Keep your books in Xero or QuickBooks

Your application can keep your books up to date in Xero or QuickBooks Online. The customers you work for, the invoices and credit notes you issue, and the payments and refunds you record are sent to your ledger, so nobody types them in twice. The Books screen shows how that is going and which tax codes and accounts everything is filed under.

Getting it into your application

Keeping your books in a ledger is part of your application, so you ask for it on Changes, in your own words. For example: "Send our invoices and payments to Xero." Because your data goes somewhere new, our team checks that change as well as you. See Ask for a change.

Once the change is approved, the ledger appears on the Integrations tab under Settings, ready to connect: an owner signs in to Xero or QuickBooks from its card, as for any service you sign in to. See Connect other services. Each ledger's card has a link to its Books screen.

What is sent

• A customer becomes a contact in Xero, or a customer in QuickBooks. If your ledger already has one with the same name, or in Xero the same email address, your record is matched to it rather than added twice.
• An invoice is sent once it is issued, exactly as it was issued: each line, its VAT and the totals. It is dated on the date of supply, which is the date your VAT return goes by.
• A credit note is sent once it is issued, set against the invoice it corrects where that is still owed.
• A payment is recorded against its invoice. Once it is in your ledger it is never changed from here: correct it in your ledger.
• A refund is recorded against its credit note in Xero. In QuickBooks it is a refund receipt, and the credit note stays as credit for the customer until your accountant links the two.

A record sent again updates what is already in your ledger rather than adding another, and a record that has not changed sends nothing. If you asked for it, an invoice paid in your ledger marks the record it came from as paid here too, within the hour.

Your application sends your ledger what a VAT invoice needs. Your ledger is what files your VAT return: Divvent itself is not software for filing returns.

What the Books screen shows

Each ledger has a card with three parts.

• Sync status says how the last week has gone, and counts anything that is waiting or needs your attention, with the reason. It never names which record.
• What syncs lists, in plain words, what your application sends and what it reads back.
• Mapping has a box for each VAT rate's tax code, the code for lines with no VAT, each account, and how many days after the invoice it is due where nothing else says (30 unless you change it).

When your ledger is unavailable

Nothing you do in your application fails because your ledger is down or refuses something. The sync waits and is tried again on the hour, then less often, and after about four days the Sync status says it needs your attention, with the reason. Fix what it names, in your ledger or in the mapping, and the next time the record is sent it goes through.

Change the mapping

Type the codes your ledger uses into the boxes and press Ask for this mapping. The mapping is part of your application, so this asks for a change, which you approve like any other before it is used. An owner, an admin or an editor can ask; anyone else who can open the application can read the screen.

Things to know

• Only Xero and QuickBooks Online are offered. Bills, bank feeds and other ledgers are not yet possible.
• Test copies don't use your ledger. A test copy has no sign-ins of its own yet, so nothing it does reaches your books.
• A waiting sync keeps the details it will send in your application until it goes through. Erasing a person does not yet clear a sync of theirs that is still waiting.