“Xero integration” is not a complete specification
Compare accounting integrations by record type, direction, currency, mapping and failure handling. A connector that exports invoices is not automatically two-way, and it does not automatically support refunds, credit notes, marketplace fee splits or multiple currencies.
What syncs, and what does not
This is the table we would want if we were buying. It is deliberately blunt about the right-hand column, because “not supported” is much cheaper to read now than to discover in month two.
| Record | Direction | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Sales invoices (GBP) | MaxInvent → Xero | Supported |
| Supplier bills (GBP) | MaxInvent → Xero | Supported |
| Payments (GBP) | MaxInvent → Xero | Supported |
| Credit notes | — | Not supported |
| Non-GBP invoices or bills | — | Not supported |
| Marketplace payout fee splitting | — | Not supported |
| Anything inbound from Xero | Xero → MaxInvent | Not supported — the push is one-way by design |
| QuickBooks, Sage, SAP | — | No native integration |
What one-way actually means for your month end
Because nothing comes back from Xero, MaxInvent does not know that an invoice was paid in Xero, edited in Xero, or credited in Xero. Three practical consequences:
- Edits have one home. Decide, per record type, whether MaxInvent or Xero owns changes after the push. Editing in both produces two versions of the truth and no way to reconcile them.
- Credit notes are manual. A return processed in MaxInvent does not create a Xero credit note. Someone raises it, and that someone should be named in your month-end checklist.
- Marketplace payouts still need work. A single Amazon or eBay payout containing commission, refunds and fees is not split for you. Reconcile the payout in Xero against the settled fees shown in profit analytics.
The upside of one-way is that it cannot corrupt your ledger. There is no scenario where an operational change silently rewrites a posted account, and for most operations that is worth more than the convenience of a two-way sync.
What to test before cutover
- Create representative GBP sales invoices with mixed VAT treatment, including a zero-rated and a reduced-rate line.
- Receive a supplier order and verify the resulting bill mapping.
- Apply a payment and confirm contact and invoice matching.
- Retry a deliberate validation failure — a missing tax rate is a good one — and check duplicate protection on the retry.
- Confirm which system owns edits after a record reaches Xero.
- Process a return end to end and write down who raises the credit note.
Requirements outside that scope
If you need inbound updates from Xero, multi-currency, credit notes, marketplace payout fee splitting or native QuickBooks, Sage or SAP integration, record those as explicit requirements. MaxInvent does not currently claim them, so they should not be inferred from the general phrase “accounting integration”.
For the operational finance features that do exist — aged debtors and creditors, period locks, open-item statements — see operational accounting.
Integration scope as reviewed 23 August 2026. Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and SAP are trademarks of their respective owners; no affiliation is implied.