Xero Integration

Hi All,



Has anyone successfully integrated Xero w/ CS-Cart at all?

My store is starting to have quite a few orders placed each week and I’m falling behind!



I’m aware of 4sprungs offering, looking for alternatives before going that route.

I've worked with 4Sprung before and I don't trust their work. My store is buggy, corners were cut, and the code is unmaintainable. This was 2 years ago so things might have changed since then, but I wouldn't recommend them at all.

We are currently developing an addon for this.

Xero told us it was not made for many orders. It is not meant to be used with an online shop.

Xero or any accounting software is meant to connect to your bank accounts not an online store - Sno

[quote name='snorocket' timestamp='1409114265' post='190765']

Xero or any accounting software is meant to connect to your bank accounts not an online store - Sno

[/quote]



Well, I don't necessarily agree there. You can import your orders from cs-cart (even with a csv) and Xero links them to payments (paypal, bank, etc). But it was more made for freelancers, and so on. Handling 1000's of orders is not what it was made for.



P.S you might also want to have a look at Kashflow: http://www.kashflow.com/

It's really very good, and they have an amazing amount of add-ons, including e-commerce. Not cs-cart, unfortunately.

[quote name='snorocket' timestamp='1409114265' post='190765']

Xero or any accounting software is meant to connect to your bank accounts not an online store - Sno

[/quote]



Your store probably doesn't take that many sales where accounting becomes difficult.


[quote name='Flow' timestamp='1409122903' post='190776']

Well, I don't necessarily agree there. You can import your orders from cs-cart (even with a csv) and Xero links them to payments (paypal, bank, etc). But it was more made for freelancers, and so on. Handling 1000's of orders is not what it was made for.



P.S you might also want to have a look at Kashflow: [url=“http://www.kashflow.com/”]http://www.kashflow.com/[/url]

It's really very good, and they have an amazing amount of add-ons, including e-commerce. Not cs-cart, unfortunately.

[/quote]

I've paid 4Sprung for the module, doesn't work exactly like I wanted it to, but it's done the heavy lifting of moving customer information across along with the price. Can't complain that much.

Xero has no difficulty in dealing with hundreds and thousands of orders

It seems like they can handle a lot more invoices now (below used to say 200 to 500 per month), but still it has its limitations. From the Xero website:



System limits



Invoicing



[color=#797979][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]Xero is designed for volumes of up to 1,000 invoices per month, dependent also on the frequency of invoicing during the month, variability of amounts and the frequency of sales tax reporting requirements.[/size][/font][/color]

Bank Transactions – Spend & Receive Money



[color=#797979][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]Xero is designed for volumes of up to around 1,000 bank transactions per month, also dependent on the frequency of transactions during the month and variability of transaction values.[/size][/font][/color]

Inventory Items



[color=#797979][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]Inventory item lists of greater than 1,000 could cause performance issues for users invoicing via methods other than the API.[/size][/font][/color]

Contacts



[color=#797979][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]Contact lists of greater than 5,000 could cause performance issues for users utilizing Xero via methods other than the API.[/size][/font][/color]

[color=#797979][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][size=4]Xero will work with higher levels than this but the performance of some features and reports may become degraded.[/size][/font][/color]



1000 invoices may seem like a lot when you just start, but it's only a bit more than 30 order per day, so really not that much.

We've got it running much higher volumes than that, i think those figures are related to the lack of bulk tools and people using all the features rather than using cs-cart for some, also our interactions are all via the api.



I think a lot depends on what products you sell and average order values as to whether cs-cart / xero is the best system to use.



If there was bottlenecks on certain reports or searches you had to do in xero, you could easily use the api to do them.

[quote name='JesseLeeStringer' timestamp='1409136352' post='190811']

Your store probably doesn't take that many sales where accounting becomes difficult.[/quote]



I wish, then I would'nt have to work so hard, then i could post ridiculous questions on various internet forums and reply with even more ridiculous posts - Sno

[quote name='pixelbypixel' timestamp='1409165916' post='190854']

We've got it running much higher volumes than that, i think those figures are related to the lack of bulk tools and people using all the features rather than using cs-cart for some, also our interactions are all via the api.



I think a lot depends on what products you sell and average order values as to whether cs-cart / xero is the best system to use.



If there was bottlenecks on certain reports or searches you had to do in xero, you could easily use the api to do them.

[/quote]



Hmm that's interesting. And strange that Xero support mailed me personally that they would not recommend their product for an online shop with over 500 orders per month, which made me give up on it.

I think it would mostly depend on what functionality you needed, for example if most of your orders are for the exact same amount, reconciling would be a nightmare.

[quote name='JesseLeeStringer' timestamp='1405163198' post='187429']

Hi All,



Has anyone successfully integrated Xero w/ CS-Cart at all?

My store is starting to have quite a few orders placed each week and I'm falling behind!



I'm aware of 4sprungs offering, looking for alternatives before going that route.

[/quote]



Hi,



I had created and installed the XERO Accounting add-on for one of my Client website and it has working without any issue for past 1+ years. Please check your PM.



Please let me know if still you are looking Xero add-on.



Thankyou.

One of our clients has integrated Xero. They use 4spring add-on. They had very much failed orders. We found much errors with xml sending to xero from add-on. Errors related the following problems:


  1. Product names contains diffrent forbidden symbols such us “&”. It is necessary to replace these symbols
  2. Product taxes are calculated incorrectly
  3. Address fields are sent as empty
  4. Address fields contains different forbidden symbols



    May be this information will be useful for anyone.

[quote name='snorocket' timestamp='1409173117' post='190870']

I wish, then I would'nt have to work so hard, then i could post ridiculous questions on various internet forums and reply with even more ridiculous posts - Sno

[/quote]



It's just not the same once we start banning people from the forum…