Unleashed and Xero
We’re delighted to see a new breed of inventory systems coming online which can connect with Xero.
Unleashed Software, our latest Network Partner provides online inventory management for small to medium sized businesses. Unleashed tightly integrates with Xero so you can manage your inventory levels, purchasing and sales inside Unleashed and then it automatically creates the accompanying accounting entries in Xero. This means you don’t have to re-enter supplier and customer invoices in Xero or work through the accompanying inventory and cost of goods sold changes. Pilot customers have reported significant savings of time using both Unleashed and Xero together.
Take a look at this video from the Unleashed team about the integration:
21 Jan 2013 – video updated as previous one was out of date
To get set up from the Xero side you may need to add a few new account codes and make a small change to your reporting layout of your Profit and Loss. We recommend you talk to your financial advisor about this and make sure your opening stock and Cost of Goods figures are correct in Xero. Utilising Xero’s reporting layout customisation will enable you to easily adjust your Profit and Loss report to show your Cost of Goods sold in your Gross Profit calculation. Your balance sheet will show the most up to date value of your stock on hand as well.
To take a bit of a closer look behind the scene let’s step through the accounting entries created in Xero.
- A draft accounts payable invoice gets created inside Xero when the good you’ve ordered from a supplier have been received. Once this invoice is approved your stock on hand value will increase and there is an increase in your accounts payable liability.
DR CR Accounts Payable 1,125 Stock on Hand 1,000 GST 125 - When you make a sale a draft accounts receivable invoice is created in Xero. Once this invoice is approved your revenue increases and there is an increase in your accounts receivable account.
DR CR Accounts Receivable 2,250 Sales 2,000 GST 250 - There is then another invoice which comes into Xero (as a result of the sale) to lower your stock on hand value and increase your cost of goods sold. The invoice has a zero total and has the same effect as posting a manual journal with a matching debit and credit once it is approved. Our API will have support for manual journals very soon, when that happens this adjustment will be posted as a journal instead of an invoice.
DR CR Cost of Goods Sold 1,000 Stock on Hand 1,000
For a more detailed explanation of how as a developer you can integrate an inventory system with Xero, head over to our developer centre and read this guide.
18 comments
James
We’ll be doing simple stock shortly but we are far more interested in working with Xero network partners for advanced stock features. Stock is very often tied up with warehousing or Point of Sale (POS) which isn’t our business. Often Stock management is tied up with industry specific workflows. We also believe Internet enabled stock will connect to lots of other systems and enable small to small and small to large EDI opportunities
So we’re delighted to see new partners investing in this area,
Rod
Sounds good Rod. I have my own private API system working from my e-commerce website which handles my stock, but I’d be interested in seeing what Xero can come up with for basic management.
Following on from Rod’s comments – the first steps will be to take the Price List Items we have for accounts receivable invoices and make these available in accounts payable as well. In this way it will be possible to track the movement of inventory items as you buy and sell them.
I think (having had a quick look around) that this piece of the Cloud has great potential to help out many Xero using businesses…. my issue… no United Kingdom support… or pricing/offering. Would like to see this as we’re doing what we can to get Xero out there in the UK…. don’t forget us Pohms!
We’ve been using Unleashed and Xero together for a while now, including managing distribution of stock to retailers as well as direct sales sales to customers online. Working very well together!
@Andrew – that would be awesome if combined with being able to purchase/sell price list items via the API. Look forward to it!
Hank
This looks really useful, but I’m gobsmacked that they only support Australian and NZ customers.
I’d forgive Unleashed if this was still 2009 but Xero now has 20,000 paying customers from more than 50 countries. It’s an international product. Also, the UK is Xero’s second largest geographic customer by value.
Gareth
Unleashed are releasing the worldwide version in 3 weeks, due out 1st August. Enabling you to select your base currency and country.
Will this integrate with any web shopping carts? I basically want to run my business without doing any work at all if possible. I’m quite lazy.
Greg Murphy (Unleashed)
Yes, Unleashed can integrate with websites. Prior to the API release targeted for October, Unleashed are happy to work directly with companies wishing to integrate with Xero and e-commerce sites – contact support@unleashedsoftware.com
Does it integrate with any, or have any POS systems? This would seem to be necessary for a retail merchandise business.
We are happy to say we are working with Vend HQ now to enable better POS / Retail options (i.e. a Xero, Unleashed, VendHQ combo). We hope to have this integration in place during the next two months.
Karen
We have been using Unleashed and Xero for almost a year now. I can highly recommend their product to anyone considering it. It is so easy to use and set up. We are now able to run our stock levels in real time, we have eliminated all duplicate entry and record keeping and it has saved us heaps of accounting time both during the month and month end. Also the guys at Unleashed have been great to deal with, the service has been excellent and nothing is too much trouble for them.
Exciting Xero EDI development: the EDI industry and Xero have not yet been willing to invest in the interface needed for Xero EDI. However, my research showed that DiCental might be a good candidate to do this fairly inexpensively. My email to DiCentral soon resulted in a very long conversation with one of their programming managers. The exciting conclusion was that DiCentral would create the Xero EDI link if they get even one committed Xero EDI customer. I do not remember the exact initial Xero EDI SETUP ESTIMATE, but believe it was only around $500. I also found the transaction fee costs shockingly low, even for small quantities, but do not recall that amount either.
I will gladly help with this, at minimal cost.
@Mike great to hear, I will drop a line to my contact at DI Central to confirm. I’ve also created a thread in our Add-on request forum so users can register to show support and get updated on progress: http://xero.uservoice.com/forums/28866-integration-with-other-products/suggestions/2986219-di-central-integration-with-xero
One user was unhappy that DiCentral only supported Internet Explorer. Its website said it only supported IE 6 and 7, but they will soon correct that error. It supports any IE starting with 6. They are considering other browser support, but it barely matters. EDI is for computer-to-computer transaction exchange. Once you (or I) set it up, you can use any browser to review imported entries in Xero. I will follow up on whether you need IE to originate EDI transactions to customers or suppliers.
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Any word yet on when Xero’s inventory module will be ready?