Unleashed Purchasing Workflows for Xero image

Unleashed Purchasing Workflows for Xero

Blog
onTuesday, 7 April 2020

In this article you’ll learn:

  • The basics of the Unleashed – Xero integration

  • How the Unleashed integration to Xero works for purchasing

  • How you can use Unleashed with ApprovalMax

  • How you can use Unleashed with AutoEntry

  • How you can use Unleashed with Receipt Bank

Linking your Xero accounts to Unleashed

Let’s start with the basics. When you first integrate with Xero you need to select the default accounts for sales, cost of goods sold, and stock so that Unleashed has a default to post transactions to.

It is possible to override the defaults for sales and cost of goods sold within the settings for an individual product in Unleashed, but no defaults are available at a supplier level. 

There is only 1 choice of stock account available, but detailed stock valuation reports can be viewed in Unleashed so this is not a problem.

Mapping Tracking Categories

It’s possible to map specific areas of unleashed to Xero tracking categories.

You need to make sure that the tracking categories are created in Xero for this to work, Unleashed won’t create them for you.

Purchasing User Permissions in Unleashed

Unleashed provides granular user permissions. Understanding these will come in handy as the article progresses.

Understanding the Purchasing Integration with Xero

Purchase Orders

Purchase orders are raised in Unleashed. PO’s DO NOT move into Xero at any stage. PO’s can be approved in Unleashed by there is no multi-stage approval workflow. Anyone with the user permission ‘approver’ can approve a PO. There is no off-the-shelf integration with ApprovalMax to get multi-stage approvals and no workaround.

Purchasing

To be able to understand how you might use AutoEntry or Receipt Bank with Unleashed for Xero, it is important that you first understand the purchasing integration options available for Unleashed’s Xero integration:

OptionWhat it meansExport purchases 

Export purchases sends a bill to Xero for the main purchase lines on the purchase order. It is not possible to create a PO for multiple suppliers at the same time.

Whenever a purchase order is partially or fully received in Unleashed, a bill will be sent to Xero as either Draft, Awaiting Approval, or Awaiting Payment.

The bill date will be equal to the date received in Unleashed. This may not always be the same as the actual invoice date, for instance where the goods are received in advance of an invoice. 

Export purchase costs

Export purchase costs sends a bill (or bills for different suppliers) to Xero for the additional cost lines, i.e. 1 x carriage charge @ £50 = £50. 

Whenever a purchase order is partially or fully received in Unleashed, a bill will be sent to Xero as either Draft, Awaiting Approval, or Awaiting Payment.

These costs don’t have to relate to the same supplier. If each line relates to a different supplier then a separate bill will be sent to Xero for each purchase cost line on the Unleashed PO. 

It doesn’t matter if the currency of the cost line is different to currency of the overall PO. Provided multi-currency is enabled the currency of the cost line will be the currency of the bill in Xero. 

By default any cost lines associated with a PO will move to Xero as stock, in line with accounting treatment. 

Supplier returnsCreates a credit note in XeroSupplier return costsCreates a credit note in XeroExport suppliersCreates/updates suppliers in real-time once saved in Unleashed.Export supplier return journalsStock journals will be exported in real time once completed. Export re-cost adjustment journalsJournals from purchase re-costs will be exported in real time once completed. Export stock take journalsStock journals from stock takes will be exported in real time once completed. Purchase invoice approvals with Unleashed

Unleashed

Whilst there is no multi-stage approval workflow built in to Unleashed, it is possible to restrict who is able to receipt a purchase order, facilitating a separation between those who are able to raise, approve, and receipt PO’s.

ApprovalMax

Once a PO has been receipted and a bill is raised in Xero, if a further approval is required then ApprovalMax could be used.

For this to work the bill would need to be raised into Xero with the status “pending approval”.  

To make sure the approval went to to the right person you can set granular conditions for your approval steps:

This is where Unleashed’s tracking category integration with Xero can be useful. For example if you wanted to have a different approval workflow for a different warehouse or product group.

Using invoice processing automation with Unleashed

This is possible but the benefits are relatively limited. At the time of writing the only 2 apps that you can use with Unleashed for this are AutoEntry and Receipt Bank. They both work on the same principle. If a purchase invoice that is processed by AutoEntry / Receipt Bank already matches to a bill in Xero this will be highlighted to prevent duplication, and an option to attach the PDF into Xero will be provided.

AutoEntry

AutoEntry has a feature called File-Match that supports this.

It is only activated once a publish attempt is initiated as opposed to when the item is in the inbox.

For these to work the bill in Xero can have any status, but the bill dates must be an exact match or the Xero bill must be dated after the actual invoice date.

AutoEntry provides the option to set an invoice date threshold for the duplicate check. However this is a forward-looking threshold, so will only work if the bill date in Xero is after the actual invoice date (i.e. goods are receipted in Unleashed at a date after the invoice date). This threshold goes up to 15 days.

Receipt Bank

Receipt Bank has a feature called Paperwork Match that supports this (although Receipt Bank’s documentation points to this being for payments rather than bills). Sometimes you will need to refresh your Receipt Bank connection for this to work.

Unlike AutoEntry, Receipt Bank has no date tolerance threshold for bills (forwards or backwards). The purchase invoice date must be an exact match to the bill date in Xero.

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