Syncing line items and invoices into Xero with ScaleXP Invoicing is straightforward, but you may also want to send other data from HubSpot across to Xero. This article explains the options available for getting extra HubSpot deal information onto your invoices and into your accounting platform, and the trade-offs of each approach.
When you might sync extra data
There are many reasons you might need to send additional data fields from HubSpot to Xero. The most common are so that the finance team can identify the details of a deal, to display purchase order or confirmation numbers on the invoice, and to send additional data for reporting purposes.
All of these are possible. However, Xero does not support custom fields in the same way that HubSpot does, so the approach you take depends on what you need. The options below cover each route.
Link to deal
The most common use case is giving the finance team more background about a deal. If you are happy to give your team access to HubSpot, this is the simplest option.
When you view an invoice in Xero that was generated by ScaleXP Invoicing, you will see a link that reads Open in ScaleXP Invoicing. Clicking it takes you straight to the deal inside HubSpot. If you are using more advanced data tools, you can also extract the HubSpot deal ID from this field (it is called InvoiceURL).
Reference field
The reference field in Xero is a free-type text field, and its contents are shown on the invoice when it is sent to a customer. It is commonly used for a purchase order number or reference number. This is usually the first option to consider because it is easy to set up.
Inside ScaleXP Invoicing you can customize how the reference field is generated each time you create an invoice from a deal, using one or more HubSpot deal properties. For example, if you had a HubSpot field called PO and also wanted to include the salesperson, ScaleXP Invoicing can be configured to fill the reference field as PO1234 / Deal Owner. You can use whatever delimiters you like (the characters between each value).
If you need something more complex, such as a generated reference code, you could create it as a field in HubSpot first and then use that field as the default reference field. There are some limitations to this approach: it gets cumbersome if you have lots of different pieces of data, and the data is visible to your customer.
Tracking categories
For reporting, tracking categories can be really powerful, as you can build reports inside Xero using this data. For example, you might want to track the region or team that generated the revenue.
Inside Xero you can create up to two tracking categories, each with up to 100 options. ScaleXP Invoicing supports setting tracking categories across the whole deal, and can be configured to auto-fill the tracking category based on HubSpot deal properties.
Adding extra line items
Because Xero does not support custom fields in the same way as QuickBooks, there are not many other options for sending more data. If you would like the customer to see more detail on an invoice, the fallback is to add additional line items with further descriptions. The ScaleXP Invoicing team can help you get these auto-filled if that is a route you would like to explore, so just get in touch.