Xero + Solve CRM, Yin and Yang
Xero is a “beautiful online accounting software” that’s kicking butt in the marketplace. Imagine how smoothly your days will roll as your two core business applications, accounting and CRM, seamlessly work with each other, providing a combined and consistent view of important customer information.
The very popular Solve CRM + Xero integration will provide your team with a view of a contact’s history, opportunities, statement of account and invoices, regardless of what Solve tool was used to create them - Web app, mobile app on devices or the Gmail Gadget. Staff will be able to create invoices directly from Solve opportunities and update contact information between systems with a no-surprise synchronization feature.
Both your Xero and Solve CRM users will save time by having quick access to information and shortcuts to complete routine tasks from their primary application. The Solve CRM + Xero integration gives your team a truly holistic view of their customers, and it’s drop-dead simple to enable and use.
Prescient Power experiences 300% annual growth in revenue with Xero and Solve
You may need to secure which users have access to the Xero information, so we’ve made sure you have the necessary control. Let’s review the simple one-time tasks to hook these two systems up in a minute…
One-time tasks to hook them up
Step 1 - Allow Solve CRM to connect to Xero
Login to Solve as the administrator and click: Solve menu (top right) > Add-ons > Xero > Add.
Click on the “permission” link and follow the Xero prompts as shown in the following two screen-shots. Then return to this panel and click on the “verify” link.
Return to the Solve Xero add-on panel and click on the “verify” link as shown in the screenshot above.
Choose which users will have access to Xero data in Solve CRM. The Solve administrator is always selected.
Step 2 - Optionally, configure the Xero to Solve link within the Xero workspace
Login to Xero and click: Settings > General Settings > Custom Contact Links.
Add a custom link named “Solve” and paste the following value exactly as shown into the link definition:
https://secure.solve360.com/xero/link/{!CONTACTID}
Getting down to everyday business
With the one-time tasks completed, Solve CRM users can begin matching up their Solve records with Xero contacts.
Any authorized Solve user adds a Xero activity to a contact, company or project blog page to display related Xero information on that record.
Hover over the activity and click the edit icon. From the dropdown list select an existing Xero contact or click the create link to create a new contact in Xero.
Once a Solve CRM user has made the connection for a given contact, company or project blog other users will not have to make the connection again. The Xero information will be visible to any user in Solve who has granted their Solve account to access their Xero account.
Save the newly-linked Xero activity by clicking outside of the blue box and like magic, the Xero account details are shown in Solve.
As opportunities turn into sales, users can click on a special link to generate an invoice from a Solve revenue opportunity - this saves the user from re-entering information.
Let’s take a look at what it looks like from within the Xero application …
Login to Xero, on the Xero contact record a link to the corresponding Solve record is provided. Clicking on that link will open the Solve record in a new browser tab.
If a corresponding record doesn’t yet exist in Solve some magic automatically happens behind the scene: 1) the system will try and find one by searching name and email address and if found they are linked, or 2) if none are found a new contact record is created and data is copied over from Xero record.
Synchronizing to Xero
One of the special features within the Solve Xero activity is an option to synchronize information from Solve to Xero.
To ensure that information is transposed perfectly, a special confirmation panel is provided where the user confirms the mapping details. Once you set the mapping between the systems, those settings will be used as defaults for all future syncs. Solve uses GeoMapping technology to transpose its single-field address format into Xero’s multi-field format.
Additional technical information
Setting the active Xero organization
If you see an error in Solve, make sure that the Xero organization you previously linked to Solve is currently set as “Active” in Xero. If the organization is not active in Xero, Solve CRM cannot access it. To make a Xero organization active, login to Xero then open Xero > My Xero > and choose the corresponding organization.
Enabling Xero currencies
When creating a Xero invoice from a Solve opportunity, you may see the message “Org is not subscribed to the currency …”. To correct this just enable the currency specified in the Solve CRM opportunity: login to Xero then open Xero > Settings > General Settings > Currencies.
Non-standard Xero users
According to Xero’s website you currently need to be a standard user in Xero to grant rights to a 3rd party application. This means that all authorized Solve users have the same level of access to Xero to 1) create a draft invoice from a revenue opportunity, 2) create new Xero contacts, and 3) update Xero contact fields.
Solve CRM in Action - Be an office hero with Xero!
Imagine… you are the new guy at the office… you are by yourself on a Friday night, and about start off your first vacation. Everyone else has gone home. Just as you are about to leave for the Batman premier, you get a call from some lady called Lois. Lois is in a panic. You’ve heard her name in the office before. You realize that she represents your biggest client (The city local newspaper). Lois needs to know if her invoice has been paid for this month. You don’t know what to do. You are unfamiliar with her as a client and all of your accounting team is already long gone.
As a reflex you login straight to Solve CRM to look her up. Solve has never let you down before. You find her contact record instantly. You glance down at the activities section, then… low and behold!… there it is: The invoice! Your accounting team used Xero accounting software to send it out, and you were able to see it because of the Solve CRM - Xero integration. You notice that the payment was due today and is already paid. What a relief, you may have failed high-school accounting, but this was so easy even Peter Parker (your pet spider monkey) could have figured it out.
Lois is now thanking you profusely over the phone. She explains that there were serious legal and contractual implications tied to late payments. You then notice that the email address for Lois is incorrect in your Solve CRM account. You point this out and she informs you that this address is her accountant’s. She asks you to change it to hers to avoid being left in the dark again. You oblige her and make the change in Solve, knowing that this information is synchronized with your accounting team’s Xero account.
She thanks you once again calling you her “superhero”, then tells you to hurry off to the movie premier. As you buff and shine your fingernails on the giant “S” on your t-shirt, you tell her: “Maybe I will Lois… Maybe I will!”.