, whether done by API (or another service such as Zapier) would also be a lot easier. And if a customer changes an “Invoice to” name, no problem - you just change the name, not the original account name. Everything would display on the invoice perfectly. We could have two, or even three (or as many as we like) “invoice to” names even if they were identical.
That way it wouldn’t matter if we have more than one of the same “Invoice to” names (as the “Invoice To” piece of data is not the unique identifier). In our case we would use our database’s “Invoice To” field, which is a separate piece of information from the “Customer Name”. The problem is now an invoice layout problem - something that is surely a lot quicker and easier to fix.Īll that Xero has to do is provide a second optional field in the “To section” on the standard invoice template. The problem is no longer an underlying database design problem (which is what the primary key problem is). Notwithstanding the above, progress has been made. After a lot of frustrating customisation we may get this right, but I have been advised by more than one Xero Advisor, not to go this route, as it can mess with your invoice pay-now link integrations and also your individual invoice URLs. Using our work-around solution above, the invoices we send out would now look like this:įail! In fairness, Xero does provide the option to upload your own custom templates. Unfortunately, the standard invoice template uses the “Customer Name” field in the invoices “To: Section”. The most visible part of our Xero database is the invoices we generate. This work-around would work fantastically if all of the Xero database details were “behind the scenes” with nothing front-facing the public.
Our problem would immediately be solved, and we would actually have a better user experience when working in Xero as it would be easier for our admin people to quickly cross-reference account numbers to Xero customers. The logical thing for our business would be to use our account number in Xero’s field for “Customer Name”, instead of the customer’s name. This can cause major integration problems if your business has more than one customer with the same name (see: reasons your business might have more than one customer with the same name). The issue comes about because Xero uses “Customer Name” for its unique identifier (sometimes referred to as “ primary key”) in the Xero database. However, if you are a subscription-based business like ours, and have another CRM as your main database (or your own custom database like us), which holds more than a couple of hundred customers, you are likely to run into the same problem we did. This issue is unlikely to affect 95% of small businesses using Xero. As I explained in a previous post - Xero accounting software has a database quirk.
0 kommentar(er)
