Adfin | Adfin’s integration with Xero saves on average 3 hours per week

Collecting a payment isn’t a single action, it’s a chain of steps across multiple systems. Customer details, invoices, email or SMS delivery, banks, payment networks, payment providers, payouts, accounting systems… and that’s before you even get to reconciliation.

When these systems don’t talk to each other properly (which is most of the time), the result is familiar:

poor payment experience
late payments
hours lost to manual reconciliation and troubleshooting

A classic example:

A customer pays by bank transfer, but the reference doesn’t match. The money’s in your bank, but Xero can’t reconcile it automatically. You’re now manually matching transactions, updating invoice statuses, and emailing customers to confirm payment.

That’s 30 minutes lost on a single payment.

The real problem: broken connections

From the early days of Adfin, we've spent most of our time talking to our users - especially accountants and bookkeepers. The scale of inefficiency in managing invoices and payments became immediately clear, particularly in reconciliations.

With Adfin, businesses don't need to worry about any of these. Adfin has built state-of-the-art integrations with each of these components, especially with Xero. We've invested years of development work and integrated feedback from thousands of accountants and bookkeepers to create the best Xero integration in the payments market (that’s what our users tell us, at least!).

There are four key characteristics that truly blow the mind of our users:

Two-way sync - Changes made in either system are reflected in the other. Always.
Real time - Updates appear in Adfin and Xero within seconds, not hours, not “eventually”.
Complete - Most integrations handle the happy path. Adfin goes further and covers the edge cases that actually cause problems. That’s where the real time savings come from.
Reliable - Built to run 24/7. When something needs attention, users are notified immediately

Below is a detailed breakdown of what the Adfin <> Xero integration does and why our users save tens of hours every month.

Fully automated integration setup

The integration setup process is fully automated and it usually takes our users no more than a couple of minutes to connect Adfin to Xero - which includes setting up how invoices are captured, how payments are reconciled, bank and payouts configurations, importing and syncing customers.

The result is totally worth it: two of the most business critical systems are properly wired to cover all those edge use cases and Adfin is added as a payment method in Xero, allowing businesses to Just Get Paid faster and cheaper than ever.

Adfin captures invoices from Xero

Adfin gives users full control on which invoices should be imported from Xero or just import all of them. Users that opt for granular control make use of branding themes to select whether Adfin should import the invoice and how it should be collected - via Auto Collect (Direct debit) or On Demand (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, bank transfer).

Adfin captures the invoice, customer details, and line items, attaches the original Xero invoice PDF, and sends a payment request to the customer. The invoice is automatically marked as sent in Xero.

The part that our users love the most: once the invoice is linked, any update made in Xero is automatically reflected in Adfin, ensuring the correct amount is always collected and customers always see the latest invoice.

Adfin sends the invoices

Adfin ensures customers receive the invoices on their preferred communication channels - via email, WhatsApp or SMS text messages. For example, we’ve seen plenty of customers pay in seconds when the invoice is sent via WhatsApp and they click on the link and pay with Apple Pay.

Collecting payments using direct debit (Auto Collect)? Adfin handles the entire communication process:

No mandate yet? Adfin sends the invoice with a mandate request and starts collection automatically once signed.
Mandate already in place? Adfin sends the invoice for records and issues payment notices in line with BACS requirements.

The part that our users love the most: As with everything in Adfin, all of these flows are fully configurable, including selecting communication channels, mandate chasing frequencies, whether to send invoices right away or later etc.

Adfin sends reminders automatically

Adfin’s credit control automation follows up on unpaid invoices via email, WhatsApp, and SMS. Users control when, how, and how often reminders are sent.

The part that our users love the most: Adfin Autopilot - the AI-powered tool that sends personalised reminders to the customer based on the business tone of voice, adapted to the context of each customer. It keeps good customers happy - and gets difficult payers to pay faster.

Adfin collects the payment and reconciles instantly

Adfin supports all major payment methods in one place:

Direct debit
Card
Apple Pay & Google Pay
Bank transfer
Open Banking

This means consistent reconciliation in Xero, reducing manual reconciliation efforts and making it easier to understand what’s going on.

Adfin creates the payment on the invoice in Xero right away after the customer has paid and posts the transaction on the Adfin clearing bank account. If payment is reverted for some reason (like a failed direct debit), Adfin automatically reverts the payment in Xero and continues the payment collection process with automated retries and fallbacks to card payments.

The part that our users love the most: Sometimes, customers just pay differently - in cash, via a cheque or directly into your bank account. Adfin syncs all these manual payments that are logged in Xero, making sure that invoice amounts are reduced by any partial payments or chasing stops when the invoice is fully paid (or voided) in Xero.

Double the love: Sometimes, these manually posted payments in Xero are reverted - Adfin covers for that as well, by automatically cancelling the payment and resuming collection with the new amount.

Adfin automatically syncs credit notes

Adfin syncs all credit notes from Xero. When a credit note is applied on an invoice, Adfin will reduce the collection amount.

Edit the credit note amount or delete the credit note? Adfin will immediately read the change and update the collection amount.

Fast payouts, fully reconciled

We know how important cash is for businesses, so unlike many providers, Adfin doesn’t sit on your funds. We execute the payout as soon as the money is available. All the payouts are automatically reconciled in Xero between the Adfin clearing account and the business bank account.

Adfin collects and reconciles payment links (payments without an invoice)

Adfin has a complete integration with Xero for managing payments without an invoice as well - like payment links or direct debit payment schedules.

Each business has its own way of handling these payments. Therefore, Adfin offers 3 ways of managing these payments in Xero: as a receive money transaction, as an overpayment users can easily apply on the invoices directly in Xero, or as a prepayment, which allows automatically reconciling VAT as well.

Adfin keeps the users informed

Users get full visibility on the data that’s synced between Adfin and Xero. The activity feed in Adfin at invoice and customer level shows the updates that were made to or from Xero and their status.

Whenever there is an issue in Xero, it will be highlighted in the activity feed. Whenever there is an impediment processing the update in Adfin, Adfin will inform the users via email or in-app notifications.

Users can rest assured that Adfin will let them know when their attention or manual intervention is required.

Xero and Adfin disconnected? Adfin will send an email and show a banner in the app, so users can take action.
Payment cannot be synced to Xero due the accounting period being closed? Adfin will send users an email notification.
Customer was deleted in Xero while their invoice was still under collection in Adfin? Adfin will email the user telling them how to fix the issue.

Customer records, always in sync

Users can import customers from Xero to Adfin either as a mass import of all customers or filtered by specific Xero customer groups. Users can then decide if new customers assigned to the customer group in Xero should be auto-imported in Adfin.

Adfin then keeps the customer records in sync:

When an invoice is captured in Adfin from Xero, Adfin automatically reads the customer details.
When the customer's details are changed in Xero, Adfin applies the updates. The same happens in reverse: Xero is updated when customers are changed in Adfin.

The part that our users love the most: Adfin can send notifications to multiple contacts at the same time, so the right customers get the payment request or the reminder. This feature also enables invoices to be pushed to bookkeeping tools for automated reconciliation.

Built for accountants. Loved by businesses.

These are the top reasons why our users and thousands of accountants love the Adfin <> Xero integration. And our investment in this integration is ongoing, expanding to cover more use cases in our mission to fully automate everything payments for our users.

Adfin’s integration with Xero saves on average 3 hours per week

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