Deep Dive - Configure Coding for Xero

Sheena Trepanier

The Coding tab is where Xero information is configured for Expensify. This will allow employees to code expenses and reports accurately. To find your coding settings, head to Settings > Policies > Group > [Policy Name] > Connections > Configure button > Coding tab.

Configure the connection

After connecting Expensify with Xero, the next step is to configure how the information is shared between the two systems. 

Categories

• Xero expense accounts and accounts marked with "Show In Expense Claims" will be automatically imported into Expensify as Categories.
• After connecting, go to Settings > Policies > Groups > [Policy Name] > Categories to see the accounts imported from Xero.
• Use the enable/disable check-box to choose which Categories to make available to your employees.
• Click the blue settings cog to set Category specific rules such as default tax rate, maximum amount, receipts required, comments and comment hints.

Please note that each expense has to have a category selected in order to export to Xero. The selected category has to be imported in from Xero and cannot be manually created within the policy settings. 

Tracking categories

If you use Tracking categories in Xero, you can import them into Expensify as either a Tag, Report Field, or the Xero contact default.

• Tag applies a tracking category per expense.
• Report Field applies a tracking category to the whole report.
• Xero contact default applies the default tracking category set for the submitter in Xero. If the submitter is not set up in Xero or has no defaults set, the field will be left blank.

Tax

Our tax tracking feature allows you to apply a tax rate and tax amount to each expense

• Enable Tax tracking in your Xero configuration and the taxes set up in Xero will automatically be imported into Expensify as Taxes.
• After connecting, go to Settings > Policies > Groups > [Policy Name] > Tax to see the taxes imported from Xero.
• Use the enable/disable button to choose which taxes to make available to your employees.
• Set a default tax for policy currency expenses and, optionally, another default tax (including exempt) for foreign currency expenses which will automatically apply to all new expenses

For more details on Tax Tracking visit this Community post.

Billable Expenses

• If you re-bill expenses to your customers, you can track and invoice your expenses with Expensify and Xero
• If enabled, Xero customer contacts are automatically imported into Expensify as Tags that can be applied to expenses
  
• NB: a Contact in Xero is not a 'Customer' until they have had some kind of bill raised against them. If you can't see your Customer imported as a tag, you may need to raise a dummy invoice at the Xero end and then delete/void it
• After being exported to Xero, tagged billable expenses can be placed on a sales invoice to your customer

Note that in order for expense to be available to place on a sales invoice, you'll need the following:

• Ensure Billable Expenses is enabled in the Xero configuration settings
• The expense is marked as billable
• The expense is tagged with a customer