How to integrate Jim's Jobs with Xero

If your are migrating from Formitize to Jim’s Jobs and your Formitize account is integrated with Xero, you have the choice of using the same organisation or creating a new one in Xero. Using the same organisation will break the link between Formitize and Xero.

Jim's Jobs Web has the ability to integrate with Xero. Before you begin the process of integrating, please check you have all you need.

Prerequisites

Have your Jim's Jobs account set up with your username and password handy.
A valid Xero account and information to access the account, such as username and password. If your account was set up by your accountant, please make sure that your username has permissions to read, create and modify contacts, invoices, payments and financial settings. If you are not sure, contact your accountant first.
Setup a new organisation with your Xero account, ask your accountant to help if you don’t know how to do that. A How-to page on setting up bank accounts in Xero is here.
Basic knowledge of operating in Xero, such as login, searching contacts, invoices and payments. Please familiar yourself with Xero first if this is the first time you work with Xero.

Formitize users can keep using their existing organisation in Xero.

Preparation

Integrating with Xero involves exporting data from Jim’s Jobs. When you first start with Jim’s Jobs, you will need to import your data from your previous system if you wish, such as JIMBO, Jim’s Jobs Classic, Jim’s Online or Formitize.

For Formitize users using their existing Xero organisation, there are some extra preparation steps to take before you can start the integrating.

Sync all data to your Xero organisation in Formitize
You can import your contacts, jobs, quotes, leads and purchases from Formitize into JJW via DATA IMPORT TOOL

Once the Data Import is done, do a sanity check of the imported data, particularly in the following areas:

Xero doesn’t allow contacts with a duplicate name, this means Xero will overwrite one after another if you have two clients with the same display name. Update the display name to be unique. Xero does require your client to have name.
Check your client’s addresses (Postal and service address) are correct and valid in Jim’s Jobs.
Check your client’s email is in a valid form. Xero will reject the client if email address is invalid. If a client does not have email address, leave the field blank.
Make sure all your general ledgers are set up in Xero, using the same code and name as they are shown in Jim’s Jobs. Ask your accountant if you don’t know how. Accountants have their own way of setting up ledgers, Jim’s Jobs doesn’t export general ledgers to Xero. Instead, it imports the set of general ledgers from Xero to replace its own.
Make sure you have your bank accounts set up in Xero. Bank accounts are used to received payment, Jim’s Jobs honours the set in Xero. Ask your accountant to help if you don’t know how.
Make sure you have Country information setup for your Jim’s Job account, as well as your timezone information.
Make sure your tax codes are set up in Xero. In most case, a default setting of an organisation will be satisfying. Jim’s Jobs uses 2 codes from Xero

Country	Tax Type	Default Tax Rate Name

Country	Tax Type	Default Tax Rate Name
Australia	`GST` Sales `non-GST` GST Free Sales	`GST` GST on Income `non-GST` GST Free Income
New Zealand	`GST` Sales `non-GST` NONE	`GST` 15% GST on Income `non-GST` No GST

Once the preparation is done, we can start to integrate with Xero.

Integrate with Accounting software

You can start the accounting integration by visiting the ACCOUNTING INTEGRATION page through SETUP > Financial Settings > Accounting Integration.

This is a five step process, and depends on how much data you are about to transfer, it could take up to an hour to finish.

Select Xero from the drop-down list under the Select accounting system section.

Click on CONNECT button, you will be brought to a login page hosted by Xero

Type in your Xero username and password in the page to finish the login process. You will be asked to give permission to Jim’s Jobs to access your organisation data. Select the organisation you want to integrate with Jim’s Jobs then click Allow access

Once XERO authenticates your login and receives your authorisation to the organisation's data, it will redirect you back to Jim’s Jobs ACCOUNTING INTEGRATION page to do the next step - Select company.

Select your organisation from the drop-down then click on “CONFIRM COMPANY” to move to step 3, import accounting system setup data.

In this step, you will import bank, general ledger and tax data from your accounting software into Jim's Jobs. Click on IMPORT BANK, GENERAL LEDGER AND TAX DATA to start importing.

Step 4 is to export clients and invoices to Xero.

Click on EXPORT button, you will be asked to confirm the exportation process with a popup as below:

Jim’s Jobs assumes a new Xero Organization has been created to accept the exported Jim’s Jobs data. If you want to use an existing Organization, please be sure you have done the data sanity check described above to minimize the chance of data duplication. Click Yes to start exporting clients and invoices to Xero.

After step 4, you now then finish the integration with your accounting software. From now on, invoices you create in Jim’s Jobs will be automatically synced to your accounting software.