How to sync your Timely customers to Xero – Timely

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Xero is an online accounting system, that integrates with Timely to help you manage your financial transactions. When you connect Xero to your Timely account, we'll automatically make sure that your Timely invoices, and any associated payments, are synced across to your Xero account. So you only have to enter your sales information in one place!

Customers will be synced to Xero when an invoice for them is created in Timely. A customer record in Timely will only have a Xero ID if the customer was imported from Xero, or if an existing invoice for that customer has already been synced to Xero. In this article, you will learn how to sync your Timely customers to Xero.

How contacts/customers are created between Xero and Timely

Once a contact is created in Xero for a Timely customer, then any future invoices for this customer will be synced to the same contact. This is matched using their Xero ID. When we create a contact in Xero, the following information from the customer's record will be included:

First name and last name
If the customer has a company name listed in Timely, this will be the contact's name in Xero
Postal and physical address
Email address
Telephone number
SMS number

If you have an existing customer database in Xero, then you can import your customers from Xero in to your Timely account. This applies a Xero ID to the customer in Timely, so whenever you raise an invoice for that customer in Timely it will be linked to their existing contact in Xero.

Important note: When you import your customers from Xero, duplicate customer records may be created. You can merge a customer record and retain the Xero ID as long as the customer that originated from Xero is kept as the Primary Customer. See our help guide How to merge duplicate customers for more information.

Timely note:

Customer: the customer or client, as they are in Timely.

Contact: the customer or supplier's details, as they are entered in Xero.

Xero ID: the ID of the contact in Xero. We use the Xero ID behind the scenes to match a customer in Timely to their contact in Xero.

How to import your Xero customers

There are two ways in which you can import customers into Timely:

From the Customers tab

1 Head to the customers tab in your Timely dashboard.

2 Click the import customers button.

3 Select import from Xero from the list of options (this option will only be available once you are connected to Xero, see our help guide Getting started with Timely and Xero for more information). Now your customers from Xero will start importing.

From the Xero settings page

1 Head to setup > integrations (formerly add ons) > Xero > configure.

2 Click the import customers button, and then your customers will start importing.

How to sync a customer to an existing Xero contact

If you've been using both Timely and Xero separately and want to connect your Xero account to Timely, you may not want to import your contacts from Xero again. It's then possible to merge the new contact with the existing contact, while retaining the link to the customer's record in Timely. This will also merge the sales history for the existing contact into the new contact. Any future invoices from Timely will then sync to the same merged contact.

To sync a customer to an existing Xero contact

1 Start by locating the existing Contact in Xero.

2 Choose options > merge in their record.

3 In the merge field, select the contact that was created by Timely.

4 Click merge to confirm the process.

Timely note: a contact's name can only be used once in Xero, so it won't be possible to sync a new customer to Xero when a contact already exists for them. You will need to alter the name in Xero slightly so that they aren't recognised as the same contact. Once that's been done, you'll be able to sync the invoice to Xero and create a new contact.