Xero in on Xero; Xero’s Recurring Invoices + IntegraPay

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Collecting cash is a top priority for any business. We look for ways to help our customers get paid faster regardless of their business model. We’ve found an ideal way to get paid immediately upon sending an invoice out of Xero.

We’ve been a Xero shop since we founded our accounting and bookkeeping company in 2012. One of our favorite Xero features is Repeating Invoices.

Repeating Invoices from Xero

If your business invoices the same amount on a recurring basis, or even if there are minor tweaks from time to time, Repeating Invoices are the way to go. So how do you make paying your invoices easier?

Xero has allowed users to integrate a merchant service link into your invoice to help encourage payment with a nice user experience for a while now. Although this is useful, you’re still at the mercy of your customer paying you when they’re ready to do so.

Another issue is that systems run independently from each other, which means if you’ve modified the Repeating Invoice and forget to go into the merchant service backend to update the amount, you’ll charge the wrong amount and have to manually fix it. That’s embarrassing for your customer and is a manual process that leaves room for error.

Here’s where IntegraPay comes in.

IntegraPay + Xero is the Solution

IntegraPay is a merchant services platform that is fully integrated with Xero, but what is unique about this application is that it will charge the payment method on file automatically and can see the invoice amount within Xero so you only have to update that data in one place! You’ll rarely need to even go into IntegraPay outside of account maintenance.

This solution may require a change to your current workflow as you'll need to obtain the customer’s payment method in advance so that’s on file before you send the invoice. As you’ll see below, that’s easy as IntegraPay has a PCI-compliant form to automate the collection of this information.

Here’s a little more on what it’s like to set up and some additional benefits.

Set Up Is Simple

IntegraPay has step-by-step guides to help you configure Xero and IntegraPay but I thought I’d be help to “see” how it connects.

IntegraPay ties into the Branding Themes, or invoice templates in Xero, so you’ll need to set up at least one Branding Theme that you want to automate. You can still use Branding Themes for other scenarios, but in our example, we’re using the Repeating Invoices for recurring revenue.

Here’s what ours looks like:

Then, over in IntegraPay, you’ll need to tell that system which Branding Theme to use. IntegraPay pulls in your themes as you can see below.

Now that we’ve linked the Branding Theme, any invoice I create from that theme will run through IntegraPay on the Due Date. IntegraPay supports credit card payments and ACH pulls, so whatever method of payment your customer chooses, that’s what IntegraPay will use on the invoice Due Date.

Although getting paid fast is the priority, there are more benefits to using IntegraPay.

Automated Reconciliation

PCI-Compliance

Automated Reconciliation

IntegraPay will mark invoices paid upon a successful charge against the payment method on file. This is helpful in making sure your AR Aging is up-to-date and not requiring you to manually apply payments to invoices.

IntegraPay does this by applying the payment against a clearing account, something their User Guides will instruct you on how to create in Xero. Their guides will also instruct you on setting up Bank Rules, another powerful feature of Xero, to simplify reconciling deposits from InteraPay. As the deposits hit your bank account, the Rule kicks in and all you need to do is hit OK.

PCI-Compliance

Many small businesses are not PCI-compliant and are not even sure what that is. Handling credit card information is risky business and you do not want to get caught out of compliance. The most common scenario we see with our customers is that they manually write down a credit card number and hand-key it into their merchant service platform. They may save that information in a non-compliant system so they can refer to it later. That’s probably because that platform doesn’t allow for a PCI-compliant way to obtain that information.

IntegraPay has a form called an eAmendment that you will use to obtain payment method details. Any time you need a customer to provide or update their method of payment, you simply trigger this email from within IntegraPay and they fill it in. IntegraPay will email you when they’ve completed the form. On the back-end, you never see the full number and can stay compliant.

Here’s what the email looks like:

Once they click Update Payment Details, they can enter their credit card details or their banking information for an ACH pull.

That’s all you need to do. You’re now ready to invoice from Xero and get paid automatically. Reach out to IntegraPay for more details. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Xero Pro Tip: If your business has recurring revenue and you use Xero, check out IntegraPay right away. As far as implementation goes, it’s as simple as it gets. Combining that with Xero’s Repeating Invoices will help automate one of the most important parts of any business, getting paid fast!

Author Bio: Rhett Molitor is a cofounder at Basis 365 Accounting, who provides a cloud-based accounting and bookkeeping services for eCommerce, Software, and Service-based businesses. We play a leading role in mapping out efficient workflows and implementing solutions. Business owners understand what drives their financials and what they need to achieve their goals.

Follow him on Twitter: @rhettmolitor